Special thanks to /u/labarge3 and /u/Enrico_Dandolo for the assist on this one. I’m a Medievalist and my specialty is later/vernacular lit, so they were very helpful, particularly for antiquity. I didn't include everything you guys mentioned, by a long shot, but there was so much to write about I could hardly fit more in

##Part 1: The “Canon” and the people who make it

I'm perhaps more Canon loving then the general mood in English lit these days, (The idea of a Western Canon is...controversial, to say the least. The Canon Wars were a thing, and more or less resulted in the defeat of Canon-defenders.) but even I am inclined to quote a certain pirate when I say that the Canon is "more like guidelines, than actual rules." The Canon is fuzzy, ill-defined, and should not be taken as some sort of comprehensive list of things that are good. Instead, it should be understood as a limited list of things we’re pretty sure are important. Basically, my opinion is that things that are "in the canon" are good, but most things that are good are not "in the canon."

Part of the problem is one of periodization. At least in the States (and I think a lot of this goes for the UK as well), the majority of Literary studies happens through English departments and the various language studies. Language Studies (French/German/Italian etc.) are inherently focused on reading in that language rather than on holistic literary study, and are generally tilted pretty heavily modern, since they usually rotate around a core of modern language learning.

English departments generally focus around English in the same way, and while they’re more accepting of literature in translation, they tend to be A. Tilted Modern, B. focused on the England-France-Italy axis that makes up the core of Medieval studies for a lot of people in the west, when they go back there at all, and then only because those three nations tend to be part of a textual community during the birth of a large scale vernacular renaissance in the 11th and 12th centuries. In less jargon-y words, English departments, insofar as they study the Middle Ages, study the development of English literature. Vernacular literature in what is recognizably English only really got going around the later end of the 12th century. After all, the Normans only showed up in 1066, and it took some time before something sort of like our modern English could appear out of the mixing of French and Anglo-Saxon. Generally speaking, English Literary studies has started here, and continued on to the modern era.

Meanwhile, Classicists, being, you know, Classicists, have tended to focus on the period from about 800 BC to 500 AD. Classical studies is relatively literarily minded, so there’s a fair amount of study for literature of that period. So where does that leave us with those intervening 5-600 years? Who’s studying those? Well, Historians. There are plenty of historians of the period, and they could tell you all about the literature of the period that exists (and I’ll get there), but the problem is, they’re not literature people. They’re interested in literature, as historians. The production of literature, and the content of it, is of historical interest, of course, but it does not a literary “Canon” make. That’s the subject of literary interest, and Western literary interest has been largely focused around Greco-Roman Texts, and then the ancestry of modern western languages. We’re going to get into why that’s true in a bit too, don’t you worry. Just to get into how blind this can make people, Beowulf itself wasn’t considered of real literary interest until J.R.R Tolkien blew the doors off Beowulf criticism with “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics”

Now this isn’t UNIVERSALLY true, not even close. Historians are perfectly capable of literary analysis and criticism, and there are definitely people working on literature from these periods as literature, but it’s just less done, to some extent, which means less of it filters down to the average person thinking about “The Canon.” As a specialist, I’m at least familiar enough with a lot of these types of literature to know they exist and are important, even if I haven’t studied them myself, but the average person might only know of the existence of some of the more famous writers like Shakespeare or Milton.

Here’s an illustration of the problem: Byzantium is a huge source for medieval thought, literature and art. Their work was hugely influential, and a lot of it survives. Here’s a list of graduate programs in Byzantine studies. Look at the departments they’re through. Almost all of the programs are in History, Christian Studies, Art History and Classics, whereas fights over “The Western Canon” usually took place in English, Comp Lit, and Philosophy departments. This sort of academic divide and factionalism contributed a lot to the current shape of the Canon, arguably moreso than the actual existence or lack thereof of “Canon Worthy” texts (This sort of problem is part of why the Canon people largely lost the fight). Furthermore, of those programs, most have an angle of study that isn’t what I would call Literature-forward. History programs mostly study the Byzantines as a historical interest, and while Classics is more literature focused, it’s still at least as much about history as it is about literature, and it also tends to focus (I would imagine) on Late Antiquity. Christian Studies wants to look at Byzantium as it relates to Christian thought and history, and Art History is more about visual art than literature. So very few people are engaging in study of Byzantine literary texts as literary texts, and much the same goes for Philosophy. This is anecdotal, but one of my friends is studying under a man who specializes in a particular branch of Byzantine Philosophy. (I believe it’s the Philosophy of Byzantine Ecumenical Councils.) He is the only person in America who studies this. He’s retiring soon.

So all of this looks more like a description of modern western academic organization and politics than it does the history of literature. That’s because “The Canon,” is the attempted codification of what some “Western” Scholars have thought about “Western Literature.” It’s very influenced by the biases and habits of those same academics, arguably moreso than any objective measure of literary quality. (Western is in quotes because it’s also super problematic for this time period. I’ll get there. Also I’m not going to get into the fight over whether or not we can objectively evaluate literature at all. It’s not germane to the point and involves more aesthetics than I’m ready for.) Also I should note that all of this only really applies to the English-Speaking world. The Anglo-American academy is very different from the Continental academy, and as I’m (For the moment) mostly monolingual I can’t speak to the non-English academy.