Some brief reflections on canon and genius

Among the many bees in my professional bonnet is the issue of canon formation: how some works become singled out as being of particular value and worthy of preservation and perpetuation through subsequent generations. The mechanisms of canon formations are usually shared by whatever type of art we are talking about, whether it is pictorial art, the art of writing, or the art of music. There are several factors that can contribute to a work's entry into a given canon, and there are also several factors that contribute to a work's continued place in that canon, because the canon is also changing. 

In all cases, at least as far as I have seen, canonical status is achieved through patronage and from the decisions of individuals in relevant positions of power and decision-making. The reasons for elevating a work to canonical status, or at least pursuing an attempt to elevate a work to canonical status, can be many and varied. However, in many instances it appears most likely that someone's attempt to elevate a work to canonical status has a lot to do with that person's self-fashioning. In order for that person to be seen as well-read and cultured, the works that they promote to canonical status are expected to reflect some of the grandeur of that status back onto the promoters.  

For a work to achieve canonical status, and for a work to have sufficient canonical lustre to reflect it onto the self-fashioning promoter, the person behind the work must also be elevated. The usual trick in this process is to turn to the idea of genius, the idea that some individuals, seen as working on their own, are so brilliant that they deserve a place in the pantheon provided by the canon. Whether the genius in question is dead or alive is immaterial. What matters is that the declaration of genius serves to generate enough brilliance that it is reflected on those that profess to know about this person's works, that profess to love the work, or who use that work as a prop to appear grand and cultured to an audience. For instance, having the complete works of Leo Tolstoy in the room where you receive guests has a very different meaning that having those works placed somewhere where they are not easily seen. The same goes for hanging Edvard Munch's Scream on the wall where you receive your guests, or playing a recognisable tune from Mozart or Beethoven during a party. To do all these things are not necessarily done without some measure of affinity for these works, and it is not a bad thing to appreciate the works in question. The issue is that genius and canon serve self-fashioning. 

However, because the literary canon, for example, is often constructed with a view towards self-fashioning, there is often very little interest in acquiring understanding beyond the canonical work itself. Every work is engendered in a specific historical and cultural context, and many canonical literary works are somehow related to other literary works. If a literary canon had served to augment our understanding of literature and not just augment the status of the work and those who claim to read it, this relationship between works would have inspired the perpetuation and dissemination of those other, less known, works. 

If the literary canon served as an inroad into the wider-reaching threads of intertextuality and literary connections and genealogies - and to some people the canon does do that - then we would also have urged for the preservation of those other, less well known works. There are two particular examples that come to mind when trying to illustrate how the navel-gazing functions of a literary canon works in practice. The first example is the chivalric romance Girone il cortese, romanzo cavalleresco by Rustichello of Pisa. Rustichello is widely known as the writer who recorded Marco Polo's account of his travels in the East. The canonical status of Marco Polo's Travels is well established, and its impact on later culture is immeasurable, but includes such highlights as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1972) and the name of a spaceship in the Norwegian science fiction TV series Stowaway (1978). If the canonical status of the Travels had kindled curiosity and desire to understand - at least among those in positions of power and decision-making - we would also have translations and editions of Rustichello's romance. And while such editions have been produced in Italy, there is, for instance, no such edition in some of the most globally impactful canon-formers such as Oxford World Classics or Penguin Classics. The latter publishing house has, on the other hand, issued several editions and translations of Marco Polo's The Travels. 

My second example is Don Quijote, a work that satirises and would perhaps not exist without the romance Amadis of Gaula by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. Yet aside from editions produced in Spain, the romance of Amadis is not, at least to my knowledge, translated into other languages in recent times, and certainly is not included in Oxford World Classics or Penguin Classics. This lack of interest is perhaps especially surprising in the case of Amadis of Gaula, since it is heavily referenced in Cervantes' novel, and since the intertextuality and literary connection is both overt and very strong. If those in position of editorial and financial power sought to enhance our understanding of Don Quijote, for instance its jibes against Amadis of Gaula, they would finance the editing and translation of the work for a wider audience. That this work is not being done is, to my mind, a good example of how ideas around canon and genius tend to be very shallow affairs, usually tightly bound up in issues of self-fashioning and snobbery.