Canon within the canon?

Question

what does "canon within the canon" approach mean?

Answer 1

I'm not sure. It may imply that within a set of approved (canonized) works, there are some that are more central than others. If this is right, I suspect the term was born as a result of the efforts of academe to expand the canon of literature (say) by including work formerly excluded and calling it also part of the overall approved set of readings.

No one would dispute that _Moby-Dick_ and _The Scarlet Letter_ are in the canon of great 19th century American literature. Would you say the same for Harriet Jacobs's _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_? If your criteria are inclusiveness you would. No one would claim, however, that this work is written with the same attention to literary form and philosophical profundity, many-sidedness and control, that the Melville and Hawthorne books are.

The question then is, is the canon within the canon, the original, unexpanded canon, or is the canon within the canon the other excluded work that now occupies a contiguous place?

I've never heard "canon within the canon," though. I don't know the context from which you took it either: you don't say.