Dialogues with/and Great Books : The Dynamics of Canon Formation

What is the source of a book's perceived greatness and why do certain books become part of the accepted canon? Dialogues with/and Great Books - now available in paperback - presents a fresh perspective on these questions, re-visiting prevalent approaches that explain a work's reputation in terms of its aesthetic qualities ("the beauty view") or as the result of dictates by social hegemonies ("the power view"). Author David Fishelov argues that the number and variety of echoes and dialogues a book generates - with readers, authors, translators, adaptors, artists, and critics - is the most important source of its perceived greatness. The first part of the book - What Is a Dialogue? What Is a Great Book - provides useful distinctions between different kinds of dialogue (genuine dialogue, dialogue-of-the-deaf, and echo-dialogue), develops theoretical arguments (why the dialogic approach is not circular), and empirically tests intriguing cases (why has Candide, and not Rasselas won the literary race for fame?). The second section - Genuine Dialogues with Great Books - presents in-depth readings of literary and artistic dialogues with well established canonical works, including Monty Python's The Life of Brian, Swift's distortion of More's Utopia, and some modern adaptations of Ovid's Pygmalion, providing an opportunity to examine the process by which dialogues contribute to a work's reputation. Through its special blend of theoretical arguments, empirical methods, and sensitive interpretations, Dialogues with/and Great Books offers a stimulating invitation to re-think the literary canon and intertextuality - and the intricate connections between the two.