ABSTRACT
The introduction chapter, “Locating the Literary Canon,” provides a brief overview of the purpose and scope of each chapter of this book. Each chapter is tied together with the overall goal of investigating the role of the idea of the literary canon in the teaching of literature, especially in secondary English classrooms in the United States. While the idea of the literary canon stretches back to Ancient Greece, it has overtime changed, taking on religious connotations during the Middle Ages, and then being used to refer to imaginative works of literature in the 1700s. Yet it was not until after the middle of the 20th century that the word “canon” was commonly used in literary studies, that is, not until it was viewed as problematic. And despite positive changes in the teaching of literature brought about by challenges to the literary canon, processes of canonization continue, often unnoticed and unproblematized. Thus, this chapter underscores the importance of reconceptualizing the literary canon in the teaching of literature using the ideas of Michel Foucault and assemblage theory to better understand text selection practices in the teaching of literature.
