CHAPTER 51: GREAT TRADITIONS: THE LOGIC OF THE CANON.

The article presents information about the book "The Great Tradition," by F.R. Leavis. The word canonical mentioned in the book is appropriate to an extent, though there are many kinds of canon and the history of this and other related terms can help to understand them. As used today, it often has a caricatural force deriving from its original scriptural associations. According to writer G.W. Anderson, writing in the Cambridge History of the Bible, it was first used in its modern sense in patristic writings of the fourth century to refer to those texts which orthodoxy had come to regard as the Old and New Testaments. The new term, needless to say, does not altogether correspond to a new concept. It is unlikely today that anyone wishing to recommend the study of literature would use arguments such as these or at least as confidently and unequivocally; or that they would or could have been used at any time in France. The modern term which conveys most simply the general notion of the canonical is the word literature itself, which refers to a canon of works of outstanding value and possibly even interest as well.