Cultural Capital
The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
9780226830599
9780226830605
Cultural Capital
The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
An enlarged edition to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of John Guillory’s formative text on the literary canon.
Since its publication in 1993, John Guillory’s Cultural Capital has been a signal text for understanding the codification and uses of the literary canon. Cultural Capital reconsiders the social basis for aesthetic judgment and exposes the unequal distribution of symbolic and literary knowledge on which “culture” had long been based. Drawing 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 the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Now, as the “crisis of the canon” has evolved into the “crisis of humanities,” Guillory’s groundbreaking, incisive work has never been more relevant and urgent. As scholar and critic Merve Emre writes in her introduction to this new edition: “Exclusion, selection, reflection, representation—these are the terms on which the canon wars of the last century were fought, and the terms that continue to inform debates about, for instance, decolonizing the curriculum and the rhetoric of antiracist pedagogy.”
Since its publication in 1993, John Guillory’s Cultural Capital has been a signal text for understanding the codification and uses of the literary canon. Cultural Capital reconsiders the social basis for aesthetic judgment and exposes the unequal distribution of symbolic and literary knowledge on which “culture” had long been based. Drawing 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 the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Now, as the “crisis of the canon” has evolved into the “crisis of humanities,” Guillory’s groundbreaking, incisive work has never been more relevant and urgent. As scholar and critic Merve Emre writes in her introduction to this new edition: “Exclusion, selection, reflection, representation—these are the terms on which the canon wars of the last century were fought, and the terms that continue to inform debates about, for instance, decolonizing the curriculum and the rhetoric of antiracist pedagogy.”
448 pages | 6 x 9
Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature, General Criticism and Critical Theory
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction to the New Edition by Merve Emre
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
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