Guillory begins "The Ideology ofCanon Formation" with the assertion that "the authority of the culture, what maintains it as both marginal and elite is not to be distinguished from the authority ofthe canon" (145). Of course the marginal elite he is referring to here is the literary culture within the academy. He goes on to posit that while it is unlikely that the formations of canons can ever be removed from ideological conflicts, that in essence, this is not really saying much at all (145)! While the marriage ofideology and canon formation may be self-evident, Guillory still goes on in the essay to carefUlly delineate how the ideological concerns of T. S. Eliot culminated in Eliot's creation ofa revisionist canon which operated as somewhat of a "shadow canon" along side the established literary canon by elevating the importance of the Metaphysical poets at the expense ofthe established poets ofthe traditional canon--Milton, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Yeats, etc. According to Guillory, the recipients of Eliot's canon (scholars, academics) the "marginal elite", act as the "clergy" ofthe orthodoxy ofthe literary culture, occupying, as Guillory points out, a perch not unlike that of Eliot's preferred poets: "Its real status is precisely that of Donne's poetry, which circulated among a coterie of admirers, or a marginal elite" (151).
Guillory maintains that it is Cleanth Brooks who is left with the task of translating Eliot's many ideological concerns;-the doctrine ofimpersonality relative creative invention as articulated in "Tradition and the Individual Talent", the monumental and closed nature of the existing literary canon (feuw critics,l Guillory notes, seem more oppressed than Eliot by the feeling that the canon, by its very nature is closed), the value and influence ofthe minor versus the major poets, and the doctrine of orthodoxy, what Eliot refers to as "true opinion" or "right tradition" (157) into a cohesive pedagogical practice. Guillory does a masterful job of depicting Brooks' many contributions to the development and practice of "New Critical Theory" both in the 1983 essay as well as in its expanded version as the third chapter in Cultural Capital. Guillory maintains that the real power ofEliot's revisionist canon and literary criticism as articulated in Brooks' New Critical pedagogy is measured by the,affects it had upon a generation of college students who, Guillory states, very "willingly credited the cultural capital of literature" (174) as taught through the New Critical practices of close readings ofllterary texts in order to discern "doxa" or truth through the deliberately opaque screens afforded by the literary devices of paradox, wit, and irony. To further elaborate on this point, Guillory suggests that Brooks/pedagogy insists that "the poem becomes an ostensive act, beyond which lies a conceivably recoverable doxa" (162). Thus the teacher is given the responsibility of "pointing without saying" to a truth which is embedded within the paradoxical nature of the truly poetic work. For it is paradox which is the most highly valued of the three tropes of the New Critical lexicon, and according to Guillory, it is the paradoxical nature of true poetry that Brooks elaborates on most persuasively in The Well Wroupaht Urn, thus investing paradox with the full "ideological weight of the New Critical agenda" (161). Brooks maintains that it is the paradoxical nature of poetry which makes literature difficult to understand, and yet it is this very "difficulty" which Brooks sees as infusing literature with its (in Guillory's term) cultural capital. Although Guillory quotes at length comments Brooks made relative to this position in The Well Wrought Urn, the following statement on this topic seems most emblematic of this sentiment.
Some modern poetry is difficult because of the special problems of our generation. But a great deal of modern poetry is difficult for the reader simply because so few people, relatively speaking, are accustomed to reading poetry as poetry ....
Apparently then, by understanding that "real" or "true" literature is intrinsically difficult, and that it therefore must be interpreted, we can also understand why it must be studied at the university, and why those who are able to master this difficult material become sufficiently credentialed to be admired into an elite, highly educated upper class culture (Cultural Capital 172).
Guillory ends his 1983 essay on canon formation wiffi some reflections relative to the dissemination of literary canons. He notes that ffie canon "participates centrally in the establishment of consensus as the embodiment of a collective valuation" (170). However, in order to be successful in this endeavor the canonizers had best "erase the conflictual prehistory of canon formation" (170), (and Guillory credits Cleanth Brooks for performing this task exceptionally well, particularly as relating to how he established the Eliotic canon as the basis for the New Critical pedagogy). Guillory would seem to insist then, that such establishment of consensus is illusory at best, and therefore and more importantly perhaps, that it is also true that "it should be possible to understand the very divergence of canons and canonizers as a better ground than consensus for a defense of literary culture" (171 ). Guillory concludes "The Ideology of Canon Formation" with what I perceive to be very hopeful and affirmative statements. He posits since the orthodoxy that Eliot imagined really only worked against the premise of a very exclusive society such as he might have found in England or the American South, it will no longer do to seek any sort of canonical consensus in contemporary society. Rather we would be better served to seek the state of what Guillory labels as a "heterodoxy". He states, "This condition I would like to describe is the state of heterodoxy, where the doxa of literature is not a paralyzed allusion to a hidden god, but a teaching that will enact discursively the struggle of difference" (172).
Joe Weixlmann, in "Dealing with the Demands of an Expanding Literary Canon" shows many of the concerns Guillory raises in "The Ideology of Canon Formation". He begins his discussion by noting that the concept of the artistic canon and the notion of canon formation have long been the subjects of intense scholarly debate. His own ideology of canon formation is articulated as follows:
I think it is imperative to understand that our extant literary canon was formulated within a political context and that political actions are not known for producing results that serve the members of an entire populace exlually well. Any reformation of the canon necessarily involves our implicating our political selves in the judgments we make. Utter objectivity is not possible, and we should not delude ourselves into believing that it is (275).
Weixlmann then goes on to discuss a number of the defenses commonly cited by defenders of the legitimacy of the extant literary canon against those in favor of canon reformation. Chief among these defenses, which include the assertion that the existing canon represents the best that has been thought and said in our language, or that it has withstood the test of time, is the assertion that its most legitimate claim rests on its ability to have achieved some sort of consensus (277). Weixlmann, like Guillory, flatly disputes the notion that the canon is a vehicle which owing to its claim of privileging "difference" will open the canonical debate to a multitude of voices. Weixlmann then feels compelled to question whether, in light of the certainty that an established canon will not stand up to critical scrutiny, if we should attempt to establish new canons which would express "as yet unestablished interests" or simply abandon the idea of canon reformation altogether (277). Weixlmann is certain that Guillory would most likely favor the latter course of action, stating that under heterodoxy, "Difference, a designation to be avoided under orthodoxy, becomes, in a heterodox context, a sign of possibility" (278). Weixlmann concedes that Guillory's notion of//ae~eterodoxy would definitely afford critics the opportunity to "erect their own structures, free from the demands of a canon they are almost certain to be bothered by", but that this concept is by no means a practical consideration for the practicing teacher in the college literary classroom.
Weixlmann goes on to elaborate on why the heterodoxical theory is not easily translatable into a classroom pedagogy. The problem, he maintains, lies in the difficulty in teaching a literature course without the canons. For whatever their innate problems, the fact remains that the core of most undergraduate programs are built around anthologies heavily dependent upon the canon. Abandonment of the anthologies supposes that teachers would expend the vast amount of time and effort necessary to obtain the rights to reprint only the stories, poems, plays, etc. that they intend to teach. Weixlmann does not find this to be a practical alternative to the canon.
(This begs the question of whether or not such a practice would be in essence, an exercise in canonical reformation!) However, in further discussion, Weixlmann proves to be much closer to the sentiments I most admire in Guillory's "The Ideology of Canon Formation". To illustrate, Weixlmann, a supporter of canon reformation, clearly states that canonical reformation should widespread and collusive rhetoric of a hermeneutics of suspicion which never suspects itself of being open to contamination" (42).
It is here where Ricks levels his most potent criticisms of Guillory and his fellow academics, for Ricks sees them as guilty of two sins relative to their critiques of the canon. First, they are not the disinterested parties they claim to be, and secondly, their entire critique amounts to something on the order of a meaningless intellectual exercise of immense proportions which fails to consider the roles in literary canon-making of the creative writers who inhabit the canon or those readers existing outside of the academy who are blissfully unaware that a canonical debate is ensuing. The pedagogues, in Ricks' parlance, have gone too far. "the profession of the pedagogue is an honorable one, but the honor of any profession consists in its not arrogating to itself more than the profession should claim" (43). This last sentence gets to the heart of Ricks' attack on Guillory and his fellow pedagogues. According to Ricks, academics like Guillory fail to understand that literary canons are made well outside the boundaries of the academy. Ricks argues that "the most important and enduring rediscovery or reinvention of a book or a writer comes when a subsequent creator is inspired by it to an otherwise inexplicable newness of creative apprehension" (44). While this statement is eerily reminiscent of Eliot's concept of the minor versus the major poets, it seems to be a rather simplistic explanation of the complex factors surrounding canons and canon-making ideologies. It does not seem to take into account the very real and profound influence on students of the dissemination of established or "official" literary canons. It also ignores the reality that academics and institutions have more influence on the creators of the anthologies than the writers canonized within them. Publishers are interested in making a profit, and to do so they must offer a product that educational institutions will buy. Ricks closes his essay by staunchly maintaining that the canon is not created by academics and critics, but by creative wnters and that their works live, "not in the formation of the cunning canon or the candid curriculum" but rather, that writers' works of literature live through their "fecundating of later works of literature" (44).
In 1993 Guillory published a rewording of his 1983 and 1987 essays on canon formation within a book he wrote that more fully explores his current theories relative to the ongoing canonical debate,
The book offers yet another spin on theory relative to the problernatics associated with traditional literary canons. Guillory articulates a viewpoint not explored in his earlier work.
"I propose that the problem of what is called canon formation is best understood as a problem in the constitution and distribution of cultural capital, or more specifically, a problem of access to the means of literary production and consumption" (ix).
The problem according to Guillory, has nothing to do with the content of the canon, and that critics are missing the point when they engage in discussions of representation or exclusion. Critic Bruce Robbins, who has cited Cultural Capital, explains that Guillory is basically leveling an indictment against the the educational institutions in our country in which there exists both unequal access to education as well as unequal access to to the credentials the institution has the power to bestow (371). Guillory's main assumptions relative to literary production and consumption are bleak. Barbara Foley states that in Guillory's ideology of cultural capital, literary study itself has been marginalized largely because "it has experienced what he calls capital f~t in the domain of culture"' (474). This has occured due to the fact the the ducational system is now primarily informed and regulated by a new "technobureaucratic class" hich has determined that the only meaningful cultural capital is per Guillory, a "professional/technological knowledge", thereby making debates over what literary texts are read irrelevant to the larger forces shaping the context in which the reading takes place" (Foley 474).
Bruce Robbins, an admirer of Guillory's work in Cultural Capital who characterizes Guillory's text as "brilliant and orginal" offers only minor criticism of the implications it has on pedogogical practices. While he apparently agrees with Guillory's position that the content of the canon doesn't matter and one might as well be indifferent to attempts from above or below to change it, he sees this as equal to Guillory's other assertion that the real politics that should concern academics and teachers lies outside of literarure at the level of a "credential-giving instutition". However, rightly or wrongly, Robbins sees teachers having little or no influence over these politics and therefore, because they are incapable of acting, inevitably, all that will be left is inaction (374). For example, he posits that teachers are incapable ofredistributing or offering a more equal distribution of the cultural capital that will enable graduate students in literature access to jobs in their field (375).
Bill Readings has a few more problems with Guillory's text, with his criticisms of the theories set forth in Cultural Capital centering primarily around the pedagogical implications inherent in Guillory's critique of the educational institution, as well as his seemingly unconscious disregard for the global realities of Contemporary society and how they might inform the cultural assumptions contained within the text. Relative to assumptions on how Guillory's works might inform the college literary classroom, Readings states that although Guillory seems "quite fight in his general analysis of the direction taken by the University as an institution" (322), he wonders if Guillory's theoretical framework can "successfully address the literary curriculum", noting that conclusions and suggestions for further work seem to be "strangely disjunctive". Similarly, he observes that Guillory's call for a "reconceptualization of the object of literany study" proceeds without any suggestions as to what direction this might take.
It is left then, to Barbara Foley to articulate the most serious critique of Guillory's critical assumptions as depicted in Cultural Capital, Foley agrees with Guillory that while the debate over canonicity that currently occupies many contemporary literary scholars may be nothing more than a "red herring", especially in light of the decline of the cultural capital of the humanities, she nevertheless thinks that he is wrong to treat lightly the movement to draw into the curriculum significant numbers of texts written by women, minority, and working class writers, and poses several strong arguments for their inclusion. First, she maintains that these texts provide a distinct and unique mode of reaching their audience, culminating in "an expansion of our knowledge about the relation of representation to rhetoric"; secondly, they challenge received ideas about society and inherited modes of reading; and finally, they place pressure on us to read canonical texts against an alternative grain (477).
Foley also critiques Guillory's rendering of the debate over the canon as a non-debate as setting a dangerous precedent for scholars or teachers who are either resistant to the reception of alternate voices within the curriculum, or to the prospect of having to "retool their curriculum" by providing them with an an apparently "left" rationale for doing so (477). Foley finds this to be a paricularly dangerous policy in a time when attacks from the political right are constantly being directed towards the hard-won gains of the civil rights and women's movements. Guillory, she argues, "should not be giving aid and sustenance to any aspect of cultural conservatism" (477). Foley's final, and for me, most potent criticism of Guillory's work in Cultural Capital is her charge that he "underestimates the importance of what happens in the classroom". For even though Foley can and does agree with Guillory that the "war for hegemony" takes place primarily in sites far removed from the academy, this in no way diminishes the fact that "generations of young adults, of all social backgrounds" have most certalnly been "profoundly affected by the views of human potentiality and conceptions of justice erabedded in the texts that they are assigned to read" (478).
This final statement of Foley's in many ways recapitulates for me much of what Guillory, Weixlmann, Robbins, and Readings have stated in the various texts cited within this essay relative to what is at stake in the debate over the literary canon. All discussions of literary canons must surely lead inevitably, inexorably to discussions about the degree to which they inform pedagogical practices at all levels of the educational system. That is why for me, what is read is important, who is heard is important, and perhaps most importantly, how the canon is read at all levels of the educational system is crudal. The authority granted to the texts disseminated in the secondary s~hools as well as the undergraduate classroom and beyond, can and does have an enormous affect on students, as well as their understanding of what is meant by "literature". (And if we doubt the last part of this statement, we need only reflect on the outpouring of concern which recently ensued in this session of English 415 over the subject of"theory versus literature".) By way of further anecdotal evidence, I offer the following. One of my close friends is a high school teacher ofbehaviorally disordered children. Her pedagogical program is a mixture of academics and behavior modification geared towards assimilating these students into the mainstream classroom. She teaches subjects ranging from mathematics to health, to science and yes, literature. Although admittedly she is not trained specifically as an "English" or "literature" teacher, she is vitally concerned about the literary content that she disseminates to her students. When asked to define what she means by literature, she responded that in her estimation, "'fiction is for entertainment, but we look to literature for what it teaches our students" (Roberts). And therein lies a powerful reason why debates over the literary canon must not fail to address what messages axe imparted by the canonical choices that appear on the syllabus.
Guillory, John. "The Ideology of Canon-Formation: T.S. Eliot and Cleanth Brooks." Critical Inquiry. 10 (1('3~) 144-176.
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993
Readings, Bill. Rev. of Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation: by John Guillory. Modern Language Quarterly. 55:3 (1994) 321-326
Ricks, Christopher. "What is at stake in the "battle of the books"?," The New Criterion. (1989) 40-44
Robbins, Bruce. "'Real Politics' and the Canon Debate." Rev. of Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation by John Guillory. Contemporary Literature 35 (1994) 365-375
Roberts, Lynn. Personal interview conducted 13 March 1996
. Weixlmann, Joe. "Dealing with the Demands of an Expanding Literary Canon." College English 50 (1988) 273-283