ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 explores how the literary canon, once a rarely named given in literary studies, came to be challenged and critiqued in the second half of the 20th century, calling attention to the importance of canon criticisms in educational settings, especially in the 21st century. This chapter begins with a personal account of the problems involved in selecting literary texts for a literature curriculum and the relation of the canon to the teaching of literature. It then explains various important functions of canons before chronicling the emergence of canon criticism in U.S. literary studies. While the New Critics helped to unify literary studies and provide the field with a solution to previous methods of literary analysis, like the old historicism, they also brought with them certain texts, the canon of the 20th century. This chapter, however, notes the importance of social movements in the 1960s in identifying problems in the canon, especially problems of representation. This chapter also details how changing methods of literary analysis have affected the canon to today. This chapter ends by specifying the importance of investigating the role of the literary canon in the teaching of literature and outlines the aims and scope of subsequent chapters.
