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Culture, Education, and the Canon: An investigation of six texts in relation to literary culture, canonicity, popular culture, and mandatory education in England and Wales

Keating, Zoe (2021) Culture, Education, and the Canon: An investigation of six texts in relation to literary culture, canonicity, popular culture, and mandatory education in England and Wales. Masters thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

This is a thesis examining the relationship between three pairs of texts – Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the Alice books (1864 and 1896) by Lewis Carroll and Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury – to each other and to their canon-scapes. My research into the specifics of canonicity, education, and cultural landscapes indicated that each of these relationships offers a unique and important perspective on the canon debate of traditional versus multiple canon-scapes as it relates to the place of each text within the education system. This thesis looks into the relationship of each text to the cultural and academic landscape of the period in which it was produced as well as the attitudes towards the texts from a contemporary perspective through the lens of mandatory education at secondary level in England and Wales. Each set of texts holds a unique positioning in relation to each other, be that in terms of direct or explicit influence, or subconscious influence due to genre tropes and evolution of literature. As well as positioning these texts together in such a way in order to garner a clear perspective on the contrast in canonical perspectives, the historical shift in attitudes becomes clearer as it moves further into the twentieth century.

Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
Status: Published
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
School/Department: School of Humanities
URI: https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/6307

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