Thursday, January 17, 2008

Everything Old: Canons IV

So here's a surprising turn of events, particularly after the last series of posts on canons and women.

I've been approached to republish a piece on Mary Pix and the misattribution of a play called Zelmane that originally appeared in Notes and Queries. This is an Oxford publication specializing in arcane details and footnotes that become articles from lack of relevance to the paper for which it was originally intended.

The piece will now go in a university textbook that lists "literature" from 1400 to 1800.

The anti-canonical becomes standard -- probably from boredom with what we've always studied.

Like language, "great" books change as we do.

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