The canon and a book of quotations

 I sometimes think that teachers of literature have tied themselves in knots about the idea of a canon.

It’s a bit like philosophy teachers, who sometimes tie themselves in knots over the is-ought problem. You can, if you’re interested, find some earlier notes about the problems involved in deriving an ought (a moral imperative) from an is (a set of facts). All educated people should know something about those difficulties. But if you are the kind of person who would let a toddler wander onto the freeway without stopping because you’re worried about the is-ought problem, I don’t want to talk to you.

I think English teachers should worry about the problems with having a canon. But those problems shouldn’t stop them.

We are going to have a canon — more accurately, many competing canons — because we are, as Aristotle put it, animals who live in a polis. We’re communal creatures, and so when we hear news we share it.

We share our views on movies and pop songs. We say that the new café is better or worse than the old ones. And we sometimes share our views on more serious things.

In time, what’s said changes. What’s said to be good or better changes. But the idea that you could stop this process entails the idea that you could change human nature overnight.

If you want a poor man’s insight into the canons of literature, look at books of quotations. Notice that they change.

If you look at today’s editions, you’ll find fewer specimens of Milton and Tennyson. Perhaps one day there will be more.

Books of quotations reflect what we collectively found worth talking about, worth trying to hold in memory — at the time. We tried to hold these particular words in memory because those lines had been found to appeal to others — at the time. It was a way we could communicate, a way we could live in the polis together.