Classics and the Western Canon discussion
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The selection criteria for the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction (which includes poetry) says that "No books are included of which it cannot fairly be said that they were famous in their generation, and have since shown a strong power of survival." Not a bad criteria, that.
Wouldn't famous in their generation exclude Emily Dickinson? (Counterexamples are my caviar.) I just flipped through the 357 titles on the bookshelf. That list includes the Copernicus and Newton that are nixed in §3 above. Also looks like there are double entries for Lucretius and Chekhov's stories. Suggestion: if possible, order titles by date of first publication, whether ascending or descending.
Aleph wrote: "Suggestion: if possible, order titles by date of first publication, whether ascending or descending. ..."Aleph --not sure that's available, at least not readily. That is not a field provided in the bookshelf, either. (Or am I wrong?)
Aleph wrote: "Wouldn't famous in their generation exclude Emily Dickinson? (Counterexamples are my caviar.) ..."Aleph -- note the double negative in the original statement? (I had to read it three times myself, but, anyway...)
"No books are included of which it cannot fairly be said that they were famous in their generation, and have since shown a strong power of survival."
Aleph wrote: "Wouldn't famous in their generation exclude Emily Dickinson? (Counterexamples are my caviar.) ."There's one in every class. [g]
No set of guidelines is absolute. But Dickinson wouldn't qualify here because we don't do poets, except of epic length poems, as major reads.
Aleph wrote: "That list includes the Copernicus and Newton that are nixed in §3 above..""Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Whitman is.... IN! Also Emerson and his hobgoblin.
Hi Everyman,I'm taking you up on your offer to suggest books for inclusion on the bookshelf. I've scrolled through your existing bookshelf a couple of times and didn't see the works I'm suggesting listed--although it's possible they are there and I just missed them. If that's the case, I apologize in advance.
I included poetry since I saw Yeats and Dickinson in the list.
For your consideration, I submit the following in no particular order:
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Essays by George Orwell
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A Passage to India by E.M. Foster
Collected Poems of John Keats Annotated : Complete and Unabridged
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Trifles by Susan Glaspell
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T.E. Lawrence
Things Fall Apart. Although not strictly western, since you had Gilgamesh in there, I thought I'd try to sneak this one by you.
I bet you're delighted you solicited suggestions :-)
Thanks for the opportunity to provide input.
all best.
Tamara wrote: "Lord of the Flies by William Golding"When I looked through the shelves, this is the only one that came to mind as a book that should be included. As far as a literary view of the modern world, I believe this short novel helped shape western thought.
Tamara wrote: "I bet you're delighted you solicited suggestions :-)Thanks for the opportunity to provide input."
I am delighted, and glad you took up the opportunity.
We'll take a careful look at your suggestions. A few, I can say upfront, though, while eminently readable, don't really fit with the criteria for major reads, which is the purpose of the bookshelf. For example, plays (A Doll's House) and short poems (Keats, Owen). They might be chosen down the road for Interim Reads, but Interim Reads don't come off of the bookshelf, but directly from the moderators (choosing them is a valued perk of putting in the work of moderating!)
We did do some of Orwell's essays as an Interim Read awhile back. I agree he's a very important author, and I have a well read copy of his four volume edition of essays, journalism, and letters on my shelf, but other than 1984 he didn't really write books that fit the criteria of major reads.
But some of your suggestions are well worth considering, and we certainly will -- you'll probably see at least a few appearing on the shelf before the next major book selection process starts.
Thanks, Everyman.I'm assuming others will have their own suggestions. It would be nice if you could let us know which books make it on the shelf once you've reached a decision.
thanks, again.
Tamara wrote: "Hi Everyman,I'm taking you up on your offer to suggest books for inclusion on the bookshelf. I've scrolled through your existing bookshelf a couple of times and didn't see the works I'm suggesting..."
An additional note - several of these works are still new enough that they are still, perhaps, not quite ready for classic designation.
The other criteria I failed to mention above is that a book should have content that has sufficient issues of meaning to make for a rich and extensive discussion justifying the amount of time we spend on books here. For example, I thought Cry the Beloved Country was an excellent and important book, but I'm not sure that it has enough issues to make for a rich discussion. But I'll see what the other mods think.
There are very many books very worth reading, and most on your list certainly are, but given that we discuss no more than eight books a year, and fewer when we get into longer books like The Divine Comedy, we need to be careful to pick books not only that are worth reading but that will justify spending six weeks or more reading and discussing.
But I hope all that didn't sound too discouraging! There are certainly holes in the bookshelf that deserve plugging, so we are happy getting ideas for books that deserve to be elevated to bookshelf status.
Everyman wrote: "But I hope all that didn't sound too discouraging! There are certainly holes in the bookshelf that deserve plugging, so we are happy getting ideas for books that deserve to be elevated to bookshelf..."No, it's not discouraging at all. I understand what you are saying about selecting books that warrant a six week or more reading and discussing.
Perhaps some of the books I suggested might work as interim reads. I hope that moderators will keep an open mind when selecting those. For example, Chopin's The Awakening and Glaspell's Trifles are both considered classics in feminist circles and maybe suitable as interim reads. I didn't see anything that struck me as being particularly feminist on your shelf, so I thought I'd suggest them to broaden the scope somewhat.
Also, some of us in Brit Lit think Keats' poetry would be right up there with Shakespeare had he not had the misfortune to die so young. Maybe suitable for an interim read?
These are just gentle proddings. But whatever you decide is fine with me.
Thanks again for seeking input.
Tamara wrote: "Also, some of us in Brit Lit think Keats' poetry would be right up there with Shakespeare had he not had the misfortune to die so young. Maybe suitable for an interim read?."Not impossible. We've done some poetry as Interim Reads -- Tennyson's Ulysses, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth's The Old Cumberland Beggar. But not Keats yet -- I don't think of him as a philosophical poet, but maybe I've been reading the wrong poems or misreading the ones I've been reading.
I forgot -- we also did a selection of Donne's poetry.For those who are newer to the group, here's a list I keep of the Interim Reads we've done. I don't always include the specific poems or essays read (and sometimes we start with one and them move on to others), but it gives an idea of the scope and sort of thing that makes an Interim Read.
The holiday IRs tend to include more short works. We don't do one every year, but if we end a book in November we tend not to start a new one until January, but fill the interim with a variety of related short works.
The discussions for all of these are still accessible on the site.
Antigone 6/2009
Oedipus at Colonus 6/2009
The Blue Carbuncle 12/2009
Tennyson, Ulysses 3/2010
Richard II 5/2010
Essays of Elia, selected 8/2010
Chesterton - A Piece of Chalk 10/2010
Stevenson - An Apology for Idlers 3/2011
King - A Letter from Birmingham City Jail 5/2011
Euripides - The Medea 7/2011
Wordsworth - Tintern Abbey 10/2011
The Declaration of Independence 12/2011
Trojan Women 3/2012
Faulkner - A Rose for Emily 7/2012
Wordsworth - The Old Cumberland Beggar 3/2013
Alice in Wonderland 6/2013
Hazlitt, “Why Distant Objects Please,” 8/2013
Three Views of Socrates: 11-12/2013 [Holiday IR]
Plato’s Apology, Xenophon’s Apology, Plato’s Crito, The Clouds
Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy 4/2014
Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band 7/2014
Monro (Saki), Tobermory, Mrs. Packleman’s Tiger, then others 10/2014
Shakespeare, Henriad 12/2014 [Holiday IR]
Chesterton, Father Brown Stories 4/2015
Donne, Poems 5/2015
E.B. White, Once More to the Lake 7/2015
Transcendentalists 11-12/2015 [Holiday IR]
Euripides, The Phoenician Women 2/2016
Adler, How to Mark a Book 5/16
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 7/16
Chekhov short stories, 11-12/16 [Holiday IR]
Everyman: "I contain multitudes."All well & good, as long as not a case of "we are too menny" …
Patrice wrote: "as for keats...truth is beauty and beauty is truth, thats all ye need to know...doesnt that qualify him as philosophical?..."Well, if that's all we need to know on earth, that wipes out any further role for this group, doesn't it? [g]
Does that mean that all truth is beautiful and all beauty is truthful?What prompted the phrase, "the ugly truth"?
Maybe we should read more Plato to determine what truth and beauty are. :)
‘”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" are the last two lines of Keats' poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' More has been written about these two lines than all of Keats' poetry. Critics have debated and continue to debate their meaning. The debate is twofold:
What do those lines actually mean?
And who is saying them to whom? Is it the urn speaking to the reader? Is it the poet speaking to the urn? Is it the poet speaking to reader? Or is it the urn speaking to the figures on the urn? And so on.
T.S. Eliot argued these last two lines ruined an otherwise lovely poem.
David wrote: "Does that mean that all truth is beautiful and all beauty is truthful?What prompted the phrase, "the ugly truth"?
Maybe we should read more Plato to determine what truth and beauty are. :)"
Personally, I find myself considering Eco's books On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea and On Ugliness, along with Diane Arbus's challenging photographs, when pondering the relationships of "truth" and "beauty" and "ugliness" and existing/functioning/relating in the "what is" of earthly life.
Applauded today on another site was this article: http://www.startribune.com/fat-shamin... and deplored was this one: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...
This seems a bit of a hodge-podge of a review that may miss the point of Eco's work, but it does give a sense of some of the challenges the topic of beauty/truth poses:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
I don't consider correlations of beauty and truth irrelevant at all, but some writers, artists, comedians, fellow human beings, landscapes and land dumps, ...., certainly make me stop and consider the relationships made.
I do think that there is "philosophy" to be found in both the letters and some of the poems by John Keats. Of the books Tamara suggested, I would include both the letters and the poetry of Keats as well as "A Passage to India". But I would find them probably to be more suitable as "thick" Interim Reads.I am keeping the 75 year rule in mind, however.
Some suggestions for addition:Sir Thomas Browne (Religio Medici and Hydrotaphia) was a classic English prose writer and would be a lot of fun to discuss with this group.
It would be nice to include some Victorian Faerie romances like the novels of William Morris (e.g., The Well at the World’s End) or George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblin or Phantastes). They are rather polarizing (some people find them transporting, others find them a slog), but they had a major influence on emerging twentieth-century fantasy.
Huysman’s decadent classic A Rebours should also probably be on the list. Also, Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done? was an incredibly influential and widely-read early utopian novel, though it has also been called one of the most dreadfully written books of the nineteenth century. Might be worthwhile?
Rex wrote: "Some suggestions for addition:Sir Thomas Browne (Religio Medici and Hydrotaphia) was a classic English prose writer and would be a lot of fun to discuss with this group.
It would be nice to incl..."
I read The Well at the World's End with pleasure once, and I would gladly do it again.
The activity on this thread reminded me of a note I made last year but forgot (?) to post.Double entries
- Augustine of Hippo - Confessions
- Burke - Reflections
- Chekhov - Stories (both can be replaced with the P&V selections: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...)
- Cicero - Selected Works
- Dickens - Great Expectations
- T. S. Eliot
- Flaubert - Madame Bovary
- Lucretius - On the nature of things
- Thoreau - Walden
Maybe not Classics
- Max Byrd
- Jane Carruth
- Chesterton
- Lord Dunsany
- Edith Hamilton
- Lytton Strachey (a personal favourite, but classic?)
- Twain - Prince & Pauper (Huck, of course, is a classic)
- Jules Verne
Additions
- Baldesar Castiglione - The Book of the Courtier
- Erasmus - In Praise of Folly
Rex wrote: "Some suggestions for addition:"The moderators have reviewed your suggestions and the following books have been added to our group's "To Read" bookshelf. These books will be eligible for nomination beginning with the next poll for our fourth read of 2018 by the Random Book Generator™
Religio Medici by Thomas Browne
The Well at the World's End by William Morris
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Phantastes by George MacDonald
What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Would the following authors be too modern?: Somerset Maugham, Herman Hesse, Alfred Doblin, Andre Gide
Their works were mostly before WWII but I'm not sure about the exact criteria for 'modern'
Some books I believe aren't yet in the bookshelf (correct me if I'm wrong):
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Doll by Boleslaw Prus
Pensees by Blaise Pascal
Discourse on Metaphysics and Monadology by G.W.Leibniz
A possible suggestion for interim reading:
Celestina by Fernando de Rojas
Le Spleen of Paris by Charles Baudelaire
Lenz by Georg Buchner
Lady Macbeth by Nikolai Leskov
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson
I might suggest: Kafka Unleashed: Stories, Dreams & Visions >> 14 Stories (w/ Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, Investigations of a Dog, The Burrow, Josephine...etc) &4 Novel excerpts from The Trial (1) & The Castle (3).
New translation by yours truly, 2018.
p.
Thanks for the suggestion, Philip. Please note that The Trial and the Metamorphosis are already on the bookshelf. The group does not nominate or read specific translations, but if we do select Kafka at some point in the future I hope you will consider joining us.
I will suggest too, if it is possible, to our group reads The Qur'an. It is a book outside the knowledge of the great public and I guess it would be an interesting read.
It is in Harold Bloom's "western canon". “Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest. I would think that, of all the books that are in this first list, once the reader is conversant with the Bible, Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists, and Virgil, the crucial work is the Koran . . ."
That said, it would be very unwieldy to read in its entirety. That's why we've never read the Bible either.
Thomas wrote: "we've never read the Bible either. "Ha! Looks like I'm not the only one who got very good at pretending I've read it! :p
Thomas wrote: "It is in Harold Bloom's "western canon". “Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of grea..."
I am glad to know that, but sad too. The Koran is not shorter than the Bible? I guess that we could read it if there's someone here with islamic background. But it's fine if it not fit the group profile for be a religious book.
I was surprised to not see The Confessions of St Augustine here. I have just recently started it. I know it’s not western but it has and does still create influence still today.
WhitneyMarie wrote: "I was surprised to not see The Confessions of St Augustine here. I have just recently started it. I know it’s not western but it has and does still create influence still today."?It is on the bookshelf, just never read by the group -- two editions, actually, along with City of God. (An alphabetical listing by author of the bookshelf is how I found it: Augustine of Hippo.) Everyman himself appears to have added Confessions twice, once in 2011 and again in 2017.
Confessions by Augustine of Hippo is indeed on the shelf and has been since Feb. 2017. It has not been read yet, I think.Go to the bookshelf, click all (books) and sort by authors A to Z. The book should appear near the bottom of the first page, 6th from the bottom on my browser.
David wrote: "Confessions by Augustine of Hippo is indeed on the shelf and has been since Feb. 2017. It has not been read yet, I think."Ooh maybe it's time!
Here's a good novel to add: William Dean Howells's Hazard of New Fortunes. I'm nearly finished with it myself. It's a classic of American realism.
Michele wrote: "David wrote: "Confessions by Augustine of Hippo is indeed on the shelf and has been since Feb. 2017. It has not been read yet, I think."Ooh maybe it's time!"
I’d love to reread this. Its number came up in a poll sometime in the past couple years, but didn’t get enough votes ;). Maybe the next time....
David wrote: "Confessions by Augustine of Hippo is indeed on the shelf and has been since Feb. 2017. It has not been read yet, I think.Go to the bookshelf, click all (books) and sort by authors A to Z. The boo..."
Thank you! I am new to all of this!
I don’t know how to limit my search to books on the shelf of this group, but, if Hegel isn’t there already, can we add him? Pretty please?
The Philosophy of History is there.If you go to the bookshelf link in the upper right hand corner, you'll get the matrix of all the books on the shelf. You can then click on one of the headings (like author) and get an alphabetical listing. Or if you were looking for a particular title, you could click on the title heading, and get an alphabetical listing there.
If you knew for sure how they were shelved, you could select a shelf first from the options at the left of the page, which would give you less books to search through, but I just went to the main matrix and clicked 'authors' and scrolled till I found Hegel.
ETA: I have a copy of that, so when it comes up, I'm in.
Thanks Bryan.Though, I was personally hoping for Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Can we add that one too? 🙈
Rafael wrote: "I will suggest a portuguese epic, The Lusiads by Luís de Camões."Bloom put it in the Western Canon. It appears in its index.
Lia wrote: "Thanks Bryan.Though, I was personally hoping for Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Can we add that one too? 🙈"
Lia, ask for The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy
Eta: It's only $18 for the Kindle edition.
Christopher wrote: "Lia, ask for [book:The Difference Between Fichte's and Schel..."I’m going to run out of brownie points at this rate! Place the order yourself! I’ll vote for it and read with you if you successfully get this placed on the shelf ;-)
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy (other topics)Phenomenology of Spirit (other topics)
The Lusiads (other topics)
Phenomenology of Spirit (other topics)
The Philosophy of History (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Luís de Camões (other topics)Luís de Camões (other topics)
Thomas Browne (other topics)
William Morris (other topics)
George MacDonald (other topics)
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The answer, briefly, is that the moderators have consulted their own reading experiences and many sources of "classics" including the Great Books of the Western World series, the Harvard Classics series, the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan, the St. John's College seminar syllabus, and other sources.
Still, there are almost certainly books that deserve to be on the shelf that we have overlooked. We are always open to suggestions for additions, but it's been awhile since we invited suggestions.
First, though, we should spedify some parameters.
1. This is a group to consider the Western Canon. There are many very important and fascinating books in other cultures that deserve to be read, and we do not intend to suggest otherwise by excluding them, but we have a specific focus here, so books must be those which have been part of or highly influential in the development of Western thought.
2. We do not consider "modern classics." While we have not defined a specific cut-off date for a book to be considered, three generations of readers seems a reasonable minimum period for a book to have been read and valued by serious readers before it can legitimately obtain classic status. This means approximately 75 years, or roughly before WWII.
3. Technical works or works of narrow interest are normally not appropriate for a general group like this one. For example, Copernicus's On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, Newton's Principia, Aquinas's Summa Theologica, are examples of works that are clearly classics and central to thought in the Western intellectual tradition, but are not appropriate for this group.
4. Short works (such as short stories, non-book length poems, plays) are generally reserved for Interim Reads, though we have at times gathered a collection of shorter but related works (Greek tragedies, Shakespearean plays, shorter dialogues of Plato, the short stories of Chekhov, for example) to constitute a sufficiently robust offering for a major read, often our holiday read.
That said, if there are books that members want to suggest for inclusion on the bookshelf that seem to fit within the foregoing criteria, this is the place to mention them. We do not guarantee that every book suggested will wind up on the shelf, but we do assure group members that every suggestion will be seriously considered.