The Hospitable Canon: Essays on literary play, scholarly choice, and popular pressures

by Virgil Nemoianu (Editor)

The papers in this book respond to the public debate over literary canons, in the United States, and elsewhere, by placing the political-ideological aspects of the conflict inside perspectives derived from comparative literature. Canons are seen by most of the contributors as based on democratic and communal intentions or choices inevitable filtered through and colored by historical experiences and social biases.An examination of the canonical process over many centuries reveals both the impressive durability of its elements and the amazing flexibility of its outlines. The careful individual analyses, as well as the thought-provoking general contributions in this volume agree that the democracy of play is one of the strongest bonds uniting the human race. “Canons or canons”, the contributors argue, are based on it and reflect the intimate interdependence of cultural and intellectual matters with the workings of society as a whole. Contributors Charles Altieri, Lilian R. Furst, Michael G. Cooke, Robert Royal, Roger Shattuck, Rosa E.M.D. Penna, Glen M. Johnson, Yves Chevrel, Raymond A. Prier, Peter Walker, Christopher Clausen, Virgil Nemoianu.

279 pages, Hardcover

First published June 21, 1991

About the author

Virgil Nemoianu was a Romanian-American essayist, literary critic, and philosopher of culture. He was generally described as a specialist in comparative literature, but this is a somewhat limiting label, only partially covering the wider range of his activities and accomplishments. His thinking placed him at the intersection of neo-Platonism and neo-Kantianism, which he turned into an instrument meant to qualify, channel, and tame the asperities, as well as what he regarded as the impatient accelerations and even absurdities of modernity and post-modernity. He chose early on to write within the intellectual horizons outlined by Goethe and Leibniz, and continued to do so throughout his life.