Two reflections on the ongoing Great Books debate:
First, we have an obligation as readers to indulge in at least some thoroughly new literature and begin to make considered judgments about it. At the moment I would be willing to offer a serious argument in favor of Zadie Smith and David Foster Wallace and against (say) Jonathan Franzen and Ian McEwan. That argument might be wrong, or overtaken by critical opinion later, but I have an obligation to make it all the same. I cannot function as a serious reader if I do not. (Academic analogy: I would be happy to teach a course on Machiavelli-Hobbes-Locke-Rousseau-etc until the cows come home. If that's all I read, I am committing academic malpractice. To be responsible I should not only take in the relevant secondary literature, but new primary literature that might itself be worthy of study.)
Second, no conception of the canon is purely time-dependent or socially constructed. Disclaim excellence until the cows come home, but a purely constructed account thinks no differently of Shakespeare than Fitzgerald, in that either may be read out of the tradition. Indeed, I believe we in a period of severe decline in the canonical status of almost all English poetry. T.S. Eliot, in his criticism, takes Dryden rather seriously: one would be hard pressed to find any non-academic reader who does the same now. Some of the major figures still remain, but most are unread, or little read. The pure constructivist, I think, would have to regard this judgment, should it be sustained, as an accurate reflection of the canon as understood by tradition--but I don't think a Great Books-er would give up Shakespeare's sonnets quite so easily.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
1 comment:
1. Obligation, schmobligation. I am obliged to read nothing. My aesthetic arguments may be more powerful if I do read modern literature, but, c'mon, thou shalt not kill is about one zillion times more imperative than thou shalt read Zadie Smith. And surely Zadie Smith isn't necessary for all serious reading. Do I really need to read Zadie for a proper understanding of everything from Aristotle to Zamyatin? Maybe if I want to say Things About the Novel, I should read some new ones, but that's a smaller claim. (And I'm not overwhelmingly convinced that a close study of Richardson will be that damaged by forgoing Zadieology.)
2. Judgments of canonicity pay minimal attention to the judgments of illiterates. In the broadest sense, sure, Shakespeare can go the way of Gilgamesh. In a slightly narrower sense, Shakespeare will doubtless dwindle as Latin and Greek literature did; I won't be unduly upset if the Canon of 2500 includes a smaller dollop of Shakespeare. But the question of canonicity assumes the narrow audience aware of and interested in anything written before Harry Potter.
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