Diversity Canon

In this edition of ‘Scribble’, Head of English, Mr Aldridge, considers the diversity offered within the canon of English Literature.

Literature is such a cornerstone of any culture’s self-representation and expression of identity, that it really should not be hard to make a case for English Literature’s ability to tell a range of stories from a variety of perspectives, to celebrate a diverse plethora of voices, ideas, experiences and identities, or to find a host of gender and sexuality identities open to students during their time at school. And yet it is.

The canon of English Literature has long been a contentious concept, and one increasingly rejected by scholars and critics alike. The term ‘canon’ is derived from Ancient Greek: κανών (kanṓn), meaning a measuring rod, or standard; a simple definition of English Literature’s canon is a collection of ‘significant’ and ‘worthy’ texts which embody or exemplify Western culture and ideas - ‘essential’ and ‘important’ works that any student should read. In my first term at University, the compulsory module for students of English Literature was called ‘The Canon 101’ and ensured that all undergraduates developed a common grounding in English Literature’s ‘classics’. We read texts by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Spenser, Marlowe, and needed some passing understanding of the works of Ancient Greece (Virgil, Homer, Sophocles) and of wider European writers (Pushkin, de Cervantes, Dostoyevsky). This was, by design, a grounding in the ‘canon’ of English Literature so that we were able to demonstrate an understanding of English Literature’s rich heritage and tradition. I don’t remember thinking it as a naïve eighteen year old, but I am staggered looking back at how gender and culture blind this initiation to undergraduate study was. The only female writer that was given any kind of prominence was Jane Austen; writers of colour were entirely omitted. Instead, women writers, non-English writers, non-conformist writers were all given their own unit, entitled ‘The Canon and its discontents’, which immediately followed the initial study of the Canon; I am glad that non-Canonical writers were celebrated on my degree, but it nonetheless remains problematic that these voices and stories were not deemed canonical, remembering that a canon comprises ‘significant’ and ‘worthy’ writers and texts, and, therefore, by definition, these non-canonical texts are somehow less significant and worthy than their canonical counterparts.

So, what’s changed in the last thirty years? Surely, in the modern, progressive c.21st, we are not still labouring under these limiting Western-centric parameters of what qualifies as Literature worthy of study? There are a number of touch-points with which we can measure this:

Firstly, the GCSE English Literature curriculum for 2022, as considered via the AQA course taken by Shrewsbury High School students currently. Since the education secretary’s curriculum reforms of 2016 which cemented English Literature as English Literature, rather than literature in English, teachers and students have found a significant narrowing of voices and experiences available for study. The work of William Shakespeare is a non-negotiable component, and thankfully many of his texts allow for progressive interpretations of race, culture and sexuality – the representations of Mercutio, Shylock, and Portia all spring to mind. Alongside a Shakespeare play, students are asked to study a c.19th novel and have seven options – Stevenson, Dickens, Dickens, C. Bronte, Mary Shelley, Conan Doyle and Jane Austen. On the surface, we have an almost even split of gender, with three male and three female writers available; the problem I have with the options is the choice of novels made for Austen, Shelley and Bronte. Both ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ are fantastic novels, but share the same essential narrative – a woman or women who feel incomplete without having found husband to give her life meaning; the skill of the novelists is undeniable, but the values of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, and Lizzie Bennet (and her mother and sisters) and Mr Darcy are hardly progressive. This leaves Mary Shelley’s brilliant ‘Frankenstein’ as arguably the only available text which is progressive to its core – a sci-fi novel written before sci-fi had truly been imagined, centred on man’s utter fallibility in creating and sustaining life. The list of ‘Modern Texts’ for the third literary component of the GCSE arguably fares even more poorly – a collection of twelve modern texts, written by ten male writers and two female. JB Priestley, Willy Russell, Alan Bennett, Denis Kelly, Simon Stephens, William Golding, George Orwell, Kazuo Ishiguro and Stephen Kelman are all considered ‘significant’ and ‘worthy’ enough to be part of a sixteen-year old’s literary diet. By comparison, Meera Syal (Anita and Me) and Shelagh Delaney (A Taste of Honey) feel in the minority as female writers. The anthology of poetry available is where AQA’s remit of offering diversity is well-achieved; alongside the dead, white men, we have John Agard’s celebration of black history in ‘Checking out me History’, female poets in Carol Ann Duffy, Jane Weir, Beatrice Garland, Imtiaz Dharkar and countless poems that challenge authority and highlight oppression in numerous forms.

That said, however, I do not feel that this is a curriculum that is particularly diverse in its consideration of literature and would welcome attempts in any future re-branding of English Literature to create opportunities to study works by writers of colour, works that are not immediately hetero-normative and works which include inspirational characters with diverse identities. The move in 2016 to ‘English Literature’ rather than Literature in English, removed seminal texts like Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ (which unquestionably challenges contemporary values on women and people of colour) and Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (which offers a damning indictment on the treatment of black people in the Southern states of America in the early c.20th), and the time is right, in my opinion, to re-address this state of affairs.

As an English Department, the teachers at Shrewsbury High School, alongside many of our colleagues across the GDST, are committed to finding more opportunities to read texts in Years 7-11 which include diverse representations of gender, colour and sexualities; of course, this would be alongside traditional and much-loved canonical texts, rather than a total replacement of them.

Secondly, at A-level we are given far more scope to include a range of voices and stories in our programme of study. There are numerous examination boards who offer numerous routes through an A-level; for measure, I will discuss the merits of AQA’s English Literature B course, which is the one we follow at the High School. the course is split in two – focusing on Crime and Comedy as literary genres, and I feel that our chosen texts offer strong possibilities to consider representations of diversity. In Kate Atkinson, we have found an inspirational writer for our young women to read, and, furthermore, the central characters of Reggie and Louise drive the core narrative of ‘When will there be good news?’, with a third female character, Joanna, given real agency in the text; by comparison, the central male character, Jackson, is arguably pretty passive and a bystander for the majority of the narrative arc, Atkinson consciously subverting the genre. Alongside this novel, Graham

“I have absolutely no interest in this job. I won't work for them. They oppress me, they upset me, and they are not worthy.”

Benjamin Zephaniah

Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ also includes prominent female characters – another teenager in Rose and the novel’s detective, Ida Arnold, both of whom also are given agency by the author. In the comedy module, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is a text rich in opportunities for debate on society’s value of wives / daughters, and the deliciously subversive, tongue in cheek ending, however problematic it may be, can underline just how in control Katherina has become – to take the words of John Fletcher in 1647, it is a story of ‘The Tamer Tamed’ rather than the oppression of a shrewish woman. Both other texts studied involve considerable satire on the role of men and women in marriage, in Wilde’s ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ and Chaucer’s ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, particularly the ridiculous characterisation of Chauntecleer revealing just how vain and idiotic some men actually are. Added to these two core units, our study of Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife encompasses a huge range of diverse representations of women and sexuality, touching on heterosexual and homosexual love, gender transformation and re-assignment, gender fluidity, motherhood, daughterhood and strong, powerful women along the way. Preparations for the NEA Prose unit has to include consideration of postcolonial literary criticism and allows for students to read extracts from Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and Chinua Achebe, among others.

The freedoms that are offered at A-level, however, are frustratingly not reflected in the wider literary community, and here I offer my final touchstone for consideration. There exists the ultimate literary boys’ club, a group of almost entirely white men, who are supposed to represent the nation in all its diverse glory. The Poet Laureate. This position is historically significant and is appointed by the monarch with guidance from the Prime Minister. The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions. The Laureate receives little pay, a stipend of £5750 and a barrel of sherry, but the significance comes in the job title – the primary poet of the whole nation, writing poems of national importance, capturing the mood and feelings of the whole nation.

To date, there have been 21 Poets Laureate since its inception in 1668.

20 men; 1 woman. 20 English men; 1 non-English woman. 20 straight men; 1 openly gay woman. 21 White poets; 0 poets of colour.

For me, this encapsulates the issue which study of English Literature faces. Institutionally, it is still very much the preserve of dead, white men – examination boards, Universities, public celebrations of Literature are still fixated on the work of a very narrow set of writers, involving a very narrow set of characters and narratives. Speaking before the appointment of current Laureate, Simon Armitage, black British poet Benjamin Zephaniah responded to vociferous speculation and calls for his appointment by stating

John Agard, photograph by Jack Latham

“I have absolutely no interest in this job. I won’t work for them. They oppress me, they upset me, and they are not worthy.” The appointment of a poet of colour to this position would have huge and significant impact on English Literature – encouraging people to celebrate their voice, whatever their colour, class, sexuality, gender identity, and in 2021 this is hugely overdue, in my opinion. There are many worthy and extremely capable poets who fall into this category, but my choice would be for John Agard, a regular and very popular contributor to GCSE poetry anthologies, and someone who effortlessly questions and challenges oppression. Many readers will be familiar with ‘Checking Out Me History’, which questions the oppression evident in the British curriculum imposed upon him as a child, but also rallies readers to find their own figures of significance in their lives, like Agard who is “checking out me own history, I carving out me identity”.

Speaking on behalf of the English team at Shrewsbury High School, we are excited by our challenge to bring more diverse voices to the classroom in future years; a challenge we have already begun making progress towards addressing. More widely, I urge all students of English Literature - whether they are students at school, parents of children at school, adults who work with children, or just people who like to read – to find ways to embrace and promote a sense of diversity in their reading. Find something – share it. Without people being their own agents of change, finding and celebrating their own voices and stories from across the world and from across time, we will never be able to say that English Literature embraces diversity and the canon will remain as closed and exclusive as it sadly is today.

To begin with, here is one of my favourite poems by John Agard – his ‘Alternative Anthem’:

“Alternative Anthem.

Put the kettle on Put the kettle on It is the British answer to Armageddon.

Never mind taxes rise Never mind trains are late One thing you can be sure of and that’s the kettle, mate.

It’s not whether you lose It’s not whether you win It’s whether or not you’ve plugged the kettle in.

May the kettle ever hiss May the kettle ever steam It is the engine that drives our nation’s dream.

Long live the kettle that rules over us May it be limescale free Wand may it never rust.

Sing it on the beaches Sing it from the housetops The sun may set on empire but the kettle never stops.”

― John Agard, Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (2009)