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The concept of a canon and its impact upon the teaching and examining of english literature

This thesis sets out to investigate the concept of a canon, and its impact upon the teaching and examining of English Literature in this country. It focuses on the relationships linking the concept of a canon, conceptualizations of canonicity and their practical consequences: four propositions are raised concerning those relationships. The thesis seeks to identify the ethical implications of the rival moral anthropologies which are involved in those relationships, and applies an axiological critique to the praxiological issues and pedagogical aspects of canonicity when related to notions of the 'critical' in literary theory, social theory and critical pedagogy. Since canonicity, culture and literature are considered inextricably linked, and theory recognised as 'a miscellaneous genre' (Culler 1988:87), theories of language, history, mind and culture are perceived as potentially illuminative accounts of signification. The philosophy of the aesthetic as an autonomous realm, purposively instrumental in equating a 'correct' reading of literary hermeneutics with its 'correct' counterpart in establishment axiology, is seen as problematic, and central to the thesis. The thesis is presented in three parts: Part One: Setting the Scene Part Two: The Conceptual Domain Part Three: Evaluation: Effects, Consequences and Implications. The findings are offered as a tentative explanation of the consequences of canonicity. They suggest that current conceptualizations of canonicity encourage and enable a cultural-restorationist approach, wherein a prescriptive rather than an emancipatory pedagogy is enacted in the teaching and examining of English Literature within contemporary compulsory schooling in this country

Binarism and indeterminacy in the novels of Thomas Pynchor

Bibliography: pages 397-401.I attempt in this thesis, to graft together a close critical, and predominantly thematic, reading of Thomas Pynchon's novels with selected issues treated in the work of Jacques Derrida on philosophy and textuality, illustrating how this work demands the revision and interrogation of several major critical issues, concepts, dualisms and presuppositions. The thesis consists of an Introduction which sets forth a brief rationale for the graft described above, followed by a short and unavoidably inadequate synopsis of Derrida's work with a brief review and explication of those of his 'concepts' which play an important role in my reading of Pynchon's texts. The Introduction is succeeded by three lengthy chapters in which I discuss, more or less separately, each of Pynchon's three novels to date. These are V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49, (1966) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and I discuss them in the order of their appearance, devoting a chapter to each. I attempt to treat different but related issues, preoccupations, themes and tropes in each of the novels to avoid repeating myself, engaging the apparatuses derived from Derrida's writing where deemed strategic and instructive. I suggest moreover, that several of the issues examined apropos the novel under consideration in any one chapter apply mutandis rnutandi to the other novels. Each chapter therefore to some extent conducts a reading of the novels which it does not treat directly. Finally, supervising these separate chapters is a sustained focus on the epistemology of binarism and digitalism, and the conceptual dualisms which structure and inform major portions of the thematic and rhetorical dimensions The thesis concludes with a Bibliography and a summary Epilogue which seeks to assess briefly the 'achievement' of Pynchon's writing