Re-imagining British Literature

Expanding the Canon?

Recently, I was chatting with the dean of students at work (I’m a teacher), and he asked what my students were reading.

“Gatsby,” I replied. We were wrapping up the semester in American Lit.

He confessed to not really “getting” why everyone thought The Great Gatsby was THE great American novel, and I said that my husband wonders the same.

I happen to really like Gatsby, but I understand those who don’t (like the dean and my husband), and I think it’s status as The Book Everyone Reads in High School is due more to its racy plot and setting, and critique of the “American Dream,” than to its overall literary merit compared to other similarly “classic” American novels.

This whole conversation, really, revolves around how things become “canonical” and what gains entry into the academic realm, what’s worth teaching, etc.

After our chat about Gatsby, the dean asked who my favorite American authors were.

“None.”

None?

(Well, “none” is a bit of a lie, but can I really say Le Guin? Peter S. Beagle? Maybe I can get away with mentioning Bradbury… he’s regularly taught in school, people know him, etc. He’s transcended the SFF ghetto. But can I really say Robert E. Howard? Fritz Leiber? Madelein L’Engle? Lloyd Alexander? Pulp writers and children’s book authors? These don’t “count.” Everyone knows when asked the question the way the dean asked the question that the answer should be someone who fits the canon, someone who gets taught in school, someone who shows up on Oprah and Reese book club picks. No one is ready for you to say Philip K. Dick.)

“I’m really more of British Lit person,” I added.

Which is true. Perhaps because British literature is older and thus has more “fantastical” literature accepted into the canon. Perhaps because I’m just an Anglophile who loves her some costume dramas on Masterpiece and stereotypically can’t get enough Jane Austen. Perhaps because I *heart* Tolkien and Lewis and Shakespeare and always have.

However, despite being a Brit Lit person through and through, I often find myself disappointed when teaching it.

It’s the expectations. Just as there is a canon for America Lit, there is a canon for Brit Lit. I could definitely justify teaching Brave New World in a Brit Lit class, and perhaps one day I will, but the justifications get a little harder when I think about teaching something like Lewis’s Perelandra or Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. First, it would take us the whole semester to read LOTR, so that’s kind of out. And second, there’s still a bias against SFF when we’re talking about what to teach in schools.

We can dip into certain types of SFF: dystopian lit (i.e.: Brave New World, 1984), epics like Beowulf (which I have been teaching the last two years), Shakespeare like Macbeth that have magical elements.

But to teach a whole “British Lit” or “American Lit” class focused around SFF would feel “off.” The expectation is that literary fiction take precedence. Science fiction and fantasy are okay in classes labelled as “Science Fiction and Fantasy,” but they don’t quite make the grade in a “normal” literature class.

Well.

After my conversation with the dean, I feel even more convicted to design a syllabus for next year that pushes against these expectations and assumptions.

For British Lit next fall, we are going full FANTASY.

Summer reading (which my students have hopefully embarked upon) is anchored by Susanna Clarke’s short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, with G.K. Chesterton’s essay “Fairy Tales” as supplementary reading.

When we start in the fall, we’ll jump into nursery rhymes and Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” and then right into Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Simon Armitage’s translation).

The other anchor texts will be Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and Tolkien’s short story “Smith of Wooten Major.”

Our poetry selections will also focus on fairy tales: “Goblin Market” by Rossetti, “The Stolen Child” by Yeats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by Keats, and “The Lady of Shallot” by Tennyson.

I’m thinking of having an independent reading project too, with selections including The Magician’s Nephew by Lewis, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and The Princess and the Goblin by MacDonald.

Is this unorthodox? Obviously. Am I doing a “disservice” to my students by focusing so narrowly upon a particular mode or tradition such as the fairy story? Perhaps.

But any class (or canon) is going to involve curation. And I’d like to make the case that the fairy tale or romance is just as valid for study in a literature class as any other genre. Why give Realism or Naturalism preeminence? Why are we allowed to read romance as long as it is medieval or early modern, but if it’s Victorian or 20th century, suddenly it’s too niche to show up in a general literature class?

This is one of my old complaints. The elevation of “realistic” fiction over genre fiction, of “literary” over SFF, mystery, romance, horror, etc.

I also understand that by focusing on “fairy stories” for my British Literature class, I am leaving out huge chunks of the history of British Literature.

But that would be true in ANY class. Every class, due to time constraints, must pick and choose what to focus on. All I’m attempting with this syllabus is to say, “I’m focusing on fairy stories.”

And in doing so, I’m still covering many of the major “eras” of British literary history: medieval, Elizabethan, Romantic, Victorian, and early 20th century. What’s fascinating is how durable the fairy story is, encompassing all of these different eras and genres, from poetry to drama to short fiction to the novel.

Which is one of the reasons I wanted the summer homework to be Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories. One aspect of Clarke’s genius is the way she marries the realism of Jane Austen to the fantastical elements of the fairy story. Anyone who has read urban fantasy or any other type of “fantasy in the real world” story isn’t shocked by this conceit. It’s commonplace in our literary landscape today.

But what I like about Clarke’s stories in a British Literature class is how she takes Austen’s innovations as a novelist — the emphasis on ordinary life and ordinary conflicts — and synthesizes that style with the elements of the fairy story. Austen was doing something different from the Gothic romances that were popular in her early years, pushing the novel to explore the common, everyday world with complexity and depth. What does the fairy story look like when told in this “new style” of Austen’s? For anyone who has read Clarke’s novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, you know the answer. There’s a delightful matter-of-fact-ness in the way magic is described and integrated into the mundane world, but there’s also a deeply unsettling quality to it too. This contrast and synthesis between the mundane and uncanny is what makes Clarke’s fiction so interesting, and hopefully my students will be able to take what they’ve experienced with Clarke’s stories and relate them to the older literature. How is Shakespeare’s use of the fairy story similar to Clarke’s? Different? How is magic and the world of fairy treated in Sir Gawain compared to Clarke? Etc.

Reading a national literature through such a narrow lens might raise some eyebrows, but I think it can work. If nothing else, it makes me excited for the new school year. And it gives me a list of wonderful books to reread this summer in preparation!

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Blog Posts of Interest

I wrote about how writing to a certain word count can lead to trouble and the emergence of Critical Voice.

I also reviewed a great book on making art called The Motern Method. (Did I link to this already? No matter. Here it is again.)

And in the Substack-verse, please check out Christian Lindke’s post on Guilermo del Toro’s new adaptation of Frankenstein. I have been teaching Frankenstein the last two years in Brit Lit, and next semester is the first time I’m NOT teaching it. Seeing the trailer for this new adaptation is making me wish I hadn’t been so hasty in dropping Mary Shelley’s masterpiece from my syllabus… Brit Lit Movie Club, maybe???

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That’s it for now. As always, thank you for reading!

And if you are looking for Arthurian fantasy, consider my novel, The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, or if you want a dash of nostalgic coming-of-age, 1990s-style, there’s Avalon Summer and its companion fantasy, Gates to Illvelion. Or you can check out my short stories HERE.

Remember, if you enjoyed this post but can’t afford a monthly subscription, you can always buy me a coffee.

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