4.0661 R: The Canonical Process (4/91)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 30 Oct 90 20:46:17 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0661. Tuesday, 30 Oct 1990.
(1) Date: Tuesday, 30 October 1990 6:43am CST (19 lines)
From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject: 4.0649 Q: The Canonical Proces
(2) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 90 08:38:22 EST (17 lines)
From: Germaine Warkentin <WARKENT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Textual communities
(3) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 90 09:46:00 EST (21 lines)
From: "L. Dale Patterson" <LDPATT01@ULKYVM>
Subject: 4.0649 Q: The Canonical Process
(4) Date: 30 Oct 90 09:2:00 EDT (34 lines)
From: DAVID REIMER <REIMER@WLUCP6.BITNET>
Subject: Canonical process
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 30 October 1990 6:43am CST
From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject: 4.0649 Q: The Canonical Proces
I'm uncomfortable with Tom Greene's account of what he means by the
"canonical process," whereby someone who's not a member of a particular
text-constituted community learns to read that community's text(s) in
the way members of the community read them. To call this a canonical
process is to shift onto readers a process that rather(by convention)
operates upon texts. What you seem to me actually to be talking about
is conversion, or maybe just what most of us call education. Certainly
it's true that education is supposed to be about bringing people into
the communities constituted by one or more sets of texts (though some
would argue that it has also been about maintaining the distinction
between "insider" and "outsider" readings, to the detriment of the
outsiders); but it doesn't seem to me to be particularly useful to call
it a canonical process.
John Slatin, UT Austin
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------25----
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 90 08:38:22 EST
From: Germaine Warkentin <WARKENT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Textual communities
Tom Green of Syracuse University poses a question about the way in which
communities cohere around a text or group of texts. This question is
magisterially treated by Brian Stock in his _The Implications of
Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh
and Twelfth Centuries_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1983). Stock's book is intensely preoccupied with high medieval
culture, but its implications are by no means confined to medieval
studies, as the rapid adoption of the term "textual community" by those
who have read him shows. His recent book of essays and lectures
_Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past_ (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1990) covers the same area using more accessible genres.
Germaine Warkentin <WARKENT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------30----
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 90 09:46:00 EST
From: "L. Dale Patterson" <LDPATT01@ULKYVM>
Subject: 4.0649 Q: The Canonical Process (1/40)
Concerning the canonical process. It seems to me that Mr. Green's topic
is better described as the social process of creating canonical texts.
The problem is much more than just education. For it is not just
learning about the texts, but rather the placing oneself, or a group,
under the text. It is matter of the will and of socialization. In some
communities the acceptance of the standard is part of being accepted by
the community. But it is also not just a blind social process, for in a
pluralistic society we can choose what we wish to be authoritative for
us. (There are those who would eschew Descartes and Wittgenstein for
Collingwood, Bultmann or Sarte). On the social process I would
recommend a book by William McLoughlin *Revivals, Awakenings and Reform,
1607-1977*. It is not the best book on the subject but does have a
bibliography and does address some of your concerns.
-- Dale Patterson
University of Louisville
BITNET: ldpatt01 @ ulkyvm
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------45----
Date: 30 Oct 90 09:2:00 EDT
From: DAVID REIMER <REIMER@WLUCP6.BITNET>
Subject: Canonical process
Those HUMANISTs who are also on IOUDAIOS will know that any
posting with "canon" in it (or a variation thereof) will have
an effect similar to waving a red flag at a bull. Or, to switch
analogies, having seen Tom Green's posting I respond with the
alacrity of Pavlov's dog....
It seems to me that the question as posed goes in two very
different directions. So, Tom Green writes: "...how ›does| it
happen that texts ... come to have authority?" On this level, the
question does seem -- at least to my pedestrian mind -- to be a
historical one: a question of origins; why *these* books and not
other books; a story of books that almost made it; and so on.
On this level the question is one of *texts*. However, Tom Green
goes on to write that he is not interested in "an historical a
account of how the books came to be formed, but a pedagogical
account of how certain books can come to be 'the books' for a
reader". And this question is very different from the first one.
This question assumes a tradition of authoritative works, assumes
a community that endorses and maintains them as such, and asks
how any given individual comes to share these textual "norms". This
is a question about *people*. Both questions are of interest; but
it seems to me that Tom Green wants to ask about *texts* but in
terms of *readers* ... and I'm not sure how to put those two
questions together. Is the question: how do texts come to be
"authoritative"? or, how do readers come to recognize the
"authority" of texts privileged by a given community?
David Reimer, Wilfrid Laurier University
REIMER@WLUCP6.BITNET