What is the Literary Canon? | Canonical Texts in Literature

There are numerous examples of canonical texts in Western literature. Canonical voices are generally considered to be some of the most influential in shaping Western culture's beliefs and assumptions surrounding justice, the meaning of human life, beauty, virtue, and other societal values. The following few examples of canonical texts from various periods and genres to illustrate the breadth of the literary canon for the more influential and widely accepted voices of the Western literary canon include:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian writer whose works are generally considered part of the Western literary canon.

• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Homer
• Aristotle
• William Shakespeare
• Frederick Douglass
• Emily Dickinson
• Virginia Woolf
• T.S. Eliot
• William Faulkner
• Pablo Neruda
• Albert Camus
• John Steinbeck
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Ray Bradbury
• Chinua Achebe

Literary canon is important because of its role in shaping cultural and societal values, as well as its influence on education and literary study. Unfortunately, the generally accepted Western canon lacks diversity, as it is currently dominated by men, and, for much of the last several centuries, white, Christian men. However, during the mid to late 20th century, literary departments, professors, and publishers began to question the validity of a canon that did not represent the voices of women and persons of other races and ethnicities, leading to a heated debate over expanding the literary standard.

There are numerous controversies surrounding the literary canon, particularly with issues related to the lack of diversity, representation, and changing societal values. In recent years, Classics Programs at major universities and especially at Ivy League institutions in the United States, or Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom have been engaged in a debate about which texts and writers should be accepted as classics or as part of the literary canon. Classics programs have long prioritized the white, masculine, most frequently upper-class voices of Greece and Rome. However, contemporary scholars like Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Ph.D.) of Princeton University have instead been arguing for a broader reconstruction of the classical worldview—a reconstruction that would include marginalized voices from the time period. The general argument from thinkers like Peralta centers on the idea that a ''classics program'' should explore the totality of perspectives that shaped the earliest intellectual foundations of Western civilization. Arguments from this perspective hold that if classics programs do not include the marginalized voices and perspectives of the ancient world, students will not truly understand the cultural forces that birthed contemporary Western culture. Rather, they will be left only with an in-depth understanding of the racial, socio-economic, and gender-dominant perspectives of the time period.

Maya Angelou is one of the contemporary writers widely accepted as part of the Western literary canon.

During the 20th and early 21st centuries across Western society, the debate about the literary canon has broadened to a consideration of BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color), ethnic, and queer voices. The early stages of this debate may be seen in the eventual acceptance of Black writers like:

• Frederick Douglass
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Langston Hughes
• James Baldwin
• Maya Angelou
• Toni Morrison

While most literary anthologies published today will include these writers as prominent and talented authors, their acceptance into the literary canon came only after intense debate over the last 150 years. Arguments against including these and other writers within the accepted literary canon were largely racist, stemming from a dominant cultural rejection of the value of Black writers. This debate continues within corners of the academic world, though writers like Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou, in particular, have themselves demonstrated the importance and quality of Black literary voices and perspectives. Similar debates continue regarding Native American, Hispanic, and Asian voices within contemporary Western literature.

The Debate Over Inclusion of LGBTQ+ Voices

Though occasionally present within the generally accepted Western literary canon, such as with the writings of Sappho, voices exploring life from within the LGBTQ+ perspective have historically been absent in or actively suppressed by the literary world. However, with the rise of awareness within Western society beginning in the late 19th century, these voices are now gaining consideration for canonical inclusion. Leaders within the LGBTQ+ community are increasingly gaining a voice in reshaping the canon to include their life perspectives within anthologies, syllabi, and generally used curricula. Some of the more commonly accepted queer voices in the literary canon include:

Alice Walker is a BIPOC and queer writer included in the literary canon.

• Virginia Woolf: Hugely influential for her use of the ''stream of consciousness'' approach to writing, Virginia Woolf was an incredibly influential writer who, though married, was known to have same-sex relationships.
• Walt Whitman: Though he did not overtly identify himself as gay within his more popular writing, Whitman is widely understood to have been an aware, gay man whose sexuality informed his choice of symbolism, allusion, and topics.
• Allen Ginsburg: With the extremely controversial and, at the time, illegal publication of his work ''Howl,'' Ginsburg is one of the most well-known of the early 20th-century queer voices.
• W. H. Auden: Best known for his poetry, Auden is considered a highly influential American writer.
• Alice Walker: Along with being one of the most prominent Black writers of her time and best known for her novel The Color Purple, Alice Walker is also recognized as an important voice within the bisexual community.

After national moves to rescind sodomy laws and with the eventual legalization of same-sex marriages, the queer community continues to develop recognition and acceptance with the literary world. As such, the voices of LGBTQ+ writers will likely continue to gain notoriety and prominence as they are increasingly included in the broader Western literary canon.

Stemming from an older Greek term, kanon, which meant straight rod, a canon is a standard by which other things are measured. As such, the literary canon is a technical term used to describe a set of texts that serve as a recognized standard against which other writers and texts are judged. Canon in literature, often called Western canon, can also classify works that belong to a particular literary tradition or author. The purpose of a literary canon is to assess a new text for its stylistic quality, cultural or social significance, and intellectual value. The literary canon also forms the basis from which a society grows and develops since its canonical texts and thinkers establish the philosophical and imaginative boundaries of society. Some examples of authors included in the literary canon include Jane Austen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, and Ray Bradbury.

Since the literary canon is determined by usage and general acceptance, the 20th and 21st centuries have been marked by a wide-ranging debate over the inclusion of underrepresented writers and texts from non-dominant cultures, called canonical inclusion. These debates advocate for the inclusion of the voices of BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color), queer, and other minority perspectives into the literary canon.