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One of the oldest challenges to literary studies is the explanation of the principles of canon formation which would be satisfactory to most critics and readers. Nowadays the dominant view is that they will most probably never be found, if only because there is no agreement about what the canon is. The ideal (or idealistic) definition would be that a canon is a collection of literary works characterised by inherent, universal values independent of the petty interests of current politics or moral ideology. It seems that the eighteenth-century understanding of the term partakes of the idealism in the way literature, or art at large, is perceived. David Hume in an essay published in 1757 argues that despite the proverbial conviction about the lack of the standard of taste even within groups of uniform cultural background, "there is certainly a species of common sense that opposes it, at least serves to modify and restrain it" (Hume 2001 [1757]: 488). There are works which are universally admired and once they are freed from the pressures of their own contemporaneity, their value becomes fully evident. "Authority or prejudice may give a temporary vogue to a bad poet or orator", he says, "but his reputation will never be durable or general. When his compositions are examined by posterity or by foreigners, the enchantment is dissipated, and his faults appear in true colours" (Hume 2001 [1757]: 489-90). Dr Johnson likewise believes that time is "the test of literary merit" since it is impossible to see the true value of literature within its original context of creation and reception. "Whatever advantages he [the author] might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions", when the "effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of enmities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity but are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained". It is only in the texts that "have passed through variations of taste and changes of manners" that we may look for some intrinsic artistic value (Johnson 2000 [1765]: 420). In contemporary criticism the concept of a canon is no longer so closely associated with inherent literary merit which transcends ideological contingencies. On the contrary, it is more commonly believed that the merit is dependent on prevalent ideologies and extra literary conditions. The view at its extreme was expressed by Terry Eagleton in his introduction to Literary theory. An introduction (1983) wherein he argued that that "the so-called 'literary canon' ... has to be recognised as a construct', that "there is no such thing as a literary work or tradition which is valuable in itself and that value is "a transitive term", which "means whatever is valued by certain people in specific situations, according to particular criteria and in the light of given purposes" (Eagleton 1983: 11). This view, however, is fiercely opposed by Harold Bloom, the author of a study entitled The Western Canon (1994), who is a vehement advocate of the traditional conceptualisation of the canon. Bloom insists that it is a mistake to perceive the survival of particular literary texts only as an outcome of ideological forces, to believe that "to make a canon is an ideological act in itself (Bloom 1994: 21). For him the canon is to be seen as "the relation of an individual reader and writer to what has been preserved out of what has been written", or, in other words, as "the literary art of Memory" (Bloom 1994: 17). The debate between the two concepts of canon formation is particularly interesting to observe in the context of eighteenth-century fiction. It is commonly believed that the formation of genres is governed by the same logic as the formation of the canon: genres crystallise as a result of the interplay of various cultural, philosophical, and economic forces. …

The Transformations of the Novelistic Canon: the Comparison of Daniel Defoe’s and Penelope Aubin’s Dedication to Truth and Virtue