Debating the Canon: A Reader from Addison to Nafisi

Table of Contents

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   Book Overview
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   Chapter 1 Introduction: “The Canon Brawl: Arguments over the Canon”
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   Chapter 2 Joseph Addison (1672–1719) from The Tatler , No. 108 (Thursday, December 15, to Saturday, December 17, 1709)
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   Chapter 3 David Hume (1711–1776) from “Of the Standard of Taste,” Essays (1757)
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   Chapter 4 Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) from “Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare” (1765)
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   Chapter 5 Red Jacket (c.1750–1830) “Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?” from a speech to the Boston Missionary Society (1828)
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   Chapter 6 Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) from “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” Essays in Criticism (1865)
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   Chapter 7 T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Sacred Wood (1919)
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   Chapter 8 F.R. Leavis (1895–1978) from Mass Civilization and Minority Culture (1933)
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    Chapter 9 Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) “Reading and the Growth of the Mind,” How to Read a Book (1940)
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    Chapter 10 Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) from “Odysseus’ Scar,” Mimesis (1946; trans. 1953)
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    Chapter 11 Leo Strauss (1899–1973) from “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)
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    Chapter 12 Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) from “On National Culture,” Wretched of the Earth (1961)
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    Chapter 13 Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) from “Commitment: The Politics of Autonomous Art,” New Left Review (1962)
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    Chapter 14 Chinua Achebe (1930–) “Colonialist Criticism,” Hopes and Impediments (1974, 1988)
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    Chapter 15 Elaine Showalter (1941–) from “The Female Tradition,” A Literature of Their Own (1977)
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    Chapter 16 Annette Kolodny (1941–) from “A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts,” New Literary History (1980)
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    Chapter 17 Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) from “The Field of Cultural Production, Or: The Economic World Reversed,” The Field of Cultural Production (1983)
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    Chapter 18 William J. Bennett (1943–) from “To Reclaim a Legacy,” American Education (1985)
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    Chapter 19 Elizabeth Meese (1943–) from “Sexual Politics and Critical Judgment,” in Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller, Eds., After Strange Texts (1985)
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    Chapter 20 Jane Tompkins (1940–) from “ ‘But Is It Any Good?’: The Institutionalization of Literary Value,” Sensational Designs (1985)
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    Chapter 21 Martin Bernal (1937–) from “Volume I: Introduction,” Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987)
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    Chapter 22 Allan Bloom (1936–1992) “The Student and the University,” The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
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    Chapter 23 E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1928–) from “Rise of the Fragmented Curriculum,” Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987)
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    Chapter 24 Frank Kermode (1919–) from “Canon and Period,” History and Value (1988)
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    Chapter 25 Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1932–) from “Contingencies of Value,” Contingencies of Value (1988)
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    Chapter 26 Arnold Krupat (1941–) from “The Concept of the Canon,” The Voice in the Margin (1989)
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    Chapter 27 Charles Altieri (1942–) from “An Idea and Ideal of Literary Canon,” Canons and Consequences (1990)
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    Chapter 28 Alvin Kernan (1923–) from “Introduction: The Death of Literature,” Death of Literature (1990)
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    Chapter 29 Roger Kimball (1953–) from “Speaking Against the Humanities,” Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (1990; rev. 1998)
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    Chapter 30 Paul Lauter (1932–) from “Canon Theory and Emergent Practice,” Canons and Contents (1991)
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    Chapter 31 Katha Pollitt (1949–) “Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Me …,” The Nation (1991)
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    Chapter 32 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1950–) from “The Master’s Pieces: On Canon Formation and the African-American Tradition,” Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992)
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    Chapter 33 Gerald Graff (1937–) from “Introduction: Conflict in America,” Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (1992)
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    Chapter 34 John Guillory from “Preface” and “Canonical and Noncanonical: The Current Debate,” Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993)
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    Chapter 35 Vassilis Lambropoulos (1953–) from “The Rites of Interpretation,” The Rise of Eurocentrism (1993)
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    Chapter 36 Edward Said (1935–2003) from “Connecting Empire to Secular Interpretation,” Culture and Imperialism (1994)
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    Chapter 37 Michael Bérubé (1961–) from “Higher Education and American Liberalism,” Public Access (1994)
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    Chapter 38 Harold Bloom (1930–) from “An Elegy for the Canon,” The Western Canon: The Books and the School of Ages (1994)
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    Chapter 39 Jacques Derrida (1930–) from “To Whom To Give To,” The Gift of Death (1992, trans. 1995)
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    Chapter 40 Marjorie Garber (1944–) from “Greatness,” Symptoms of Culture (1998)
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    Chapter 41 Richard Rorty (1931–) from “On The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature,” Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1998)
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    Chapter 42 Robert Scholes (1929–) from “A Flock of Cultures: A Trivial Proposal,” The Rise and Fall of English (1998)
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    Chapter 43 Azar Nafisi (1950–) from Sections 16, 17, 18, and 19 of Part II, “Gatsby,” Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2002)