CANONIZATION - The term "literary canon" refers to a classification of literature.

It is a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place. For example, there can be a literary canon comprised of works from a particular country, or works written within a specific set of years, or even a collection of works that were all written during a certain time period and within a certain region. In this way, a literary canon establishes a collection of similar or related literary works. Of course, there are many ways in which literary works can be classified, but the literary canon seems to apply a certain validity or authority to a work of literature. When a work is entered into the canon, thus canonized, it gains status as an official inclusion into a group of literary works that are widely studied and respected. Those who decide whether a work will be canonized include influential literary critics, scholars, teachers, and anyone whose opinions and judgments regarding a literary work are also widely respected. For this reason, there are no rigid qualifications for canonization, and whether a work will be canonizedremains a subjective decision. Literary canons, like the works that comprise them and the judgments of those who create them, are constantly changing. Literature is affected by the experiences and thoughts of writers and readers. Literature, therefore, changes in the context of changing experience and thought. This context is important to the make-up of a literary canon. More often than not, it is those works that are considered contextually relevant that gain entry into the canon. This means that the literary work is relevant to ongoing trends or movements in thought and art, or address historical or contemporary events, etc. Often, the popularity of a literary work is based not only on the quality, but the relevance of its subject matter to historical, social, and artistic context. A popular or respected literary work usually deals with what people are most interested in, and this interest weighs in on whether or not the work is canonized. While the text of a literary work does not change over time, the meaning extrapolated from it by readers, and thus the attention paid to a literary work may change. As peoples thoughts and experiences change, a literary work may move in and out of interest and contextual

relevance. Over time, literary canons will reflect these changes, and works may be added or subtracted from the canon. To make matters more ambiguous, the popular definition of a literary canon also changes over time. This change, like the changing inclusions of literary canons, can be credited to subjectivity. For example, one popular definition of a literary canon refers to religious validity, implying that the canonized works are officially recognized by a church, and are considered religiously appropriate. Within this definition, however, the canon remains a basis for judgment, a standard that must be met for canonization of a literary work to be considered. In this way, regardless of the exact definition of a literary canon, or the works of which it is comprised, the canon still implies an otherness to works it excludes, and an authority to works it includes.

Mikhail Bakhtin defined canonization in the following way: Canonization is a process towards which all literary genres have a tendency, in which temporary norms and conventions become hardened into universal ones so that evaluations too are considered to reflect universal rather than culture-or time-bound values. Following poststructuralism we can say that it is not possible to identify the universal truth. But it is the bad luck of literature that it or the factors related to it seek for universality. Literature is highly influenced by the time when or where it is written in. With the shift of paradigm (Thomas S. Kuhn:1970) or culture it also changes its style, theme etc. So the norms or conventions are naturally temporary and culture-or-time bound. It would be very impractical if it is tried to impose universality upon certain literary texts. Literature can have different interpretations among which none can be considered the truth. It is surprising then that the history of literature is full of canons. These canons are widely read, respected, included in university syllabus and thought as invincible. They are the one which dominate the history of literature and enjoy power over the new texts which have not become canons yet.

Some critics view postmodernism as an extension of modernism. It might be true to some extent as Richard Harland writes, Postmodernist literature relates to Modernist literature in the sense of continuing the same general goal of challenging and disturbing established habits of thought. But it is post- or beyond Modernism in the sense that the challenge has now become much more radical. Whereas Modernist writers aimed to reinvigorate perception which had been deadened by habit, and language which had been staled by clichs, Postmodernist writers now questioned the very nature of perception and the very nature of language. Here Harland finds a similarity between modernism and postmodernism in their goal though the latter is more radical. But one point that is absent here and usually omitted by many critics that is postmodernists began their act of questioning by examining the canonical position of the modernist texts. Postmodernism though sometimes is criticized for celebrating the commercial aspect of art; many critics forget that postmodernism was the first to question the high art- the art of the bourgeoisie that took place in the museums or university syllabus. These high arts were not only the art of the bourgeoisie but also they had become canons then. Modernist works of T.S Eliot or Pablo Picasso et al had become canons that were questioned by the postmodernists. The dispute was not simply ideological but more serious than that. It was the question of existence for the postmodernist art. Postmodernist art or literary texts only could survive if they were able to destroy the modernist canons. It is true some of the postmodernist texts already have become canons now but the struggle did not stop. The history of literature is the history of struggle between the canons and the new. If postmodernist texts become canons then there will surely be another movement to replace them as canons always create great obstacle for the new texts to reach the audience or reader. http://writinghood.com/literature/canonization-ofliterature/#ixzz1iMZizyz6

LITERARY CRITICISM-