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Despite its increasing prominence in university syllabi and anthologies, travel writing continues to be excluded from the canon of early modern literature. Its exclusion can be attributed to the view, articulated explicitly and implicitly, that its formal and stylistic conventions render it insufficiently 'literary'. Such assessments reveal a tendency to read early modern travel accounts using aesthetic criteria that are anachronistic, disconnected from the discursive contexts in which these accounts were originally written and read. This article examines one of the genre's most distinctive features, one which has shaped its relationship to notions of literary value and canonicity: its preoccupation with particulars, something early modern and modern readers alike characterise as 'tedious'. Focusing on Thomas Coryate's eponymous Coryats Crudities (1611), it situates the particularity of early modern travel writing within the reconstructed contexts of classical rhetoric, early modern poetics, and travel advice, placing special emphasis on the rhetorical quality of enargeia, or vividness. In addition to offering a fresh assessment of the Crudities and modelling a new approach to the study of travel writing more generally, the article reflects on how we can expand our sense of what early modern literature might be said to comprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I aim to provide an overview of the relationship between women's writing and the 'canon', to suggest some reasons for its continuing marginality to that canon, and to outline briefly the ways in which the particular character and qualities of early modern women's writing require a rethinking of many of our dominant narratives about the literary history of the period. In this I draw upon the work of many critics whose work has shaped my thinking, and who are mapping out exciting new trajectories for the future direction of this field. The second part of the article focuses on setting out some ways in which early modern women's writing might provide productive challenges to current orthodoxies about the canon of Renaissance Literature. Finally, I turn to the future, and some ideas about how the category of 'women's writing' itself needs to be repositioned and reconceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race formation, canon formation, and the writing of linguistic history can all be understood as processes of standardisation that differentiate through inclusion and exclusion of selected characteristics (of a human group, language use, or literary work) in synchronic moments and artificially link those moments to create diachronic histories that can span millennia. As we will show in this essay, Thomas Warton's The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the commencement of the Eighteenth Century (1775–1778) enacts all three processes simultaneously in ways that are inextricably entangled, and structured by an ideology of standardisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, the editors lay out the rationale behind this special issue. The goal of this issue is to identify and disrupt the complacency surrounding the medieval and early modern canon with a view to achieving two things. Firstly, we hope to uncover new approaches to the study of premodern literature that might result in a more accurate and inclusive account of what texts were of greatest significance to readers and writers in medieval and early modern England, even if those texts have typically been excluded from discussions of the medieval and early modern literary canons over the past three centuries. Secondly, we hope to draw attention to some of the problematic roles that medieval and early modern English texts have played as foundation stones of the English literary canon, and how they might equally serve to disrupt some of the assumptions on which that canon has traditionally been founded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of readings of Adalbert Stifter's 1844 Studienfassung of "Die Narrenburg" as an expression either of orientalist fantasy or of Austrian inner colonialism, this article traces the text's confusing geographies through its intertwined figurations of native and exotic plants. Often thought of (due to the etymology of vegetare) as idle, passive, inert, and mute, flora in this text suggests the tracks of colonial exploration and horticulture, as well as of orientalizing literature, and is implicated in the literary framings and formats that promote a nineteenth-century canon of "Germanness." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that Hölderlin develops a new understanding of canonicity by way of related concepts such as law, measure, and harmony. The final version of his novel Hyperion "bends" the straight rule of the canon—the metaphor underlying the notion of a literary canon—against itself, transforming it into a Heraclitean bow: a dynamic play of conflicting tones or voices. Diotima, the novel's female protagonist, has an especially important role in this transformation: not simply through her diffuse physical beauty, which flows out into her surroundings rather than being concentrated into a plastic form, but through her voice and above all her words, which correct Hyperion's own Platonizing interpretation of the Heraclitean doctrine—an interpretation that tries to conceive of the discordant unity as visual rather than radically acoustic and musical. This counter-Platonic reading of Heraclitus contributes to the political radicalness of Hölderlin's novel, which regards the agonistic polis, ultimately extended to include the relationship between human beings and nature, as itself representing the highest unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the canonical narratives and assumptions about German literature in German Studies. The authors argue that traditional German literary texts should be re-examined to focus on voices of difference, such as linguistic, queer, racial, religious, and sexual differences. The article discusses two major responses to the conservatism and dominance of canonicity: including neglected voices in classes and creating a counter canon. The authors emphasize the need for close re-readings of the traditional literary canon to decenter it and highlight the diversity of voices within it. The article includes case studies that examine how canonical texts juxtapose voices of difference from different perspectives. [Extracted from the article]

Starting from interdisciplinary theories of canon, this essay zooms in on literary canons and the canon of the field of German Studies in particular. In comparison to many kinds of canons, academic canons, it is argued, are structured based on different and frequently opposing assumptions. On this basis, a distinction is made between the adjective "canonical," which refers to the supposedly stable functions of legitimate or illegitimate authority, and the adjective "canonic," which evokes the specific forms of critical self-reflexivity required in academic contexts. The concluding discussion addresses the specific challenges of the canonic design of German Studies in the North American context. As an interdisciplinary discipline operating at a distance from Europe, the canonics of global German Studies are relatively undefined. This can be interpreted positively as a source of freedom and flexibility but also as a challenge of self-definition in relation to various disciplinary-canonic architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"How Dark Is My Flower: Yosano Akiko and the Invention of Romantic Love" by Leith Morton is a comprehensive examination of the evolution of romantic love in modern Japanese literature, with a focus on the poetry of Yosano Akiko and her husband Yosano Tekkan. Morton argues that Akiko's poetry and the Myōjō circle, which she was a part of, played a crucial role in the development of modernism in Japan. The book analyzes various poems, texts, articles, and works from the late 19th century to around 1918, providing valuable insights for scholars of poetry, modernity, and Japanese literature. It also includes translations of previously untranslated works, making it a valuable resource for researchers. [Extracted from the article]

"Henry Beeching, Dean of Norwich: professor, poet, priest" by Peter Fanning is a biography of Henry Beeching, a scholarly priest known for his preaching and published sermons. Beeching also had a parallel career as a respected Shakespeare scholar and literary critic. The book explores Beeching's belief in the importance of character in both religion and literature, and highlights his influence on the development of Humanities. Fanning's biography provides a balanced and affectionate recognition of Beeching's contributions. [Extracted from the article]