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A comparison of school textbooks for literature teaching in Argentine high schools during the years of democratic transition and manuals edited after the education reform imposed by the Federal Education Act (1993) shows fundamental transformations. Not only do these changes relate to the works and authors chosen for classroom reading but also to the theoretical, didactic and cultural criteria through which that literary school canon was built in the 80's as well as nowadays. In fact, changes made in the selection of authors, works and genres reveal much deeper changes: those related to various underlying conceptions in the design of a corpus for teaching literature in high school. This essay proposes a possible interpretation of changes in the criteria that defined the construction of a literary canon for Argentine high school. Special consideration was given to transformation experienced in three aspects: representations of power at school, literary taste and contents considered culturally legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]