The choices made regarding what books are part of the canon obviously contain normative value. If I say the Iliad is part of the canon and that a feminist, lesbian, Latina migrant worker's story is not, then that attributes more value to the Iliad than the other. And one could, and many have, argued that this is a problem because it gives more value to the work of a dead white man than a living, lesbian, Latina woman author, but that's a stupid argument. The Iliad has more value because it has demonstrated its worth by remaining relevant for thousands of years. It contains themes and messages that are universal in the human condition.
This comes very close to getting the causality backward, or, one might say, mistaking the effect for the cause. It's because a work speaks to the human condition that it lasts beyond its immediate moment (and that's not to say that the things that didn't make it failed to speak to the human condition--just in a more local and particular way. Maugham has a good passage on this in Cakes and Ale).
Now, certainly, one ought to put weight on the collected judgment of generations, and recognize that the longstanding importance attributed to a work means something. However, having a critical spirit that's open to the new is a vital part of interacting with the canon: the critical spirit allows one to order works in a way that makes sense to oneself (thus, for me: more Dante, less Tolstoy), and it keeps the canon from being something dead by allowing it to draw from new, worthwhile things.
Shorter version of this argument: see "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
Next up: I think this betrays a misunderstanding of what it means to read literally, on the part of the survey respondents and FLG. No one who spends much time with the Bible would argue the historical parts are meant to be read apart from a consideration of the ethics involved: Lot's one of the bad examples, as the narrative itself makes clear.
4 comments:
Point taken on the canon. Upon a second reading it did seem like had the causality reversed, but I was trying to articulate that "it's because a work speaks to the human condition that it lasts beyond its immediate moment." That a work remains relevant for generations, centuries, or millenia demonstrates even more strongly that it speaks to something universal.
On the Lot thing, I was being petulant.
Well, that's why I say "nitpicking"... it's sort of intentionally being humorless.
Hmmm. I'm not sure the Iliad really speaks to the human condition so much as the Greek condition. There's very little in it, apart from mortality (which admittedly is fairly central), that is genuinely universal. And if you get into the specifics of attitudes toward mortality, then I think you're in the thick of a particularly Greek worldview. There's very little that speaks to me nowadays about rampaging, bloodthirsty warriors, fickle gods, and glory. That doesn't mean it's not great and wonderful to read, but I do think its appeal doesn't lie in some kind of universality.
Not universal? I think there's a lot that's universal in Achilles' rage, the failed attempts to placate him, Agamemnon's arrogance, the family life of Hector, the sadness of Priam...
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