John Baker’s Blog

At Prospect, Richard Jenkyns discusses what he calls canon anxiety. In a lengthy but never less than interesting essay, Do We Need A Literary Canon? he argues that our sense of belonging, our shared references, must evolve more organically.
Consider the most striking literary canonisation of our times. Jane Austen has always been esteemed, and [...]

I was reminded of something TS Eliot said in the collection of essays entitled The Sacred Wood.
In discussing modern literature, Eliot wonders why we place so much value on the writer’s difference to the past, on his individuality, on the ways in which he least resembles anything that has gone before. Because, Eliot argues “we [...]