Extollager
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- Joined
- Aug 21, 2010
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Oskari wrote, "First off, literary classic is a specific term or idea, which has much to do with time scale and, more importantly, how it was or had been recieved."
It seems to me useful to think in terms of categories such as these:
1.Classics with a capital C: these are the Greco-Roman Classics that JDW mentions.
2.Classic literature with a small "c": Here, as you say, Oskari, time is certainly a factor. By that I mean that it takes more or less time for something to establish itself as a classic depending on whether the form in which it was written is an ancient or a relatively recent one. Epic poems are an ancient form. I would hesitate to say that any long narrative poem more recent than, say, Paradise Lost is a classic epic poem. The novel is a more recent form. I would be willing to grant that some novels published up to the last hundred years or so have established themselves as classic novels -- for example, something as recent as Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent would qualify, for me. But I would not want to say that more recent novels should yet be considered classic novels. I regard Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust as a truly superb novel. But it feels, to me, too soon to call it a classic novel.
Classic literature is enormously varied, ranging from things as different as the stern objectivity of the Icelandic sagas to the intense subjectivity of Jane Eyre.
3.Rather, I would call A Handful of Dust a modern classic. So is Nineteen Eighty-Four, etc.
4.Then we have genre classics. Here is where I'd place outstanding works, many of them books I love dearly, that I don't think have won their way to recognition simply as classics or as modern classics. There's hardly a fiction in the world that means more to me than The Lord of the Rings, but I am trying to suggest a fairly objective way of thinking about "classics." It seems premature to label LOTR as a classic or even as a modern classic.
There might be some overlap of categories, e.g. Nineteen Eighty-Four as a modern classic and as (yes!) a science fiction classic.
It seems to me useful to think in terms of categories such as these:
1.Classics with a capital C: these are the Greco-Roman Classics that JDW mentions.
2.Classic literature with a small "c": Here, as you say, Oskari, time is certainly a factor. By that I mean that it takes more or less time for something to establish itself as a classic depending on whether the form in which it was written is an ancient or a relatively recent one. Epic poems are an ancient form. I would hesitate to say that any long narrative poem more recent than, say, Paradise Lost is a classic epic poem. The novel is a more recent form. I would be willing to grant that some novels published up to the last hundred years or so have established themselves as classic novels -- for example, something as recent as Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent would qualify, for me. But I would not want to say that more recent novels should yet be considered classic novels. I regard Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust as a truly superb novel. But it feels, to me, too soon to call it a classic novel.
Classic literature is enormously varied, ranging from things as different as the stern objectivity of the Icelandic sagas to the intense subjectivity of Jane Eyre.
3.Rather, I would call A Handful of Dust a modern classic. So is Nineteen Eighty-Four, etc.
4.Then we have genre classics. Here is where I'd place outstanding works, many of them books I love dearly, that I don't think have won their way to recognition simply as classics or as modern classics. There's hardly a fiction in the world that means more to me than The Lord of the Rings, but I am trying to suggest a fairly objective way of thinking about "classics." It seems premature to label LOTR as a classic or even as a modern classic.
There might be some overlap of categories, e.g. Nineteen Eighty-Four as a modern classic and as (yes!) a science fiction classic.
