Approaching the debates about literary canon from an entirely new angle, a foremost literary critic explores how a range of iconoclastic twentieth-century authors (in particular Kafka, Bialik, and Joyce) have put to use the paramount canonical text--the Hebrew Bible. Robert Alter argues against the notion that the canon is a vehicle of ideological enforcement and shows instead that canons are by nature surprisingly elastic and enabling for later writers
The term canon, which originally referred only to the collection of sacred scriptures endorsed by ecclesiastical authority, has in recent decades been adapted to a secular context, as a name for the collection of great books most venerated by mainstream cultural authorities. The term's elasticity is the subject of Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture by literary critic Robert Alter (author of The Art of Biblical Narrative and translator of Genesis and The David Story). Alter begins with a brief essay on the history of the canon of the Hebrew Bible; his subsequent readings of Kafka, Joyce, and the Russian poet Bialik (who wrote in Hebrew) concentrate on the ways in which each writer's creative strengths were enabled by their reference to the biblical canon. Together, the four essays present a compact, understated argument against the idea that canon is merely "a vehicle for theological truths" and praising "the perennial liveliness of the old canonical texts as a resource for imagination and moral reflection." --Michael Joseph Gross
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The uses of the Biblical canon by modern creators:
Alter opens his book this way,"Over the last quarter of a century ,the term canon,which previously had been restricted to the body of Sacred Scripture approved by ecclesiastical authority, attained general currency in academic circles as designation for the corpus of secular literary works implicity or explicitly endorsed by established cultural authority as worthy of preservation through reading and study." He speaks shortly afterwards about his goals in the work ," I want to explore the dynamics of... more info
The Bible and Modern Artists:
For those familiar with Alter's other works on Biblical literature this will be a joy. It focuses on how three great modern writers use the Bible to create their own art. Although the three writers, Kafka, Bialik and Joyce use the Bible differently than traditional writers - they treat the Bible with the utmost respect. Alters shows how the great moderns appreciate the wonders of the Bible and use it to enhance their art. Canon and Creativity will help you understand the artistic process of the moderns and... more info
