This dissertation focuses on understanding and investigating the role of the idea of the literary canon in the teaching of literature—especially at the secondary level. This role, in the form of “standard authors” of literary works, is as old as the field itself in U.S. schools (Applebee, 1974). While many who have argued for and against the literary canon have done so by slinging vituperative remarks at each other (Lauter, 1991; Guillory, 1993; Bloom, 1995; Cain, 2013), this study is not an argument against the canon or its bedfellows, nor does it advocate a “counter canon,” the teaching of any specific texts, or the teaching of a singular interpretive approach. In this study, I attempt to describe and interrogate forces of canon formation that intersect with the teaching of literature, and offer speculations as to how the role of the canon in the teaching of literature may be reconceptualized to better understand the manifold processes involved in selecting and teaching texts in an English classroom. The concept of the canon is much older than the discipline of the teaching of literature, dating as far back as to ancient Greek thinkers like Polycletus and Aristotle (Gorak, 1991). I briefly trace the history of the idea of the canon from antiquity to its more modern usage for imaginative literary works, appearing in the 1700s (Patey, 1988; Kramnick, 1997; Ross, 1998), and the subsequent notion of some texts being worthier than others in the teaching of literature. I examine how social and philosophical movements gaining ground in the 1960s and 1970s led to serious criticisms of the literary canon (Smith, 1983; Lauter, 1991; Gallagher, 1997; Franke, 2011). I then posit three broad forces of canon formation in the teaching of literature: cultural forces, processes of categorization, and changing interpretive practices. To further understand how these forces shape and change the literary canon as the teaching of literature changes at the local level of teachers who at times self-govern what counts as a teachable literary text (Aston, 2017), I develop a conceptual framework based on Michel Foucault’s ideas of power relations and Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory (based on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari). This is again not to eliminate or suggest a counter canon, but to describe and shine a light on operations of canon formation (encoded in teaching documents, standards, and anthologies) that may at times narrow the teaching of literature while at other times expand it, pointing to the flexible and adaptive, though often contested, nature of the canon in the teaching of literature.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Many Old English poems reflect the Anglo-Saxon writers's interest in who could exercise power and how language could be used to signal a position of power or powerlessness. In previous Old English studies, the prevailing critical attitude has been to associate the exercise of power with sex—the distinction between males and females based upon biological and physiological differences—or with sex-oriented social roles or sphere of operation. Scholarship of the last twenty years has just begun to explore the connection between power and gender-coded traits, attributes which initially were tied to the heroic code and were primarily male-oriented. By the eighth and ninth centuries, the period in which most of the extant Old English poetry was probably composed, these qualities had become disassociated from biological sex but retained their gender affiliations. A re-examination of "The Dream of the Rood," "The Wanderer," "The Husband's Message," "The Wife's Lament," "Wulf and Eadwacer" and Beowulf confirms that the poets used gender-coded language to indicate which poetic characters, female as well as male, held positions of power and powerlessness. A status of power or powerlessness was signalled by the exercise of particular gendered traits that were open for assumption by men and women. Powerful individuals were depicted with masculine-coded language affiliated with honor, mastery, aggression, victory, bravery, independence, martial prowess, assertiveness, physical strength, verbal acuteness, firmness or hardness, and respect from others. Conversely, the powerless were described with non-masculine or feminine-coded language suggesting dishonor, subservience, passivity, defeat, cowardice, dependence, defenselessness, lack of volition, softness or indecisiveness, and lack of respect from others. Once attained, neither status was permanent; women and men trafficked back and forth between the two. Depending upon the circumstances, members of both sexes could experience reversals of fortunes which would necessitate moving from one category to the other, on more than one occasion in a lifetime.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).