Explain the term 'exploding the canonˊ

The term literary canon is a technical term used to describe a set of texts that serve as a recognized standard of stylistic quality, cultural or social significance, and intellectual value. The literary canon is not determined as much as it is adopted by pervasive usage in university and graduate classrooms, as well as reference and citation in academic journals, and it is to a degree based on the influence of curriculum publishers and testing organizations. Because people in a society are most likely to be exposed to the accepted canon of literature, these texts also inform both a generally accepted worldview and determine the ''imaginative boundaries'' of how that society tends to think. For example, because Aristotle's works were considered part of the literary canon for the last several centuries, western societies have tended to approach questions of warfare and economics through an Aristotelian lens. Essentially, the voice a society hears most often is most likely to carry an outside influence on the people within that society, both in how they think and how they live.

The fact that the canon is determined through usage and collaboration makes it both highly adaptable and highly controversial at the same time. In recent years, a push to change what authors and works should be considered canon or canonical has driven a great deal of debate within the western literary world. The English word canon stems from an older, Greek term (transliterated as Kanon). Originally, this Greek term referred to a ''standard'' or a ''measuring rod'' against which something was measured to ensure that it was set correctly. The physical, engineering use of this term eventually took on a metaphoric meaning. Now, the term canon is used to mean an agreed-upon standard against which other, most frequently intellectual, works are measured for quality, long-term value, and influence.

Though different for eastern cultures, the countries and people groups — especially within Europe — of western society have worked within the boundaries of a fairly consistent literary canon for the last 1000 - 1500 years. In general, the western canon has prioritized the voices of the dominant GrecoRoman philosophers, the poets and novelists of France and Britain, and, in more recent centuries, the sociological/philosophical voices of Germany. It is equally true that American novelists, in particular, have found their way into the generally accepted canon during the late 19th and throughout the 20th centuries. In recent years, Classics Programs at major universities and especially at Ivy League institutions in the United States, or Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom, have been engaged in a debate about which texts and writers should be accepted as classics or as part of the literary canon. Classics programs have long prioritized the white, masculine, most frequently upper-class voices of Greece and Rome.

However, in contrast, contemporary scholars like Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Ph.D.) of Princeton University have instead been arguing for a broader reconstruction of the classical worldview — a reconstruction that would include minority, slave, and female voices of the time period. The general argument from thinkers like Peralta centers on the idea that a ''classics program'' should explore the totality of perspectives that shaped the earliest intellectual foundations of western civilization. Arguments from this perspective hold that if classics programs do not include the marginalized voices and perspectives of the ancient world, students will not truly understand the cultural forces that birthed contemporary western culture. Rather, they will be left only with an in-depth understanding of the racially, socioeconomically, and gender-dominant perspectives of the time period.

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