Knowra American literary canon American literary canon The body of works and authors widely treated as central to American literature. Its boundaries have shifted as schools, critics, publishers, and communities have changed what they preserve and teach.
American literature : Literature written in the United States or by its people, encompassing diverse languages, traditions, and genres. The canon selects works from this broader, changing literary field.
Noah Webster : An American lexicographer and educator whose dictionaries and textbooks helped shape national language and schooling. His schoolbooks helped define a distinctly American literary and educational inheritance.
New York Intellectuals : A group of twentieth-century writers and critics associated with politically engaged cultural criticism in New York. Their debates show how political commitments shaped judgments of literary value.
Moby-Dick : Herman Melville’s 1851 novel about the whaling ship Pequod and its pursuit of a white whale. Its transformation from neglect to celebrated masterpiece shows canon status changing over time.
World literature : Literature studied across national and linguistic boundaries, often through translation and circulation. Its transnational frame challenges the assumption that U.S. literature forms a self-contained tradition.
Literary historiography : The study of how literary histories are written, organized, and revised. Histories determine which authors become central and how their importance is explained.
Ralph Waldo Emerson : An American essayist, lecturer, and poet associated with Transcendentalism. His calls for cultural independence helped frame a national literary tradition.
Canon wars : Late twentieth-century U.S. disputes over literary curricula, cultural authority, and the inclusion of marginalized writers. These disputes made canon-making itself a public controversy.
The Scarlet Letter : Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel about adultery, punishment, and hypocrisy in seventeenth-century Puritan New England. Its sustained classroom presence illustrates the nineteenth-century novel’s canonical authority.
Indigenous literature : Literature created by Indigenous peoples, including oral, written, and contemporary forms. Its inclusion raises questions about sovereignty, language, and whose history the canon tells.
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