Journal

WHAT IS THE TRADITIONAL LITERARY CANON? DO YOU THINK IT IS IMPORTANT FOR STUDENTS TO READ IT? HOW CAN IT BE APPLIED IN ENGLISH CLASSES?

The definition of canon is deeply wide it all depends on theway that people use the term to qualify or give some status to some authors’ works in religion, art, literature, laws, philosophy, culture, and history, even some science and mathematics ones. Thetraditional literary canon is, in most of the cases, the core of a way of thinking, the traditional one, marked because it shows the standard of the history; it lets behind today’s world including someliterary works made by women and minorities. The literary canon is related to a specific distribution of literature, which shows a wide range of writings or selected literary works, because they areconsidered the most relevant for a specific period of time or place. For people who are learning, at a college or university even a school is necessary to know everything about their academic issues(such as history and culture) and the traditional literary canon gives an opportunity, through the writings, of doing that. Literary readings are an interesting way to show history and the life style ofa culture to the students specially, those who want to learn a second language.
The traditional literary canon is a guide and an index conformed by different kinds of books that have an enormousrelevance and relation in terms

of time, place, history and pertinence, they are also patterns for readings and serves to any student for understanding the history and culture, in the case of Englishlearners, the English history and culture. The traditional literary canon was hardly criticize because it was elitist, any case the definition of literary canon has changed and now it just have todo with books recommended for reading in language curriculums and literature issues. The authors whose literary works are included in the canon most be accepted as authorities, it means, they need to...