The making of the English literary canon : from the Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century / / Trevor Ross

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910809734703321
• Autore: Ross Trevor Thornton <1961->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Montreal ; ; Buffalo, : McGill-Queen's University Press, c1998
• ISBN: 1-282-85489-5; 9786612854897; 0-7735-6699-6
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: x, 400 p
• Disciplina: 820.9
• Soggetti: Canon (Literature) - History and criticism; English literature - History and criticism; Criticism - Great Britain - History
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Revision of the author's dissertation (Ph. D.--University of Toronto, 1988).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-381) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front Matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Versions of Canonic Harmony -- Early Gestures -- Consequences of Presentism -- Albion’s Parnassus and the Professional Author -- The Uses of the Dead -- Defining a Cultural Field -- Value into Knowledge -- The Fall of Apollo -- Consumption and Canonic Hierarchy -- Reading the Canon -- A Basis for Criticism -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: An indigenous canon of letters, Ross argues, had been both the hope and aim of English authors since the Middle Ages. Early authors believed that promoting the idea of a national literature would help publicize their work and favour literary production in the vernacular. Ross places these early gestures toward canon-making in the context of the highly rhetorical habits of thought that dominated medieval and Renaissance culture, habits that were gradually displaced by an emergent rationalist understanding of literary value. He shows that, beginning in the late seventeenth century, canon-makers became less concerned with how English literature was produced than with how it was read and received.