Canons VIII

For Christians, the similarity to theological ideas of many of the terms and concepts used in this discussion may result in a knee-jerk conservatism. We may feel that attacks on the Western Canon in which not a few Christian themes are intertwined do damage to Christianity itself. Exegesis, hermeneutics, typology, allegory and homiletics are all terms and concepts that literary studies has adapted from biblical studies. The idea of a “Canon” - a grouping of significant texts - also found a secular application. This is no accident - the study of literature has attempted to replace religion as a moral force since the nineteenth century, as we have seen.

Do Christians, then, think differently about Scripture and literature? In theological study there has indeed been a debate on similar lines regarding the Canon of Scripture. Brevard Childs has for many years defended the intrinsic authority and unity of the biblical Canon as the founding bond of an interpretative community, namely the church. However, James Barr is convinced of an extrinsic ground to the Canon - in starting with the completed Canon, the church was taking its stand on something external to the Bible itself. This liberal Protestant position is, strangely enough, almost identical to the Roman Catholic understanding of ecclesiastical authorisation of the Canon.
However, there is the intrinsic power of the Word of God in the Scriptural Canon which sets it apart from “ordinary” literature. By claiming this much for the Bible, we needn’t accept that the Western Canon has a similar power or authority. The analogies that have been drawn between imaginative writing and Holy Scripture since the Romantic period - such as the idea of “inspiration” - are only analogies. That they collapse, if they do, need not compromise our view of Scripture.

What can we then say about the Canon in response to these various approaches? Readings account is many ways the most convincing. Like the dragon, the Canon (in literary terms) is a large, mythological beast. Purported to be the list of books sanctioned for study in educational institutions, “Canons” by and large do not actually exist per se. The use of the term”Canon” which is meant to imply the say-so of a church-like institution here breaks down. While there are indeed powerful imprimaturs given from within the literary world, there is no fixed list of what constitutes Literature and there never has been. There is no literary equivalent to the standard metric weights kept in a safe somewhere in Paris. Canons are in fact centrifugal. That is, they have a solid core of largely undisputed material with an indistinct fringe. Very few would dispute that the Western Canon has at its heart the work of a writer like Shakepeare, but the status of sixteenth century poet Mary Wroth is far less certain. The notion of “Canon” in the literary world invites debate and contention as to its contents. The setting up of a fixed list of texts would be productive only of tedium!