Literary Canon

Anthologies and Literary Canon One of the textbooks used in American Studies at NCSSM is The Heath Anthology of American Literature. An anthology is defined as a published collection of poems or other bits of writing. In this case, the collection is meant to be “American literature”, meaning it is supposed to represent the history and culture of America as it developed over the years. When a work is included, it is chosen by the scholars designing the anthology. It is chosen for what it reveals about American history or culture at the time it was written. Of course, what it does or does not reveal is entirely up to the scholars’ opinion. That is the downfall of relying solely on one anthology for a true look into history. The people who have power over the anthology decide what works have meaning and what that meaning is. They even define what American is in deciding what works to include. For example, do the Native Americans get to be included? Or are they pre-American? When scholars choose documents by their own specifications of the subject and how a document would fit it, they have power. Students using the textbook or people looking at the anthology will come out with an idea “American” shaped by what the scholars put into the textbook. A document being included in an anthology is …show more content…
The literary canon has many connections to Veyne’s ideas of mutilated history, in that history is mutilated by human interpretations and meddling. In the past and in modern extremist countries, information is chosen by the government to be put into circulation, whether it be current events or the past. For example, in a school system, the curriculum is mandated by a school board. This creates mutilated documents and textbooks, as information can be censored or picked from at will of the