Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon

by Frank Kermode, Robert Alter

The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In essays that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, Kermode reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central pleasure and change . He asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes over time. Kermode also explores the role of chance, observing the connections between canon formation and unintentional and sometimes even random circumstance. Geoffrey Hartmann (Yale University), John Guillory (New York University), and Carey Perloff (director of the American Conservatory Theatre) offer incisive comments on these essays, to which Kermode responds in a lively rejoinder. The volume begins with a helpful introduction by Robert Alter. The
result is a stimulating and accessible discussion of a highly significant cultural debate.

Genres: Literature, Literary Criticism

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 (revised 2003).

Reviews

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Кермоуд пише, що зміни в каноні відбивають зміни в нас самих і в нашій культурі, і показують те, як формується і модифікується наше історичне саморозуміння. Водночас, оминаючи виклики сучасності, він пропонує сприймати канон як цілісність, зрозуміти яку допоможуть три терміни: насолода, зміна і шанс.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A whimsical trio of discourse on the purposes and functions of canon: best consumed like a four-movement musical piece or a whole pizza.

Kermode’s opening remarks provide enough fodder for the three replies, but his closing reply seems tepid after Carey Perloff’s majestic and brief observations on the influence artists have in keeping works of art relevant or canonizing them through their own creative output.

[Mitch]

I initially started off firmly in Kermode's camp, all about tradition, exclusion and hiearchy, but Guillory, the "cultural capital" guy (god I HATE that phrase) makes a very god case for the horizontal nature of life's pleasures that appeals to my sense of pluralism. But I still maintain the higher status of, say, dismay

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literary critic Frank Kermode leaps into the fray to defend the concept of a secular literary canon on aesthetic grounds against those who would demolish the concept as political.