Your post raises an important critique of how literature is approached in academia, and it aligns closely with ideas I’ve reflected on regarding the literary canon. A canon is not meant to affirm the reader’s beliefs but to challenge them by offering encounters with values and perspectives that are often unsettling or unfamiliar. This tension is what broadens the mind and fosters the humility needed for meaningful intellectual growth.
Reducing literature to whether it aligns with contemporary political attitudes strips away this transformative potential. When I first read Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot as a teenager, I did not fully grasp its depth, but I connected to Prince Myshkin’s vulnerability and search for meaning. That connection inspired me to explore more challenging works, even those I disagreed with. This is the purpose of the canon: to invite readers to grapple with complex, sometimes uncomfortable ideas and to engage deeply with what people of the past found valuable.
The canon is not static and should evolve, but its revisions should enrich its diversity of thought rather than narrow it around a single worldview. When literature is viewed only through the lens of modern beliefs, students miss the opportunity to experience what Matthew Arnold described as a “stream of fresh and free thought.” The canon should not comfort us but confront us. It should challenge us to wrestle with the humanity of authors and characters from vastly different worlds, teaching us about both their time and our own. This is what makes the canon invaluable and worth preserving.
A literary canon is a way to understand how the world got to where it is now. To intentionally read something you need the context of the world it was written in. To go through a literary canon is to go through world history; but in a deeper, psychological and spiritual way.
Great essay. One of the most interesting things to think about is the poets who today think what they write is good and memorable and yet--who will be forgotten and considered dated in 30 years alone. Academia is risks being a lost cause with literature, if not already. Identity and political artwork will always fade away.
Well said. All very true. How can you broaden your horizons, or discover anything, if you only look at what you agree with? None so blind as them who won't look. For me, literature, as well as feeding the mind with knowledge and understanding of various perceptions, is an ecstasy of revelling in artistic expression.
Literature, like all art, is a magic from the ancient, Shamanic practice of creativity. The writer is the Shamanic Bard. We are reading magic symbols that project images and scenes from another dimension. Different realities. How ignorant to only view one version of one reality that upholds your perspective.
I have, I believe, a somewhat unique experience with this. I first began my undergrad degree in the mid-90's. I went back and got a teaching degree in the mid-00's. Got a grad degree in the mid-10's. Now dealing with the public education system in the mid-20s. Four decades of witnessing oddities in the world of literature.
I remember in the mid-00's, an English education professor of mine fully embraced the idea that old works should be discarded. Kids needed modern YLA, and it was a "waste of time" to keep "cramming books by old white men down modern kids' throats."
"But aren't there some books that everyone ought to read?" a student asked.
"I don't know" she said with smug condescension. "Are there?"
And we didn't know how to answer. None of us had a great response, and so we were stuck supposing that we were wrong.
Now I understand better. Yes, there are some books that we all should read. Why? For a lot of reasons.
1. There is great value to having a shared cultural foundation in our nation. Up until very recently, everyone who was educated knew the same foundational literature: the Bible, Greek mythology and philosophy, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, the Brontes, Austen, Dickens, Hardy. These works were among the ideas on which our culture was based. And there is so much value to a shared foundation.
2. As has been mentioned here, there are thousands of authors in the past who we don't remember. The ones we do are the best of the best. They show us what the best of the written word can be. It is such folly to ignore them.
3. Because every educated person, until recently, had the shared foundation, it's impossible to truly understand literature unless you know the tradition. You can't understand Hemingway without knowing Mark Twain. You can't understand Faulkner without knowing the Bible. You can't understand TS Eliot without knowing a shit-load of stuff. The great writers draw on words and themes from the past, taking them and granting them new life, new ways of thinking, but all in a way that connects new themes with our past and shared culture.
4. There is great danger to teaching a generation that literature is worthless unless you see yourself in the characters--especially in the superficial model of intersectionality. That is the pathway to narcissism.
5. On the other hand, there is great good that comes from connecting to things that are, on first inspection, unrelated to myself. What on earth do I have in common with an orphaned girl from upper class British colonials in India? Very little, the intersectionals would say. And yet I can find beauty and wisdom and fresh ideas by reading The Secret Garden. Not only that, I would say that I am a better person for being able to do so. And this is, of course, only one example among thousands (on my mind, because I just finished reading it with my 11-year-old students).
What did your students think of The Secret Garden? I've never read it, but from the plot summary it sounds like an exciting story as well as likely fun to read.
I wouldn't say it's exciting. It's terrific, but exciting is the wrong word. It's mostly a beautiful story, filled with some terrific and unexpected humor. In general, I'd say girls are more likely to love the story than boys. In my classes, I'd say about 75% of the kids say it's one of their favorites that we read during the year.
Shelley and Keats confronted horror with beauty. Consider PROMETHEUS UNBOUND and THE FALL OF HYPERION. Love, Beauty, and Truth all mean something to artists. And, meaning. It is not just for artists. Ask Viktor Frankl in the midst of the of the Nazi extermination camps. Or, ask Sophocles: “Count no mortal happy until he passes the portals of this life free from pain.” Artists make life worth living. Artists enjoin us to be wary of the hell of the unexamined life.
The great works of the past not only sprang from a different political environment than ours. They also built on a radically different metaphysics, cosmology, logic, epistemology, anthropology, and so forth. Part of what makes reading the canon so valuable now is that we vicariously acquire a type of experience, a manner of thinking, and a way of humanly being that is not available to us by any other means. Thus, reading the canon lets us say, along with Whitman, "I am large, I contain multitudes."
A canon is really a question of curatorship, which will always beg the questions "who are the curators?" and "what are the inclusion criteria?". Sunlight being the best disinfectant, transparency on these answers seems a more plausible way forward than seeking to agree a Grand Unified Canon. There's nothing wrong with having a "Leftist Canon" provided it is so labelled; it's presenting the partial or partisan as universal that is, as a Columbia freshman might say, "problematic".
I'm a fan of the "canon" below because I've got respect for, and some concept of, the sensibilities of its curator
👏👏👏 I’d like to give Mr. Fagan a standing ovation for this excellent article which for the most part, I agree with. We shouldn’t trash the Western literary canon just because it doesn’t suite the modern day sensibilities or political views of university students and professors. The Western literary canon was a gift to mankind. It broadens our horizons and challenges our worldview by exposing us to a variety of perspectives and ways of thinking. That’s the point of it. The fact that so many Columbia students and professors either didn’t agree or didn’t understand this, shows just how far our institutions of learning have fallen. Students need to stop viewing these works through the lens of a modern day person and accept them and treasure them for what they are. The western literary canon being used to push an ideology or agendas that is authors never intended is downright disgraceful! If all students got from the canon is “there a bunch of old dead white guys” that proves they don’t get it. It’s not about those great men’s identity, it’s about their ideas and what they wrote and how it still resonates with us today. Here’s a novel idea: we can EXPAND the western literary canon to include black, Latino, Asian, Native American, female, LGBT, and disabled authors. We don’t have to trash the “old dead white guys” in order to make room for more diversity. It’s not an either or kind of thing! Now onto areas where I disagree with Mr. Fagan. I will admit there are certain statements in this article I strongly disagree with. You had said you don’t have any desire to condemn the statement the MLA put out. But I do condemn it, very strongly. The MLA is being presentist here. They are viewing classic literature through the lens of a modern day person. Of course it’s going to have the prejudices of its time and depictions of minority groups are not going to be respectful or accurate by our standards today. While we should make note of this, it shouldn’t condemn the works themselves or lessen their value or how profound they are. Also, things like post-colonial, black and disability studies are extremely dangerous and toxic for our society as they force us to look at everything through an identity lens and see everything as racist, sexist, ethnocentric, ableist, etc. Not to mention the founder of anti-colonial studies Edward Said, was a virulent antisemite. Again, I think the solution here to expand the Western literary canon and supplement it with works by non-western authors. Not to dismiss it altogether and view it through the lens of bunk identity studies that segregates people and cultures. I would also disagree with what Mr. Fagan says about past authors calling them “morally questionable.” By the standards of our time or their time? Also, what exactly is he talking about here? But I would agree with you that the great authors of the past were just as human as the rest of us and had flaws. It doesn’t make them bad people or their work any less valuable. Lastly, I would disagree with Joshua on a couple other statements he made. Mr. Fagan says that it’s okay to prefer Toni Morrison to Virgil. No, it’s NOT okay! They are both excellent authors who’s works BOTH have their place! He also mentions he found value in reading the works of Michael Foucault and Frantz Fanon. I couldn’t disagree more, Foucault and Fanon have no place in the Western literary canon or being taught on our college campuses. Both those individuals ideas have done immeasurable harm to the western world and have helped create the world we live in today where science, truth and common sense are discarded in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion and we have no shared reality because everyone can make their own reality. Works like Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” should be brought back and it is Foucault and Fanon who should be removed from the curriculum and discarded into the ash heap of history where they belong. All that being said, Mr. Fagan makes a very important point in this article and I encourage everyone to read it! Thank you, sir!
Your post raises an important critique of how literature is approached in academia, and it aligns closely with ideas I’ve reflected on regarding the literary canon. A canon is not meant to affirm the reader’s beliefs but to challenge them by offering encounters with values and perspectives that are often unsettling or unfamiliar. This tension is what broadens the mind and fosters the humility needed for meaningful intellectual growth.
Reducing literature to whether it aligns with contemporary political attitudes strips away this transformative potential. When I first read Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot as a teenager, I did not fully grasp its depth, but I connected to Prince Myshkin’s vulnerability and search for meaning. That connection inspired me to explore more challenging works, even those I disagreed with. This is the purpose of the canon: to invite readers to grapple with complex, sometimes uncomfortable ideas and to engage deeply with what people of the past found valuable.
The canon is not static and should evolve, but its revisions should enrich its diversity of thought rather than narrow it around a single worldview. When literature is viewed only through the lens of modern beliefs, students miss the opportunity to experience what Matthew Arnold described as a “stream of fresh and free thought.” The canon should not comfort us but confront us. It should challenge us to wrestle with the humanity of authors and characters from vastly different worlds, teaching us about both their time and our own. This is what makes the canon invaluable and worth preserving.
A literary canon is a way to understand how the world got to where it is now. To intentionally read something you need the context of the world it was written in. To go through a literary canon is to go through world history; but in a deeper, psychological and spiritual way.
Great essay. One of the most interesting things to think about is the poets who today think what they write is good and memorable and yet--who will be forgotten and considered dated in 30 years alone. Academia is risks being a lost cause with literature, if not already. Identity and political artwork will always fade away.
Well said. All very true. How can you broaden your horizons, or discover anything, if you only look at what you agree with? None so blind as them who won't look. For me, literature, as well as feeding the mind with knowledge and understanding of various perceptions, is an ecstasy of revelling in artistic expression.
Literature, like all art, is a magic from the ancient, Shamanic practice of creativity. The writer is the Shamanic Bard. We are reading magic symbols that project images and scenes from another dimension. Different realities. How ignorant to only view one version of one reality that upholds your perspective.
Well done. Good piece.
I have, I believe, a somewhat unique experience with this. I first began my undergrad degree in the mid-90's. I went back and got a teaching degree in the mid-00's. Got a grad degree in the mid-10's. Now dealing with the public education system in the mid-20s. Four decades of witnessing oddities in the world of literature.
I remember in the mid-00's, an English education professor of mine fully embraced the idea that old works should be discarded. Kids needed modern YLA, and it was a "waste of time" to keep "cramming books by old white men down modern kids' throats."
"But aren't there some books that everyone ought to read?" a student asked.
"I don't know" she said with smug condescension. "Are there?"
And we didn't know how to answer. None of us had a great response, and so we were stuck supposing that we were wrong.
Now I understand better. Yes, there are some books that we all should read. Why? For a lot of reasons.
1. There is great value to having a shared cultural foundation in our nation. Up until very recently, everyone who was educated knew the same foundational literature: the Bible, Greek mythology and philosophy, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, the Brontes, Austen, Dickens, Hardy. These works were among the ideas on which our culture was based. And there is so much value to a shared foundation.
2. As has been mentioned here, there are thousands of authors in the past who we don't remember. The ones we do are the best of the best. They show us what the best of the written word can be. It is such folly to ignore them.
3. Because every educated person, until recently, had the shared foundation, it's impossible to truly understand literature unless you know the tradition. You can't understand Hemingway without knowing Mark Twain. You can't understand Faulkner without knowing the Bible. You can't understand TS Eliot without knowing a shit-load of stuff. The great writers draw on words and themes from the past, taking them and granting them new life, new ways of thinking, but all in a way that connects new themes with our past and shared culture.
4. There is great danger to teaching a generation that literature is worthless unless you see yourself in the characters--especially in the superficial model of intersectionality. That is the pathway to narcissism.
5. On the other hand, there is great good that comes from connecting to things that are, on first inspection, unrelated to myself. What on earth do I have in common with an orphaned girl from upper class British colonials in India? Very little, the intersectionals would say. And yet I can find beauty and wisdom and fresh ideas by reading The Secret Garden. Not only that, I would say that I am a better person for being able to do so. And this is, of course, only one example among thousands (on my mind, because I just finished reading it with my 11-year-old students).
What did your students think of The Secret Garden? I've never read it, but from the plot summary it sounds like an exciting story as well as likely fun to read.
I wouldn't say it's exciting. It's terrific, but exciting is the wrong word. It's mostly a beautiful story, filled with some terrific and unexpected humor. In general, I'd say girls are more likely to love the story than boys. In my classes, I'd say about 75% of the kids say it's one of their favorites that we read during the year.
Shelley and Keats confronted horror with beauty. Consider PROMETHEUS UNBOUND and THE FALL OF HYPERION. Love, Beauty, and Truth all mean something to artists. And, meaning. It is not just for artists. Ask Viktor Frankl in the midst of the of the Nazi extermination camps. Or, ask Sophocles: “Count no mortal happy until he passes the portals of this life free from pain.” Artists make life worth living. Artists enjoin us to be wary of the hell of the unexamined life.
The great works of the past not only sprang from a different political environment than ours. They also built on a radically different metaphysics, cosmology, logic, epistemology, anthropology, and so forth. Part of what makes reading the canon so valuable now is that we vicariously acquire a type of experience, a manner of thinking, and a way of humanly being that is not available to us by any other means. Thus, reading the canon lets us say, along with Whitman, "I am large, I contain multitudes."
Thanks for an interesting article!
A canon is really a question of curatorship, which will always beg the questions "who are the curators?" and "what are the inclusion criteria?". Sunlight being the best disinfectant, transparency on these answers seems a more plausible way forward than seeking to agree a Grand Unified Canon. There's nothing wrong with having a "Leftist Canon" provided it is so labelled; it's presenting the partial or partisan as universal that is, as a Columbia freshman might say, "problematic".
I'm a fan of the "canon" below because I've got respect for, and some concept of, the sensibilities of its curator
https://www.davidbowie.com/blog/2013/10/1/bowies-top-100-books-the-complete-list
Plus it allows be to tell people that I'm reading a particular book because it was recommended to me* by David Bowie.
*Not personally
👏👏👏 I’d like to give Mr. Fagan a standing ovation for this excellent article which for the most part, I agree with. We shouldn’t trash the Western literary canon just because it doesn’t suite the modern day sensibilities or political views of university students and professors. The Western literary canon was a gift to mankind. It broadens our horizons and challenges our worldview by exposing us to a variety of perspectives and ways of thinking. That’s the point of it. The fact that so many Columbia students and professors either didn’t agree or didn’t understand this, shows just how far our institutions of learning have fallen. Students need to stop viewing these works through the lens of a modern day person and accept them and treasure them for what they are. The western literary canon being used to push an ideology or agendas that is authors never intended is downright disgraceful! If all students got from the canon is “there a bunch of old dead white guys” that proves they don’t get it. It’s not about those great men’s identity, it’s about their ideas and what they wrote and how it still resonates with us today. Here’s a novel idea: we can EXPAND the western literary canon to include black, Latino, Asian, Native American, female, LGBT, and disabled authors. We don’t have to trash the “old dead white guys” in order to make room for more diversity. It’s not an either or kind of thing! Now onto areas where I disagree with Mr. Fagan. I will admit there are certain statements in this article I strongly disagree with. You had said you don’t have any desire to condemn the statement the MLA put out. But I do condemn it, very strongly. The MLA is being presentist here. They are viewing classic literature through the lens of a modern day person. Of course it’s going to have the prejudices of its time and depictions of minority groups are not going to be respectful or accurate by our standards today. While we should make note of this, it shouldn’t condemn the works themselves or lessen their value or how profound they are. Also, things like post-colonial, black and disability studies are extremely dangerous and toxic for our society as they force us to look at everything through an identity lens and see everything as racist, sexist, ethnocentric, ableist, etc. Not to mention the founder of anti-colonial studies Edward Said, was a virulent antisemite. Again, I think the solution here to expand the Western literary canon and supplement it with works by non-western authors. Not to dismiss it altogether and view it through the lens of bunk identity studies that segregates people and cultures. I would also disagree with what Mr. Fagan says about past authors calling them “morally questionable.” By the standards of our time or their time? Also, what exactly is he talking about here? But I would agree with you that the great authors of the past were just as human as the rest of us and had flaws. It doesn’t make them bad people or their work any less valuable. Lastly, I would disagree with Joshua on a couple other statements he made. Mr. Fagan says that it’s okay to prefer Toni Morrison to Virgil. No, it’s NOT okay! They are both excellent authors who’s works BOTH have their place! He also mentions he found value in reading the works of Michael Foucault and Frantz Fanon. I couldn’t disagree more, Foucault and Fanon have no place in the Western literary canon or being taught on our college campuses. Both those individuals ideas have done immeasurable harm to the western world and have helped create the world we live in today where science, truth and common sense are discarded in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion and we have no shared reality because everyone can make their own reality. Works like Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” should be brought back and it is Foucault and Fanon who should be removed from the curriculum and discarded into the ash heap of history where they belong. All that being said, Mr. Fagan makes a very important point in this article and I encourage everyone to read it! Thank you, sir!
Beautifully put. Thank you.
Great perspective!
Have you ever read Moretti’s essay “The Slaugherhouse of Literature?” I’d be interested to hear your thoughts :)