Literary canon in the context of "William Hazlitt"

Poetic tradition is a concept similar to that of the poetic or literary canon (a body of works of significant literary merit, instrumental in shaping Western culture and modes of thought). The concept of poetic tradition has been commonly used as a part of historical literary criticism, in which a poet or author is evaluated in the context of his historical period, his immediate literary influences or predecessors, and his literary contemporaries. T. S. Eliot claimed in Tradition and the Individual Talent, published in 1919, that for a poet to fully come into his own, he must be aware of his predecessors, and view the work of his predecessors as living, not dead. The poetic tradition is a line of descent of poets who have achieved a sublime state and can surrender themselves to their work to create a poem that both builds on existing tradition and stands on its own.

The necessity of a poet to be aware of his place in relation to his poem and to his tradition, to surrender himself to his work and to the great masters preceding him, is revisited by Harold Bloom in his 1973 work, The Anxiety of Influence. Bloom argued that each and every “great poet” must struggle with and overcome the anxiety of weakly imitating his predecessor poets. Bloom grounded his arguments on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (notably Genealogy of Morals) and Sigmund Freud, though he disagrees with the tendency of both authors to “over-idealize the imagination.” To Bloom, a poetic tradition is a tradition of creative misreading, with each upcoming poet clearing a space in the poetic tradition for himself or herself by alleging some inconsistency, or mistake, or insufficient progress on the part of his or her predecessor(s). He cites multiple examples in this work and in his other work on the same topic, A Map of Misreading, published in 1975. One of these is the multiplicity of misreadings by poets and critics—including T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, and Percy Shelley—of Milton’s epic poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Aleksander Jełowicki (18 December 1804 in Hubnyk - 15 April 1877 in Rome) was a Polish writer, poet, translator and publisher. He was a veteran of the November Uprising, deputy to the Sejm of Congress Poland for the Haisyn powiat and political exile in France, where he was a social activist, superior of the Polish Catholic Mission in Paris and monk.

Among the works he published are the first editions of Adam Mickiewicz's Part III of Dziady (1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834). Between 1835 and 1838 he was leading partner of the publishing house and printing works, Jełowicki i S-ka in Paris. His list of authors constitutes a major part of Poland's 19th-century literary canon and includes: Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Kazimierz Brodziński, Stefan Witwicki, Wincenty Pol, Antoni Gorecki, Maurycy Mochnacki, Joachim Lelewel, Henryk Rzewuski, Michał Czajkowski, Klementyna Hoffmanowa, Ignacy Krasicki.

Sam'l of Posen; or, The Commercial Drummer is a play by the Irish-born dramatist George H. Jessop. Described as a "comic melodrama", the play is regarded as the first work in the history of American theatre to present a positive portrayal of a Jewish character. The character of the Jewish immigrant traveling salesman Samuel Plastrick was created out of a style of humor that originated among Jewish comedians in American music halls, and was the first Jewish character in an English-language play that invited audiences to laugh with a Jewish character rather than at them; a concept which was highly successful in the United States from the play's inception in 1881 but which was ridiculed by critics and audiences when the play was first performed in England. While progressive for its time, the role has also been criticized for introducing a stereotype of a particular type of Jewish character into the literary canon.

The role of Samuel Plastrick brought both fame and fortune to the Jewish-American actor M. B. Curtis whose portrayal of the Jewish pedlar, an occupation known as a "drummer" in 19th century America, was wildly popular with American audiences. After an initial production in New York City, Posen toured in the role successfully for two years before purchasing the rights to the play outright from Jessop. After this, he made several modifications to the work with the assistance of one of his co-stars, the actor and comedian Edward Marble, with whom he transformed the play from a three act work to a four act work. He continued to tour widely in the role for decades.

The Great American Songbook is the loosely defined canon of significant 20th-century American jazz standards, popular songs, and show tunes.