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Reading the Canon

Literary History in the 21st Century

Herausgeber: Löffler, Philipp

American Studies – A Monograph Series, Bd. 281

2017

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Abstract

‘Reading the Canon’ explores the relation between the production of literary value and the problem of periodization, tracing how literary tastes, particular reader communities, and sites of literary learning shape the organization of literature in historical perspective. Rather than suggesting a political critique of the canon, this book shows that the production of literary relevance and its tacit hierarchies of value are necessary consequences of how reading and writing are organized as social practices within different fields of literary activity. ‘Reading the Canon’ offers a comprehensive theoretical account of the conundrums still defining contemporary debates about literary value; the book also features a Series of historically-inflected author studies—from classics, such as Shakespeare and Thomas Pynchon, to less likely figures, such as John Neal and Owen Johnson—that illustrate how the idea of literary relevance has been appropriated throughout history and across a variety of national and transnational literary institutions.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Zwischenüberschrift Seite Aktion Preis
Cover C
Title Page III
Copyright IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS V
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX
PHILIPP LÖFFLER: Introduction: The Practice of Reading and the Need for Literary Value 1
I PERIODIZATION, PRESTIGE, GENRE 21
CLEMENS SPAHR: Literary History and the Problem of Periodization 23
GÜNTER LEYPOLDT: Singularity and the Literary Market 47
MICHAEL BASSELER: Literary Canons and the Dynamics of Generic Change 71
II CLASSICS IN THE CLASSROOM 103
PETER PAUL SCHNIERER: Shakespeare’s Complete Works: Canonization, Completion and Collection in the Twenty-First Century 105
JOHANNES VÖLZ: The Uses of Emerson: Transcendentalism, Transnationalism, and the New Americanists 115
HEIKO JAKUBZIK: Edgar Allan Poe and the Rise of Detective Fiction 151
SASCHA PÖHLMANN: Canon Fodder: Thomas Pynchon, Unpopular Culture, and the Invention of Postmodernism 167
III IN THE NAME OF DIVERSITY 187
FRANZISKA SCHMID: Sherman Alexie and the Uses of Native American Literature 189
KATHARINA GERUND: Contested Canons? Toni Morrison and the Nobel Prize in Germany 215
CAROLINE LUSIN: Canon and Carnival: Challenging Hierarchies in Zadie Smith’s ‚NW‘ (2012) 247
JAN RUPP: New Canons for the Classroom: Teaching Black British Writing 269
DIRK WIEMANN: The Great Unread: Indian Writing in English and its Shadow Canons 293
IV LOST FIGURES, UNLIKELY REVIVALS, NEWCOMERS 313
STEFANIE SCHÄFER: John Neal’s ‚Brother Jonathan‘ and the Problem of American Romanticism 315
KARIN HÖPKER: Only in the Chattel Records—Obscurity, Historiography, and Frederick Douglass’s ‚The Heroic Slave‘ 333
TIM SOMMER: Charismatic Authorship: Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of Romantic Canonicity 363
SOPHIE SPIELER: No Longer the ‘Text-Book’ of any Generation: ‚Stover at Yale‘ and the Non-Canonical 387
KIRSTEN HERTEL: Highbrow—Middlebrow—Broadbrow? J.B. Priestley and Cultural Re-Education in Postwar German Theatre 405
ELLEN REDLING: Canonizing Youth in Mark Ravenhill’s Major Plays 433
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 457