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Literature schoolbooksPage 2 of 6
The choice of literary texts. Naturally, the choice of literary texts in schoolbooks provides the field where one may see most clearly the ideology behind its compilation. Schoolbooks represent but also contribute to the formation of national literary canons. A schoolbook may adhere to and reinforce an already established canon by offering a selection of texts suitable for teenagers but also of recognized literary value, or it may steer away from it in differing degrees, and for reasons and purposes that need to be examined as they could be considered either liberalist and progressive or propagandistic and totalitarian. In what follows, I elaborate a little further on different aspects of the selected literary texts that one may examine.
The authors of the selected literary texts provide an easy and apposite entry point, helping to judge the physiognomy of the book with respect to the canon. A canonical author, even if he/she is not represented in the compilation by his opus magnum –this kind of works is sometimes deemed unsuitable for teenagers, on account of either its difficulty or its content– still shows an effort to abide by persons of recognized value. The inclusion of non-canonical authors, living or not, may be either a positive sign of openness to hitherto unrecognized tendencies (a more recent trend), or a negative one, of an effort to endow authors of lesser, dubious or merely propagandistic value with canonical status. One need also consider possible exclusions of authors on account of their gender, political views or sexual orientation. A case in point may be provided by the exclusion of the widely acclaimed homosexual poet C. P. Cavafy from the schoolbooks of the Metaxas’ dictatorship in Greece .
1 For an English translation of his poems you can visit http://www.cavafy.com/ and you can hear a rendition of his “ |
