Paper #2: Firing the Canon: due Novembe 2nd by 5pm

Paper #2: Firing the Canon

The literary canon is being formed and re-formed every year, and the canon of 2016 only bears a slight resemblance to that of 1916; a hundred years in the future it will encompass writers not yet born, some in favor of those long dead. For now, all we can do is evaluate what we have, and in this case, we have two works that have stood the test of time: Shakespeare’s Othello and Behn’s Oroonoko. Each one was extremely popular in its day—even if some (like Rhymer) couldn’t completely appreciate the hoopla—and both works remain fascinating, if controversial, documents of an earlier age. Yet why have they remained in the canon? What makes these two works stand out as exemplary in some way while hundreds and thousands of other works have perished, or simply been cast in the shade?

In this paper, I want you to play “canon maker.” Should Othello and Oroonoko remain one of the imperishable works of the British Literature canon? If so, what qualities about each work make them suitable for current and future generations? Some qualities to consider are:

• Social commentary: discussion of race, gender, class, love, marriage, etc.
• Poetry: ability to discuss common things in uncommon ways
• Characters: characters that are more than two-dimensional stereotypes, who live and breathe and change how we look at the world
• Insight: passages or ideas that are ‘ahead of their time’ and maybe even ahead of our own
• Re-readability: how a work yields new insights and observations when read over and over again

On the same token, if you feel that a work does not merit inclusion in the canon, use some of the above categories to explain why. Don’t simply say “it’s too hard to read,” or “it’s boring”—try to go beyond subjective thinking and focus on specific qualities that make a work destined for the ages. For example, Oroonoko  might ultimately be too racist a work to be lionized for its treatment of race. Or Othello might be, as Rhymer suggests, too disjointed in time and place to come together as a unified whole.

To help you discuss this, I want you to: (a) give examples from each text through quotes—not just summaries—to illustrate your points, and (b) use 2-3 sources from the Supplementary Materials in each Norton edition. This could be the critical articles or the historical documents we read in class, or essays/excerpts we didn’t read for class. Use these to broaden your understanding of each work so you can discuss how each one fits into the historical picture—since above all, the canon is a mirror of literary history and how we read it.

OTHER REQUIREMENTS: (a) at least 4-5 pages double spaced; (b) cite all passages according to MLA format with a Works Cited page; (c) due in 2 weeks, on Wednesday, November 2nd by 5pm [no class that day]