Canon and its changes

Throughout the years, as a consequence of the evolution of society but also of the human race as
a whole, literary canon has been subjected to a series of changes, shifts and developments.
Subsequently, said changes have headed towards an interest for human experience and its many
facets. Every aspect in literature mutates: the main focus, the perspective, the language, they all
shift to match what the readers appreciate as a good piece of writing as the years pass and society
evolves.
Literary canon embodies, among other things, a set of rules concerning the perspective from
which a story is told and, consequently, the relation I/you. As the literary world warms itself up
to new movements (realism, modernism, postmodernism) , the perspective begins to change so
this relation becomes more personal and specific, and the narrator is more and more aware of the
act of communication that takes place.
Through modernism, the reader is not just observing some distant interaction between characters;
he is transferred to another reality, one where the narrative identity is much stronger and the
exchange much more intimate: the two entities, I/you, are linked by the authors desire for
unity in his writings. There is also present a shift between narrative perspectives between the
identities of I and you, while also keeping the act of communication unaffected, even though
the language becomes more complex and sometimes elusive, with meanings that are hard to
grasp.
Just the same, the presence of one of these signs of narratorial voice implies the presence of
the other, without it being imperiously necessary for it to make an appearance in the text, as we
see in the six excerpts: the act of communication between two entities is at times allusive, but
nonetheless implied. Thus, one can observe in these texts that the relation between Author and
Reader has been affected by the mutations the canon has suffered.
In the early texts, Gullivers Travels and Vanity Fair, the narrators are omniscient and
through their monologues they mention the two sides of the communicative act: Author and
Reader. They are aware of the readers implication in the story, but also of their own power over

it. In Lord Jim, while still using the monologue as means of communicating a story, the
narrator is much more involved in the action, sharing his tale personally to an addressee present
in the same room (embodied by a group of men). Therefore, the identity of you changes it is
not the Reader anymore, but other characters.
In Point Counter Point the monologue is replaced by a dialogue between characters. The act of
communication is now implied by the very presence of the pronoun I, is much more personal
and shows the characters involvement in the story. The Author and Reader become now mere
external presences. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the perspective changes once again, as the
perception of reality in literary canon shifts. The monologue and the omniscient narrator
reappear, and the Reader is once again the entity representing the you in the communicative
act. Just the same, in Atonement the narrator addresses the readers directly through a very
personal monologue, using the pronoun I, and therefore the first person narrative.
Through these texts, which represent the many changes the literary canon has gone through, one
can observe how the narrative voice moves from one type of narration (monologue, omniscient
voice) to another (dialogue) and then once again to a monologue using first person narrative,
each time becoming a more personal experience, a more intimate conversation, a more specific
reality.
The Author and Reader come in and out of focus, sometimes being the entities that represent the
relation I/you directly, and sometimes being external presences that oversee the acts of
communication existent in a text. As society evolves, the literary canon with all its components
mutates and transforms in front of our eyes.

Tiron Crina Elena

EN-NO, an III