Editing Western canon (section)

===In the English-speaking world===

==== British renaissance poetry ====

{{main|Elizabethan literature|Metaphysical poets}}
The canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th and early 17th century has always been in some form of flux and towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was criticised, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers.<ref name="Waller-2013">{{cite book|last1=Waller|first1=Gary F.|title=English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-0582090965|pages=263–270|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L9gFBAAAQBAJ&q=Waller,+Gary.+English+Poetry+of+the+Sixteenth+Century&pg=PR4|access-date=30 March 2016}}</ref> However, the central figures of the British renaissance canon remain, [[Edmund Spenser]], Sir [[Philip Sidney]], [[Christopher Marlowe]], [[William Shakespeare]], [[Ben Jonson]], and [[John Donne]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bednarz|first=James P.|title=English Poetry|url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0209.xml|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018190048/http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0209.xml|archive-date=2014-10-18|access-date=2020-10-12|website=Oxford Bibliographies|language=en}}</ref> [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]], [[John Donne|Donne]], and [[Ben Jonson|Jonson]] were major influences on 17th-century poetry. However, poet [[John Dryden]] condemned aspects of the metaphysical poets in his criticism. In the 18th century [[Metaphysical poetry]] fell into further disrepute,<ref>"Life of Cowley", in Samuel Johnson's ''Lives of the Poets''</ref> while the interest in [[Elizabethan literature|Elizabethan poetry]] was rekindled through the scholarship of [[Thomas Warton]] and others. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed in the Victorian period with anthologies like Palgrave's ''[[Golden Treasury]]''.<ref>Gary F. Waller, (2013). ''English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century''. London: Routledge. p. 262</ref>

In the twentieth century [[T. S. Eliot]] and [[Yvor Winters]] were two literary critics who were especially concerned with revising the canon of renaissance English literature. Eliot, for example, championed poet [[Sir John Davies]] in an article in ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' in 1926. During the course of the 1920s, Eliot did much to establish the importance of the metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. However, by 1961 [[A. Alvarez]] was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with the passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry."<ref>Alvarez, p. 11</ref> Two decades later, a hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a 'high Anglican and royalist literary history' on 17th-century English poetry.<ref name="ODNB">Brown & Taylor (2004), ''ODNB''</ref>

The American critic [[Yvor Winters]] suggested in 1939 an alternative canon of [[Elizabethan poetry]],<ref>''Poetry'', LII (1939), pp. 258–272, excerpted in Paul. J. Alpers (ed): ''Elizabethan Poetry. Modern Essays in Criticism''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.</ref> which would exclude the famous representatives of the [[Petrarchan|Petrarchan school]] of poetry, represented by Sir [[Philip Sidney]] and [[Edmund Spenser]]. Winters claimed that the Native or Plain Style ''anti-Petrarchan'' movement had been undervalued and argued that [[George Gascoigne]] (1525–1577) "deserves to be ranked […] among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher".<ref>''Poetry'', LII (1939), pp. 258–272, excerpted in Paul. J. Alpers (ed): ''Elizabethan Poetry. Modern Essays in Criticism''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967: 98</ref>

Towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was increasingly disputed.<ref name="Waller-2013"/>