Making the English Canon
Print-Capitalism and the Cultural Past, 1700–1770

Jonathan Brody Kramnick's book examines the formation of the English canon over the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century. Kramnick details how the idea of literary tradition emerged out of a prolonged engagement with the institutions of cultural modernity, from the public sphere and national identity to capitalism and the print market. Looking at a wide variety of eighteenth-century critical writing, he analyses the tensions that inhabited the categories of national literature and public culture at the moment of their emergence.

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Review of the hardback: 'While the rise of the English canon has been a topic of continuous and fraught interest over the past couple of decades Jonathan Kramnick offers the most coherent and detailed discussion of what is arguably its crucial historical moment: the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Kramnick's discussion of how Shakespeare and Spenser became the first English 'classics' will itself become classic. Making the English Canon is not simply a monograph on eighteenth-century literary aesthetics, it is a singularly powerful and authoritative contribution to perhaps the most important discussion going on in the literary humanities today.' Terry Castle

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Product details

• Date Published: June 2008
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521065924
• length: 296 pages

• dimensions: 228 x 152 x 17 mm
• weight: 0.46kg
• availability: Available