Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Do you think young people today, in 21st Century, read classics books? if not, why? and how can it change?

And what do you think will happen to classics books in the future? will people still read them?

There are some young people who read the classics, but sadly most of them don't. One of the reasons being that they associate the classics with English classes in high school- not necessarily a good thing.
I made a point of rereading many of the books we read in high school years later and was surprised at how much I enjoyed them. I enjoyed reading them in high school too, but it was the "other stuff" we had to do that I didn't like so much.
If persons that are admired by young people are known to read classics, that usually produces a positive result.

Rosemarie wrote: "There are some young people who read the classics, but sadly most of them don't. One of the reasons being that they associate the classics with English classes in high school- not necessarily a goo..."

I agree.
But what with technology?
Technology isn't important parameter?for example, smartphones or camputers?

I taught college level English classes for a number of years, and I was shocked to learn how little high school students were required to read. Instead of requiring them to read novels, many of them were "shown the movie" during their English classes.
It was an uphill battle at times. But I firmly believe that success in getting students at any level to read, appreciate, and see the relevance of classics lies on the shoulders of the teacher. If he/she has little appreciation or enthusiasm for the work, that gets transmitted to the students. If he/she is enthusiastic about the work and is able to demonstrate how it is relevant to their lives and encourages students to interrogate it, their appreciation for the work will follow.
Enthusiasm is contagious. I've seen students' eyes light up with excitement when they were able to relate to a work they had initially dismissed with rolling eyes and groans. It is one of the joys of being English faculty that I sorely miss.

Tamara wrote: "I taught college level English classes for a number of years, and I was shocked to learn how little high school students were required to read. Instead of requiring them to read novels, many of the..."

So from your words it show me we still have hope for future generations.

I think one of the things makes students dislike to read classics books is technology . many times people are thinking that classic too slowly and in our fast time especially, everything in one touch.

We don't teach the classics anymore in favor of what is politically correct. This has always been an issue... It is also where I believe we fail. Putting a spin on it is more important than imparting a love for literature and the beauty of words. Just imagine they would chuck 'The Catcher in the Rye' for something like 'Robinson Crusoe' or 'North and South' or some of Moliere's comedies...

Kerstin wrote: "We don't teach the classics anymore in favor of what is politically correct. This has always been an issue... It is also where I believe we fail. Putting a spin on it is more important than imparti..."

What is chuck?
And I think classics are part from beauty of words,
This is not just simple or small thing that all this books named classic, they will be relevant forever.

I just finished reading Of Mice and Men for the first time with another book group. This little book contains beautiful writing and a timeless message- truly a classic. It is taught in many schools and the teacher has a major role to play in making this book meaningful- in other words, to show the passion for reading(as someone in this group just posted a little while ago).

Rosemarie wrote: "I just finished reading Of Mice and Men for the first time with another book group. This little book contains beautiful writing and a timeless message- truly a classic. It is taught in many schools..."

Sound interesting! Which group it was?

I love traditional literature and I can attribute this to my parents and my teachers at all levels of my education.

Now if I wanted to become an English major today at many universities, I would be able to graduate having never read Shakespeare. I could take classes in comix, Manga, popular culture, digital media, alternative rock lyrics, science fiction, speculative writing, monsters, fairy tales, the "Invention of Celebrity", "Work and Class Inequality", "Global Human Rights," "Disability Studies."
These are all classes being offered right now at my local university.

Some other classes: Chaucer, 19th Century Poetry, Spenser were offered but did not attract enough students to "make" the class go.

I do not necessarily object to these courses as a rare elective, but an English major today can take a lot of creative writing in comix and still graduate.

Natalie wrote: ".Some other classes: Chaucer, 19th Century Poetry, Spenser were offered but did not attract enough students to "make" the class go..."

That's pretty sad. Things have changed so much since I was in graduate school.

At the college where I used to teach, we fought tooth and nail to require students to take a certain number of credits in the Humanities Core, regardless of their major. Included in the core were literature classes. We would end up with some students who signed up for a lit class because they wanted to be there, while others were there only because it met a requirement. But regardless of why they were there, all students ended up reading, discussing, and writing about great works of literature.

Natalie wrote: "I love traditional literature and I can attribute this to my parents and my teachers at all levels of my education.

Now if I wanted to become an English major today at many universities, I would ..."

At Purdue, for an English degree, we had to take a 400 level Shakespeare class, as well as, 3-4 American/English Lit survey classes. We did have a sci-fi/fantasy elective. The teacher basically stuck to the critically acclaimed works, H.P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, etc. We read the Watchmen, which I highly recommend, I couldn't put it down. If you only read one comic book/graphic novel, that should be it. I did my final paper on Frankenstein. It was a good experience, not my genre though.

Frankenstein is sui generis. A host of factors converge to situate it as a high-magnitude star in the literary firmament. First teenage reading quite a slog.

Kerstin wrote: "We don't teach the classics anymore in favor of what is politically correct. This has always been an issue... It is also where I believe we fail. Putting a spin on it is more important than imparti..."

Can't we have new classics? It's all well and good to read The Faerie Queen, but it's an awful slog and it's not like we're going to go back to that kind of society any time soon. Surely books written in the 21st century by a plurality of voices are much more fun to read, not to mention teach us much more about our modern world.

Jen wrote: "Surely books written in the 21st century by a plurality of voices are much more fun to read, not to mention teach us much more about our modern world. "

Isn't that what Family Guy is for?

Jen wrote: "Kerstin wrote: "Can't we have new classics?"

"New classic" is a bit of an oxymoron, when is a classic a classic? ...the question much debated on GR...
There is no question there have been many noteworthy books over the past decades, Personally I keep pushing the date back as to when I see a book as a classic, especially when I ask myself the question, "will folks still read this 150 years from now?" A good exercise is looking at lists which books were popular in the 19th century. How many of them will one recognize today, let alone feel compelled to read? There are many that spoke to the culture of the time, but lost their luster as time moved on. Right now I am reluctant to call anything a classic that is younger than 70 or 80 years. Some say 50 years, but that's more "vintage" to me :)

I don't care much for labels, "classic" included. What use is it, really? So often, nothing more than an emotive way to hype something. To some extent, this bout of ruminating seems to be over ancient vs modern – which itself is nothing new. Here are a couple of the personal markers that I lean toward. (1) Have you or would you reread the book? (2) How many editions and translations has the book had? (3) How continuously has the book remained "in print"? (4) What is the history of the book as a title on reading lists (course and otherwise)? (5) Can you right now borrow that book from a decent-sized public library system? (6) If not, how hard would it be to get via interlibrary loan? Notice that these can all be quantified. I recall once seeing an estimate that 5% of ancient Greek literature has survived the millennia. That small remnant has made the first cut at being considered "classic" – but only the first.

Aleph wrote: "I don't care much for labels, "classic" included. "

I think that labels can be useful (in genres, for example; I prefer a bookstore that segregates its books by broad genres, such as mystery, romance, literature, history, etc, which are of course labels), but I agree that "classic" is a word with many meanings for different people. Which is why for this group I have added the idea that the books are part of the "great conversation" that has been going on since literature began. Whether books written today will enter into that conversation for generations down the road is something we simply cannot know. But what we can know with some, though certainly far from complete, agreement is which books throughout the course of history have become part of that conversation and seem destined to remain so.

Aleph wrote: "Here are a couple of the personal markers that I lean toward.."

A good list. I would expand your idea of rereading to beyond just whether you have or would reread the book to whether it is a book that serious readers and thinkers are likely to reread. That's a pretty good indicator of how important a book is to Western thought.

I'm not sure whether the number of editions or translations is that important; for example, so far as I know The Magic Mountain has had only two translators, but it is, in my opinion, very much a classic work. Certainly a book that has been frequently translated merits serious consideration, but I'm not sure that the absence of many translations is all that meaningful. Still, it's certainly an appropriate factor to consider.

But in general, your approach is certainly a good one to winnow out from the vast list of published books those which merit greater consideration for being considered "classic."

I'll quibble with the notion that genre specification amounts to affixing a label. Within a sphere of classification like genre, a degree of objectivity obtains. In my lexicon, label amounts to a pasted-on gold-star-like thing that need have no significant connection to whatever it is pasted to. Think phony Rolex – or even real Rolex.

There are things I like about the notion of conversation, such as the resonances of intertextuality, but I would not choose the word as a useful definition term. That inherent privileging of sociality feels too one-sided.

Interesting how this particular assemblage of readers boils down to a willingness to read the same book at the same time, however the selection of the book comes about. The social enterprise itself confers nothing demonstrable on the title that percolates to the top.

Aleph wrote: "There are things I like about the notion of conversation, such as the resonances of intertextuality, but I would not choose the word as a useful definition term."

You'll have to take that up with Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler-- I stole the term from them. [g]

Thievery, is it? Coincidentally, I just finished reading Martin Gardner's Undiluted Hocus-Pocus (2013). An autobiography written at the age of 95, with staggering non-editing by Princeton UP. Anyway, lots of personal testimony there on the Hutchins-Adler tangos.

How I balance my reading between "old" classics and possible new classics of the future is to pick from a number of "top 100" lists.
Right now my 7 lists are:
1) a lifetime reading list I got from high school English teacher circa 1965;
2) a 1998 list of top 100 English language novels of the century;
3) Pullitzer prize winners;
4) Nobel laureates;
5) Appendix A of "How to Read a Book";
6) Appendices A, B, C of Bloom's "The Western Canon";
7) 100 American Novels of the Year (1894-1994).

There are pretty much two groups in the lists: Western Canon/Classics (1, 5, 6) and more modern possible classics of the future (2, 3, 4, 7). I have read really good books in all of the lists. I have also slogged through books on both lists. I have even stopped reading books from both lists.

And, in case you are wondering ... I sometimes read books not on the these lists!

My good reads book shelves are pretty up to date as far as books read. The tags I use are "top100"; "nobel laureate"; "pullitzer prize"

So I really don't debate the issue myself as to which group is better or where one group ends or starts. I just read from both groups.

Bob wrote: "How I balance my reading between "old" classics and possible new classics of the future is to pick from a number of "top 100" lists.
Right now my 7 lists are:
1) a lifetime reading list I got fro..."

Nice list! I also used to go pretty exclusively by Harold Bloom's list, but there are some pretty grave omissions on that list, especially Appendix D. A good resource I found is Guardian's Top Ten (which has a new list every week, chosen by contemporary writers). It is clearly hit or miss, and you need to apply your own judgement (as with all things), but I was introduced to quite few jewels I've not encountered before including Flaubert's last and unfinished novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, a magnificent adventure memoir from the 30s No Picnic on Mount Kenya, and the Icelandic masterpiece Independent People.

Shelley, I just got back from spending a week's vacation in Iceland. We passed by the home of Halldór Laxness of Independent People. His home was in a very remote area. I guess the vastness of the landscape coupled with the peace and quiet was ideal for writing his book. Your message reminded me to put his book on my gotta read list. Thank you.

Tamara wrote: "Shelley, I just got back from spending a week's vacation in Iceland. We passed by the home of Halldór Laxness of Independent People. His home was in a very remote area. I..."

Wow! Must have been a great trip. I was in Lassen National Park over Labor Day Weekend and chanced upon a little alpine lake formed from red volcanic clay, with a little stream coming down from the peaks. It reminded me immensely of Bjartur's little homestead in the book. It's really remarkable how literature can heighten one's enjoyment and appreciable of nature that much more.

Enjoy the book =)

Iceland was amazing--so very different from any other country I've visited.
I'm looking forward to reading the book. But I've got a couple of library books I have to read first.

smart people will always gravitate towards good books. as long as people continue to talk about and acknowledge them they won't go anywhere. authors like shakespeare and dante will continue to have an impact as long as their work is widely available.

One hopes...

So disappointing! The poll says Decameron would be the next read. Got all the sources and Beowulf is the read! How does this work?

Sorry Suzann. The moderators explained the decision in the next read discussion as well as in the poll comments.

After a brief discussion with regard to moderator availability as well as the apparent popularity of both works by votes and comments, the moderators hope that reading both books with a slight change in order is acceptable to everyone.

Suzann wrote: "So disappointing! The poll says Decameron would be the next read. Got all the sources and Beowulf is the read! How does this work?"

I think it is great.
~ Anonymous

I wouldn't want it any other way.
~ goodreads member

What's not to like?
~ Avid Reader

One vote; two books. Cool.
~ Western Classic Fanboy

I was hoping to read The Decameron, but now I get to read Beowulf first. Neat!
~ Enthusiastic reader

I was hoping to read Beowulf, but now I get to read The Decameron next. Neat!
~ Another enthusiastic reader

It does not matter to me. I love books.
~ Liborum Amans

It does not matter to me either. I just love to read.
~ Amant Legere

Just hoping to get the Decameron in before my six month study of War and Peace! Too many books, too little time!