The Hispanic Canon: Definition, Influences and Crossovers

Senior Boethius Fellow Dr. Erik Ellis was the keynote speaker at the first Latin American conference of the Association of Core Texts and Courses. His talk, “Friendship, History, and Tradition: Three Criteria for the Development of the Hispanic Canon,” was followed by a roundtable discussion with Dr. Ellis’ friends, Prof. Ceferino Muñoz of Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina) and Prof. Clemente Cox of Universidad de los Andes (Santiago, Chile). Ellis discussed questions of identity, shared history, and authority in the process of canon formation and drew special attention to the role of friendship in building “private canons” that through common reading, discussion, and teaching become gradually more widely distributed. The three members of the roundtable defined their common inheritance of classical and Christian culture, scholastic philosophy, and the role of the liberal arts in education and explored the possibilities of establishing Panamerican, Latin American, and North American canons of great books.