Of course, you probably have one question: what exactly is a canon? The word goes back to the ancient history of the Catholic church, where it signified conformity to a rule or principle; Church law is known as "canon law." This sense was extended when, in the fourth century, councils met to determine which books would be considered authentic when it came to the Bible. We're not generally aware of it, but there were many candidates; in addition to the four 'canonical' Gospels, there were others -- the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and even a Gospel of Judas. The Apocalypse of St. John, now in every Bible, was one of a great many competing Apocalypses. Those others were rejected, although texts of many of them survive to this day.
In the realm of literature, a "canonical" text is one that is routinely studied, and thought of as a significant text in the ongoing timeline of literary creation and reception. The list is far from fixed, and over time new authors and texts become canonical, while others fade away. Oftentimes, the shift is due to cultural changes, along with the belated recognition of women writers and writers of color. It's led to some odd results though -- every American literature anthology today includes the poetry of Langston Hughes, for instance, but Carl Sandburg -- a once-famous poet whom Hughes credited as a major influence -- is gone.
So, unlike the Church's canon, the secular literary canon evolves, changes, alters over time -- and that's as it should be. Today, it evolves in other ways besides author and text, as new literary movements, new genres, and new media have been admitted into the fold. Science fiction and fantasy, for instance, have gained in status, with writers such as Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin now enshrined in the Library of America. Yet some newer media still stumble at the threshold of the canonical, none more so than the tradition that has gone from comic books to graphic novels and memoirs. The oldest of prejudices -- that somehow books with pictures, or consisting chiefly of pictures, are essentially more juvenile -- has not gone away.
So this semester, we'll be testing those waters by reading a number of "canonical" texts -- and a few not-so-canonical ones -- all in graphical form. Our list will include Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and Octavia Butler's Kindred, among others. We'll also read shorter graphical adaptations of poetry and stories, along with some critical texts that will help us understand the most effective ways of approaching this newly graphical canon.
