From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 22:11:51 GMT

                                Saturday, the 15th of August, 1992

I said:
  The Great Books set itself is defined much more objectively and reasonably
  than either of you allow.

Tom Maddox challenged me on it:
 	Show some evidence that this is so.  In particular, show that 
 works from other cultures of the same centrality in those cultures of the
 _Iliad_ or _The Republic_ in ours have been treated "objectively and 
 reasonably."  While you're at it, make explicit whatever non-circular
 criteria you have for the "Great Books." 

The Great Books Set is *not* defined as the N greatest books of all
time, in all places. It is explicitly stated in the introductory
volume that this is Western Civ, and with an eye finally toward American
readers. The measure of centrality is defined in terms of the metaphor
The Great Conversation. The Great Books are the books, starting with
Homer and the Bible, that have contributed the most to this conversation.
It is obvious to this lone reader of Greek literature, say, that Homer
was central to the Greeks. Every Greek writer quoted him chapter and verse,
much like Americans used to do with the Bible. In other words, a Conversation
began. Now you need to pick out which works have done the most to
advance or change or contribute something original to this Conversation,
which works tend to get centrally argued against or agreed with thenceforward,
and I don't see how you're going to do much different than Adler has done
and stick to 50 or 60 books. It would be bizarre to include The Mahabharata
in such a list. It may well be worlds beyond the Iliad. It simply
has not been part of the Conversation so far, and though readers
(and, really, a translation or two) may eventually make it so, that
is gonna take deep time.

If we're talking a canon of readership, I agree with your earlier
post---go ahead and read what you want. If we're talking preparing
high-school students for the high office of electoral citizenship,
then I claim Plato and Aristotle and Thucydides and Polybius
and Locke and Voltaire and Montesquieu feed into Jefferson and
Adams in a way that Christine de Pisan does not. And Jefferson and
Adams and Lincoln and Marx and ``Letter from a Birmingham Jail''
feed into what these students need to know to make responsible
choices in a way that the Popol Vuh does not.

I was not arguing that any notion I might have of The Canon
is devoid of all subjective judgment, just that the lists
canonizers (like Adler and Hutchins) have made are more objective
and reasonable than you seem to give them credit for.

It's a lot like E.D. Hirsch's ``Cultural Literacy'' list. Everybody
reads the blurbs the ad-men have put on the jacket cover that
this stuff is what ``Americans need to know''. And everybody gets
angry at the presumptive prescriptive lexicography. On the other hand,
if you actually read the book, you'll find out that Hirsch is doing
*descriptive* lexicography (except for the science entries on the list).
The objective criterion for inclusion on the list is basically any allusion
that a New York Times editorial writer wouldn't bother to explain.
Now, you can argue that those who can read The New York Times shouldn't
be the empowered ones in our society, but I don't think you can argue
it's not the case that they don't have a lot of power, and so a list of
allusions that these people know might be useful to the rest of the folks.

                     Mike Morris
               (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books