Monday, September 12, 2022

Canon

Canon (pronounced kan-uhn)

(1) An ecclesiastical rule or law enacted by a council or other competent authority and, in the Roman Catholic Church, approved by the pope; the body of ecclesiastical law.

(2) One of a body of dignitaries or prebendaries attached to a cathedral or a collegiate church; a member of the chapter of a cathedral or a collegiate church.

(3) In the Roman Catholic Church. one of the members (canons regular) of certain religious orders.  Historically, a member of either the Augustinian or Premonstratensian, living communally as monks but performing clerical duties

(4) The body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art.

(5) A fundamental principle or general rule.

(6) A standard; criterion.

(7) The books of the Bible recognized by any Christian church as genuine and inspired.

(8) Any officially recognized set of sacred books.

(9) A piece of music in which an extended melody in one part is imitated successively in one or more other parts (fugal).

(10) A size of printer's type equal to 48 point (archaic).

(11) In hymnography, a kind of hymn in Eastern Orthodox Christianity

(12) In bellfounding, one or more hanging loops cast integrally with the crown

1150-1200: In ecclesiastical use, from the Middle English canonicus (shared with French), a back formation from the Old English canōnic (one under rule), from the Medieval Latin canōnicus (of or under rule).  The word in Ancient Greek was kanōnikós from kanon (any straight rod or bar; rule; standard of excellence), possibly from kanna (reed).  As applied to the clergy, the title dates from circa 1200, from the Anglo-French canun, from the Old North French canonie (which is Modern French is chanoine), from the Church Latin canonicus (clergyman living under a rule), the noun use of the Latin adjective canonicus (according to rule).  The meaning “standard, accepted list” is from the Old English, again from the Latin, from the Greek kanōn (rule, rod for measuring, standard), related to kanna (a reed or cane) and in English, dates from circa 1400 but only in the context of the lists assembled for ecclesiastical purposes.

The Latin word was taken in ecclesiastical use for "decree of the Church" and eventually this expanded into the codified "Canon Law" of the Church.  The general sense of "a rule or principle" dates from the late fourteenth century while the idea of a "standard of judging" is from circa 1600.  From circa 1400 as "The Scriptures", the word was applied to those books of the Bible accepted by the Christian church" and this later extended to secular books of admitted excellence or supremacy (an most importantly meeting the approval of the Church) and in some archives there are a number of such lists but according to Harold Bloom (1930-2019) who noted the history in The Western Canon (1994), the "...secular canon, with the word meaning a catalog of approved authors, does not actually come into use until the mid-eighteenth century."

Thou shalt not.

The canon as a "catalogue of acknowledged saints" is from 1727, reflecting the implications of the late fourteenth century verb canonize and the companion noun canonization.  To canonize was to "place officially in the canon or calendar of saints" and was from the Old French canonisier and directly from the Medieval Latin canonizare, from the Late Latin canon (church rule, catalogue of saints).  The noun canonization (act of enrolling a beatified person among the saints) was from the Medieval Latin canonizationem (nominative canonizatio), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of canonizare.  Use has varied greatly between pontificates, something explained by the power to canonize lying exclusively in the gift the pope since 1179.  The related forms are canonized, canonizing and the marvelous canonicity.  The use in music to describe "a kind of fugal composition" is from the 1590s.

In the traditional sense of the Western canon of literature, although never a fixed-set, it’s become increasingly contested, even to the point of being criticized, inter alia, by post-modernists, critical theorists, Marxists and feminists as a form of cultural imperialism.  Canonical is the adjectival form.

Lindsay Lohan's canon of film

1998 The Parent Trap
2003 Freaky Friday
2004 Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
2004 Mean Girls
2005 Herbie: Fully Loaded
2005 My Scene Goes Hollywood: The Movie
2006 A Prairie Home Companion
2006 Just My Luck
2006 Bobby
2006 Friendly Fire
2006 The Holiday
2007 Chapter 27
2007 Georgia Rule
2007 I Know Who Killed Me
2009 Labor Pains
2010 Machete
2011 Lindsay Lohan
2012 First Point
2013 Inappropriate Comedy
2013 Scary Movie 5
2013 The Canyons
2015 Till Human Voices Wake Us
2019 Among the Shadows (The Shadow Within in some markets)
2022 Falling for Christmas
2023 Irish Wish

A romantic nihilist's canon of film

1939 Wuthering Heights
1958 Touch of Evil
1958 Vertigo
1970 Zabriskie Point
1971 A Clockwork Orange
1971 Dirty Harry
1973 The Exorcist
1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre
1986 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
1987 Nightmare on Elm Street III
1987 Withnail and I
1990 Truly, Madly, Deeply
1991 Europa (Zentropa in the US)
1991 Delicatessen

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