I was having a similar conversation with a former colleague, too. I used to teach English, so I have to agree: it is nice to see the canon change and update as society does.
I wonder how many of us who teach/have taught literature are thinking the same thing but are unable to make these kinds of changes. I'm incredibly fortunate that my admin allows us to make these choices and respects our judgment as professionals. I know this is not the case at a lot of schools.
If you're going to do a Fantasy themed Brit-Lit course, I highly recommend starting with Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. I don't propose this because it is fantasy, rather because it contains within it a defense of fantastic literature. As with the way she used Byron as a romantic connection in Persuasion, she uses an interest in Gothic literature as a commentary on how ALL literature is worth experiencing but that one should have a balanced literary diet.
Henry Tilney and Catherine Moreland even have a moment when he acts as her Gamemaster in a pseudo-roleplaying session about her potential experiences in a Gothic Abbey. You can read a little about it in my annual (last year's anyway) All Jane Austen weekly Geekly.
I think it is interesting that you were reticent to defend American Fantastic literature as The American Canon and that we, as Americans, aren't quite as similarly dismissive in other arts. The American Songbook is filled with pop and we often add complex pop artists to the American Musical Canon. Similarly, if you read USC's list of "mandatory films to see for graduate students," it contains the requisite "artistic films," but it also contains a number of popular and "popcorn" films and not because they are popular but because they are great.
Any American canon must include James Fenimore Cooper (and be taught with an accompanying discussion of Twain's critique and how Twain's critique might be more ironic than people imagine), Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Lamb, Robert E Howard, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain (really the whole Black Mask School), C.L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, James Mitchener, H.P. Lovecraft, Tom Wolfe, and many many more.
I'm not as critical as many are of Gatsby and the "typical American novel," which is its own genre, but I do think it is part of a tradition of elite focused parlor discussions of the American Idea. Which is to say that it never delves into the real in any meaningful way. Gatz has an enormously interesting background. He is the "friendly face" of the Mob. That's an interesting story, but that is not the story told. The story told is Nick's observations about Gatz trying to attain a mythic version of the American Dream. Not the one of the "green light" so often focused on. Rather the one Gatz imagines after reading the only book he actually read in his library (The Autobiography of Ben Franklin). That book is not only in his library, but is the only one with cut pages.
I consider books like Gatsby and Catcher to be the Beat era, though not Beat in themselves, equivalent of what Tom Wolfe called Radical Chic. They were attempting to critique America in the same way that Arthur Conan Doyle (in The Lost World) and Joseph Conrad (in Heart of Darkness) critiqued British Culture and what Conrad called the "sepulchral city." The protagonists of both The Lost World and Heart of Darkness are horrified by what they see represented in civilization when they return from their adventures. They critique the loss of spiritedness and the growth of decadence over virtue in England (a theme of Michael Moorcock's work as well, but coming from a Left Wing position in his case). Gatsby and Catcher, and other books in the genre, seek to find the rot in the American Dream, but all they do is show the rot in the elite.
There's a reason that I sympathize with Nick more than James and it's that he knows the difference between the illusion of the Gilded American dream and the Common one.
Don't let the Boomer-ized canon dominate. The ancient and old canon is filled with wonder. Why should the modern canon be filled only with cynicism?
I was having a similar conversation with a former colleague, too. I used to teach English, so I have to agree: it is nice to see the canon change and update as society does.
I wonder how many of us who teach/have taught literature are thinking the same thing but are unable to make these kinds of changes. I'm incredibly fortunate that my admin allows us to make these choices and respects our judgment as professionals. I know this is not the case at a lot of schools.
Jennifer,
If you're going to do a Fantasy themed Brit-Lit course, I highly recommend starting with Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. I don't propose this because it is fantasy, rather because it contains within it a defense of fantastic literature. As with the way she used Byron as a romantic connection in Persuasion, she uses an interest in Gothic literature as a commentary on how ALL literature is worth experiencing but that one should have a balanced literary diet.
Henry Tilney and Catherine Moreland even have a moment when he acts as her Gamemaster in a pseudo-roleplaying session about her potential experiences in a Gothic Abbey. You can read a little about it in my annual (last year's anyway) All Jane Austen weekly Geekly.
https://www.geekeratimedia.com/p/weekly-geekly-for-july-19th-2024
I think it is interesting that you were reticent to defend American Fantastic literature as The American Canon and that we, as Americans, aren't quite as similarly dismissive in other arts. The American Songbook is filled with pop and we often add complex pop artists to the American Musical Canon. Similarly, if you read USC's list of "mandatory films to see for graduate students," it contains the requisite "artistic films," but it also contains a number of popular and "popcorn" films and not because they are popular but because they are great.
Any American canon must include James Fenimore Cooper (and be taught with an accompanying discussion of Twain's critique and how Twain's critique might be more ironic than people imagine), Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Lamb, Robert E Howard, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain (really the whole Black Mask School), C.L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, James Mitchener, H.P. Lovecraft, Tom Wolfe, and many many more.
I'm not as critical as many are of Gatsby and the "typical American novel," which is its own genre, but I do think it is part of a tradition of elite focused parlor discussions of the American Idea. Which is to say that it never delves into the real in any meaningful way. Gatz has an enormously interesting background. He is the "friendly face" of the Mob. That's an interesting story, but that is not the story told. The story told is Nick's observations about Gatz trying to attain a mythic version of the American Dream. Not the one of the "green light" so often focused on. Rather the one Gatz imagines after reading the only book he actually read in his library (The Autobiography of Ben Franklin). That book is not only in his library, but is the only one with cut pages.
I consider books like Gatsby and Catcher to be the Beat era, though not Beat in themselves, equivalent of what Tom Wolfe called Radical Chic. They were attempting to critique America in the same way that Arthur Conan Doyle (in The Lost World) and Joseph Conrad (in Heart of Darkness) critiqued British Culture and what Conrad called the "sepulchral city." The protagonists of both The Lost World and Heart of Darkness are horrified by what they see represented in civilization when they return from their adventures. They critique the loss of spiritedness and the growth of decadence over virtue in England (a theme of Michael Moorcock's work as well, but coming from a Left Wing position in his case). Gatsby and Catcher, and other books in the genre, seek to find the rot in the American Dream, but all they do is show the rot in the elite.
There's a reason that I sympathize with Nick more than James and it's that he knows the difference between the illusion of the Gilded American dream and the Common one.
Don't let the Boomer-ized canon dominate. The ancient and old canon is filled with wonder. Why should the modern canon be filled only with cynicism?