The Canon Research Paper

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Canon Introduction This discussion is focused on digging further into the idea related to canon as used in literature. To begin with, it is fundamental to highlight the meaning of the term canon concept. Therefore to best describe it, literacy canon is a term that is used broadly to classify literature material. In other terms, it is said to be a set of literary materials of which have been highlighted to be of greatest importance to a certain period of time or sometimes a place. Literary canon, therefore, can be said to create a set of related or identical literary works. As a good example a literary canon can be made of a particular collection of works from a specific region and at the same time can be a collection of literacy works written …show more content…

This literature material belongs to a certain tradition of a tragic romantic theme that spreads all the way back to the old days. The book is a tale from Italy that has been translated as the ‘Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet’ written by Arthur Brooke in the way back in the 16th century. The book was later rewritten in prose form as ‘Palace of Pleasure’ by one author called William Painter still in the same period of 16th century. Therefore in the book off by Shakespeare he picked a lot from these authors as his outline to expand advance the idea of the books by adding a number of characters to support the plot. Shakespeare uses poetry as his mode of presentation of the book. This led to him receiving hefty raises that were an early signal to his dramatic skills yet to come. The play of Romeo and Juliet uses various poetic forms to distinguish between characters and in other instances changing the appearance as the character develops. For example, Romeo grows as the play unfolds (Norgaard, p. 126). Influence of the Example This play has been picked severally for performances on stage, films, music presentations and opera scenes. Performances in the 19th century have attempted to bring back the texts that were originally put down in the play. The 18th century had various versions of the play altered whereby some scenes were excluded that were said to be not conforming to decency. In the period between the 20th and 21st century, the play has been used in various modified versions. For example the George Cukor’s film of Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli’s version of the year 1968.

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