John Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary...
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John Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over ""multiculturalism"" and the current ""crisis of the humanities."" Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of ""cultural capital"" in t
Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; Part One: Critique; 1. Canonical and Noncanonical: The Current Debate; Part Two: Case Studies; 2. Mute Inglorious Miltons: Gray, Wordsworth, and the Vernacular Canon; 3. Ideology and Canonical Form: The New Critical Canon; 4. Literature after Theory: The Lesson of Paul de Man; Part Three: Aesthetics; 5. The Discourse of Value: From Adam Smith to Barbara Herrnstein Smith; Notes; Index
