Conservative in Form, Revolutionary in Content: Rethinking World Literary Canons in an Age of Globalization

Abstract

"In pursuit of the twinned goals of canon transformation and the globalized study of literary form, I propose three ways for forging a canon responsive to the political present. The first and most obvious proposal is empirical: increasing the canon’s global scope will enable the canon’s formal conservatism to encompass Sinic, Indic, and Islamic traditions alongside the many other knowledge systems that have been obscured within mainstream literary history. Second: reconceptualize the notion of canonicity. Third: develop a method for reading texts through cross-cultural juxtapositions that the texts’ creators could not have envisioned."