Introduction to

Literary
Classics
Slides prepared
by Dr Nour Dakkak
What do we mean when we say classic?
How and why does a literary work become a
classic?
And why are classics important?
What is a classic?
• ‘Classic’ is a term related to the discipline known as Classics or Classical Studies.
• It derives from the Latin word classicus, meaning of the highest social class.
• It first appeared in English in the 1610s as an adjective meaning ‘of or belonging to
the highest class; approved as a model’.
• By the 1620s it meant ‘belonging to or characteristic of standard authors of Greek
and Roman antiquity’.
• By the early eighteenth century, ‘a classic’ referred to ‘a Greek or Roman writer or
work’.
• In the middle of the eighteenth century, this meaning extended to any work or author
held to have a similar quality or standing; an artist or literary production of the first
rank.
• A classic is outstanding of its kind, displaying technical mastery.
Are all classics the same?
Imaginary Hierarchy:
Popular Classic vs High Classic High
• There are different kinds of classics that are determined by
how original or influential the work is supposed to be.
• For example, Agatha Christie’s crime writing suggests that
her works are the best of their kind, but that their kind is
formulaic, not ‘original’ in style and structure, voice and
topic, and therefore does not sit high up an implied literary
hierarchy, however beloved these works and their authors
may be by a large and continually regenerating readership.
• Although these works may be very influential on others
working in the same formula, they are not felt to exert more
wide-ranging influence upon culture either at the time they
are first produced or subsequently.
Popular
High Classic
• By contrast, the ‘high’ literary classic is felt to be:
• a serious and important book that has stood the test of time
• a treasured repository of shared cultural wisdom or moral
understanding to be passed on down the generations.
• Classic status is more usually given to an older work that has been
carefully preserved and in one form or another is felt to be still active
and relevant in the present.
How much time needs to pass between the release
of the work and its recognition as classic?
Is the work classic or the writer classic?
Inside the Brontë Parsonage Museum
The literary canon?
The Literary Canon
• The literary canon is comprised of classic texts and classic authors.
• ‘The canon’ originally referred to those books of the Old Testament in
the Bible that were considered to be historically authentic or
‘canonical’.
• Within literary studies, the canon is a collection of works that are
considered to be culturally authoritative.
Different canons?
Shakespeare features in the recently
installed ‘The World Literary Giant
Square’ in Shanghai (2019) close to
the house of a major Chinese classic
author, Lu Xun.
This resembles a sort of literary
drinks party attended by the greats
of European literature plus Lu Xun
(Figure 2).
Figures 3–4 show Shakespeare and
Dickens, in company with Goethe,
Pushkin and Edgar Allan Poe. (No
women are present, though.)
Can the meaning of canon change?
 Women?

BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic)

writers?
The shifting meaning of canon:
• The literary canon, and the classics that make it up, are in fact in a
state of constant making and remaking.
• This is because the canon of classics simply expresses an idea of
‘essential cultural inheritance’.
• What a culture chooses to describe as its inheritance depends on what
it currently finds valuable.
• Thus, canons of literature in English will vary widely depending on
where they are located.
How can the canonical texts endure our
changing societies?
The Power of the Classics: the case of
Shakespeare and Brontë
 Preparation for next class:
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night