Question: What type of influence matters in a canon?

If you think that
a) a canon (national, Western, Eastern, or worldwide) is not completely useless and meaningless, and that
b) at least some consideration of "influence" is needed as criteria for canonical membership,

I would like to ask you, which of the following three senses of "influence" do you think matter the most?
1) How much a text has been read - e.g. number of people, across periods, across locations, in educational system, etc.
2) How much a text has been "ingrained" in the culture - e.g. words / phrases coined or derived by the text, how it has influenced art forms, how many derivative cultural products like TV series, movies, paintings, music are available, etc.
3) How much a text has influenced other texts - e.g. how much a form or style has been followed in subsequent texts, how much literary influence was acknowledged in subsequent key works (e.g. Dante acknowledges Virgil), etc.

... and why?

I have also posed the question on my blog:
http://lawpark.jimdo.com/compiler-s-blog/

a) a canon (national, Western, Eastern, or worldwide) is not completely useless and meaningless, and that

I think canons are meaningless but useful or useless but meaningful, take your pick.

b) at least some consideration of "influence" is needed as criteria for canonical membership,

I'd argue influence is not passed from work to work, but through entire groups of texts into others, and hence, cannot be passed into a canon list including exclusively finished works without some twist.


1) How much a text has been read - e.g. number of people, across periods, across locations, in educational system, etc.
Reading is fundamental. Neither geography nor quantity seem to be influential in a canonical reading in any true sense, but since more quantity makes it easier to achieve better reader "quality", I guess it's somewhat important.

Since canons are an exercise on quality -meaning, they revolve around critical reading unlike folk art-, you need to get those readers first, and more readers allow you to reach that quality faster.

2) How much a text has been "ingrained" in the culture - e.g. words / phrases coined or derived by the text, how it has influenced art forms, how many derivative cultural products like TV series, movies, paintings, music are available, etc.


I don't see the cultural variations being related with canon at all. Sure, they exist because the canon exists, but popular and critical recognition are two different animals and unless this kind of exposure leads to more reading -see the answer above-, I don't see any influence on this at all.

3) How much a text has influenced other texts - e.g. how much a form or style has been followed in subsequent texts, how much literary influence was acknowledged in subsequent key works (e.g. Dante acknowledges Virgil), etc.



Arguably this is pretty much what canon means: A highly critical reader is producing texts regarding a certain work and passing it through into the next generation of critical readers. Of course, fictional works are relatively minor in their critical approach but cannot be dismissed. This should be by far the most influential element of the three.

I usually think of canons as lists of texts you have to acknowledge to be part of a religious group. It defines your membership in that group. I suspect there can also be canons of saints and gods that you would be required to acknowledge or risk being thrown out of the group. Those not part of the group go to some hell, of course, where all the bad pagans, heathens and heretics go. This motivates the good faithful ones to stay in place. Once the canon is set, it doesn't change much.

You would need some sort of clergy to determine what books, saints or gods are on the list. Membership in the group requires that you contribute to the financial and emotional support of this clergy. Membership costs you something. The clergy don't work for nothing and in return you value being part of the group.

Now when it comes to lists of books in general, the clergy would have to be the academics. They get to decide who the high priests are who will make the final decision. The members of the religious body is presumably anyone who speaks the language, but is really restricted to those who respect the clergy. Hell, in this case, is the pain of being labeled as uncultured, unlettered or uncivilized.

The problem with turning literature into something that academics can canonize is that it changes too rapidly. Readers don't wait for academics or even critics drop their nihil obstat on something. They just start reading what they want.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I usually think of canons as lists of texts you have to acknowledge to be part of a religious group. It defines your membership in that group. I suspect there can also be canons of saints and gods that you would be required to acknowledge or risk being thrown out of the group. Those not part of the group go to some hell, of course, where all the bad pagans, heathens and heretics go. This motivates the good faithful ones to stay in place. Once the canon is set, it doesn't change much.

You would need some sort of clergy to determine what books, saints or gods are on the list. Membership in the group requires that you contribute to the financial and emotional support of this clergy. Membership costs you something. The clergy don't work for nothing and in return you value being part of the group.

Now when it comes to lists of books in general, the clergy would have to be the academics. They get to decide who the high priests are who will make the final decision. The members of the religious body is presumably anyone who speaks the language, but is really restricted to those who respect the clergy. Hell, in this case, is the pain of being labeled as uncultured, unlettered or uncivilized.

The problem with turning literature into something that academics can canonize is that it changes too rapidly. Readers don't wait for academics or even critics drop their nihil obstat on something. They just start reading what they want.

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This is a great analogy. Academics definitely call the shots. Membership is not free (among tax payers and tuition payers). With membership there are advantages (a Degree of some sort, can help you find jobs). Hell - uncultured, unlettered or uncivilized.

Even though literature happens too fast ... doesn't matter; just like religious canon rarely stops people from thinking whatever they want.

When the professor of literature asks: "What books have you read over the summer?" You know that answering with anything other than part of the Canon you may be considered to have wasted your summer.

As an advocate for the need for a world canon, I now recognize my implicit, political, priorly unspoken thought is that - "don't you academics dare consider yourself cultured if you have absolutely no basic ideas about basic texts outside of the narrow Western tradition."

Actually, being restrict to one group will probally make the work vanish as soon the work vanishes. Take Tolkien, if his work survives the end of tolkien fanboys, it will became cannonical.

Homer is not cannonical due to academy (there is no such thing) but neither due the group that preserved it at first - oral primitive greek storytellers. But it was when his work was accepted, preserved and trasnformed by other groups (such as the copists of alexandria) that his influence was more spread.

Academics more than not, find the canonnical works and deal with them. They deny and have denied much works which latter were accepted (Robert Louis Stevenson was not an academic sucess when he started, it was the latter appreciation of his popularity that granted his status).

You're right, lawpark, especially for students. They are the laity.

I also agree with you that the western tradition is too narrow. My favorite texts at the moment are from India, like the Mahabharata, but these are all old texts and already canonized in some way in Hinduism.

One good thing about canonizing books is that they allow people to focus their attention on them to generate a secondary literature.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Homer is not cannonical due to academy (there is no such thing) but neither due the group that preserved it at first - oral primitive greek storytellers. But it was when his work was accepted, preserved and trasnformed by other groups (such as the copists of alexandria) that his influence was more spread.

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There is some truth to what you say - that the appeal needs to be for more than one group.

Though for Homer, it seems like in classical Greek times it was already part of the core of the curriculum for the educated, analogous to Vedas for the Brahmins, or to the Five Classics for the Chinese literati who aspired to be in the government service, or to say Faust for early 20th century Germans. So being tied to one curriculum definitely helps.

Whether to be accepted by other groups had many elements of historical accidents. Take Homer as example, (and my views below are clearly somewhat speculative), Romans learnt initially from the Greeks ... because the Romans themselves started out really with not much. Not that the Greeks were necessary the cultural leaders in their time (arguable for example vs. cultures in the Persian realm), but Greeks culturally were close enough to the Romans so that it was easy for the Romans to borrow. Homer thus was definitely also part of the curriculum in some portion of time in the Western Roman world. The eastern Roman empire essentially used Greek as a lingua franca, and no wonder the Alexandrian copist would thought it worth copying. But after Rome acquired its own classics (e.g. Virgil, Ovid, etc.) and with time could learn from other cultures that might initially be more distant from itself (e.g. Christianity, which ultimately was rooted farther east the Greek), Homer lost its primacy in the western Empire and the middle ages. Of course, western Europe rediscovered Greeks in Renaissance, but I would venture to speculate that the rediscovery focused more on the philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) than Homer. Homer was probably brought in as part of the rediscovery package, more than on its own literary merits per se. In a way, it is not different from how modern Chinese for example discovers the western culture - primary interests at first was in the pure sciences, but then discovers people like Newton and Einstein actually believes in God, and these guys read Aristotle or Spinoza (in case of Einstein), and the search goes on. Only very recently has the Chinese started to translate the Christian classics like Eusebius' Church History. For Homer? I really doubt any Chinese reading it would think it a great work of literature, but most read it because of the reputation of the text in the culture that they want to understand more about.

So I guess what I am saying is that sometimes texts find reasons to be read and preserved because the prestige of the tradition it belongs and then because of its own position in that tradition, rather than directly because how the text itself is appealing to the new receiving group(s).

Not only one group, but even more. The "academics" of today (even a single country) have nothing to do with academics of 100 years ago. There is a whole predatory world there, new theories, philosphies, political guidance. Tradition is usually something stronger, besides the barriers of a group.

Now about Homer, Homer was a educational basis, but this happens already centuries after himself (or his imaginary himself). The greek classical culture was already another group or society reckonizing Homer. Of course, primary groups of oral storytellers were around, but by them Homer was reckonized from pure literary sources, philophophers, drama writers. Already a movement of adaptation and apropriation.

The hellenistic influence on Roman and about everyone else (hebrews, egypt, persians, etc) is due to Alexander. He was the one that showed the latter "strategy" of nice conqueror. Preserve a culture but also brings ours, so they would merge slowly in a subtle way. Romans became of course, masters of it. So, when Alexandria's copists became an academic center of short, Homer was already status one. Their work had basically the effect of having versions of homer in other language, even in new greeks. In the end, Homer's greek was slowly forgotten and when Rome became a cultural empire with Augustus, latim was dominant. Virgil raised to a central status, but trully, Homer wasn't lost. He still being exactly what should be canonical "read even if unread". That is why, Dante praises him as a poet's prince.

I would not think the translations of Plato or Aristoteles are more central than Homer. Most philosophers still preserved latim and the church didnt abandon those two. But the english translation of homer, ovid and virgil and the french was the true neo-classic. Homer then, the very important Chapman or Pope works, canonical by itself, which are one of the main influence for a large variety of romantic poets. This without saying the italian humanism had basis on Dante, Ariosto, Petrarca and Bocaccio, while they are have their share of philosophic education, they are following the poetry tradition that started with Homer, even if more roman. Basically you can say, Homer is so canonical that we do not even read him anymore for a thousand years.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I also agree with you that the western tradition is too narrow. My favorite texts at the moment are from India, like the Mahabharata, but these are all old texts and already canonized in some way in Hinduism.

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Which translation of Mahabharata do you read? I have a John Smith Penguin abridged version. The Chicago series seems too heavy going; the Clay Sanskrit Library version is for some reason not based on the critical edition ...

In any case, really amazed by how imaginative the Indians are in terms of story-telling.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

...
The "academics" of today (even a single country) have nothing to do with academics of 100 years ago.
...
Now about Homer ... Already a movement of adaptation and apropriation.
...
Homer then, the very important Chapman or Pope works, canonical by itself, which are one of the main influence for a large variety of romantic poets.
...
they are following the poetry tradition that started with Homer, even if more roman. Basically you can say, Homer is so canonical that we do not even read him anymore for a thousand years.

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Interesting asserting that academics now have nothing to do with academics 100 years ago - I think there is at least the "genealogical" teacher-student relationships that would be important. An interesting work on this in the Philosophy realm is The Sociology of Philsophies by Randall Collins.

Good insights regarding Homer already adapted and appropriated in classical Greek period.

In many of these discussions, it came out that the modern Canon was really largely influenced by the Romantics in the early 19th century. Maybe not so much a coincidence that it was also the time of industrial revolution which formed the basis of Europe's global dominance for the next century.

For the Italian poets, my way of phrasing (using your "appropriation" terminology), would be that the Italian poetic tradition appropriated the Roman one, which in term has appropriated the Greek one, which appropriated Homer as its founder.

To push this further, what I was saying in the last post was that ultimately the English appropriated the Italian tradition, and as Chinese tried to understand the "Western" tradition (mostly through the English version nowadays, though it had its Japanese and Russian phrases), Homer entered the broad canon list ... yet it is by no means clear it was due more to the texts' underground power than the sheer historical facts (or accidents) of prestige.

Well, there is several different academic aspects that changed. It is more democratized. For example, in my country it was small, almost devoted to specific institutions (medicine, engineering, law). Today is another thing. But even USA: the democratization of teaching pushed the academies to accept minorities, women, etc. The political bigotony is obviously over to several aspects. The responsability of teaching is also different. More people from lower economical classes are present. Etc. This of course changed the perpection and acts of a group, hence you see Bloom, an old timer academic and his school of ressentment and the conflicts towards some traditional works. Also the technology was produced different needs and answers.

Well, the romantics was in many aspect the effective globalization of englightment theories and also national aspects. We still very much romantics (Adorno has theorized that romanticism was englightment and enlightment was in curse until the first world war.) I would say we are in a period of criticism of romanticism. Also, it is age of cataloguing and inclusion. You only need to think a canon (works to be preserved) if you want to preserve them and create some guideline for "teaching".

As the italians, yes, that is how it worked, maybe with the meddling of middle age catholic thinkers (which also appropriate greek culture thru romans). And that is the canon is action. An author does not even need to be read.

I think, even us in west, read Homer more due to prestige than the power of text. Most readers lacks the capacity or experience to enjoy epic long poems. I would assume, he is more read by editions in prose, abrigaded versions, etc.

It may sound strange, but it looks like (German-style research) university system, despite the huge changes over generations, are still the same system in the sense that the Catholic Church is still the same church now vs. 1000 years ago - in the sense of institutional continuity. If one wants to do the wild chase, any professor in the current university system are trained and certified by the prior generation of professors who are in turn certified by the prior generation of professors. As an institutional system, the specific criteria may have evolved but there is continuity. Of course, it was a bit of an exaggeration what I just said - in places like China it didn't start in early 19th century, instead, it started in early 20th century when many traditional-styled scholars were invited to be professors say in Peking University, and it was exactly that generation whose works are considered "classics" by the current academia. That is, I believe, one of the reasons why Kant is considered classics - he just happens to be a great thinker, more importantly though, he happens to be a great thinker at a time when the research university system is being fully institutionalized, and that institution system was (in hindsight) "destined" to become the dominant form of higher education institutions globally.

It's more about esteem than influence. One can, for instance, appreciate a work like Smart's Jubilate Agno while acknowledging it as rather without influence until the really recent era (being unpublished).

Influence usually comes with esteem, but esteem is not based on influence, a work is not influential because it is canonical, it is not canonical because it is influential, it is canonical for any number of reasons, the sole criteria being that people hold it in high regard as integral to their vision of canon.

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Originally Posted by JBI

It's more about esteem than influence. One can, for instance, appreciate a work like Smart's Jubilate Agno while acknowledging it as rather without influence until the really recent era (being unpublished).

Influence usually comes with esteem, but esteem is not based on influence, a work is not influential because it is canonical, it is not canonical because it is influential, it is canonical for any number of reasons, the sole criteria being that people hold it in high regard as integral to their vision of canon.

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So JBI you are saying:
Esteem --> Influence --> Canonization?


凤尾香罗薄几重，碧文圆顶夜深缝。
扇裁月魄羞难掩，车走雷声语未通。
曾是寂寥金烬暗，断无消息石榴红。
斑骓只系垂杨岸，何处西南待好风。

Just curious: why did you have ... between the third couplets and the forth couplet in your signature?

It seems very simple to me. Several writers like a specific book of another writer, everyone flocks to copy it, it becomes important, it joins the canon.