**********************************
The Western Canon Mailing List
Moderator: Paul John Barnette Jr.
Activation Date: March 8, 1997
Current Date:  April 25, 1997
Current Membership: 40
**********************************


Hi Paul,

On Wed, 23 Apr 1997, you wrote regarding the Great Books Index...

> I believe that Ken has been generous and has retained all the
> authors that were in the original edition.

Thanks for your kind words about the index.  And yes, I've tried
to make it a union list, although it's been a bit difficult since I
haven't seen a paper copy of the 1990 edition.  I appreciate the
comparison someone posted in a later Western Canon message.

Adler maintains that the great books are qualitatively different
from other books; that there is a gap.  I do not believe this.

Books go in and out of fashion, even great books, and some books
speak more to the needs of an age and should be republished by
those who care for the spirit of their age.  Jane Austen's Emma
is popular today, because Emma is high spirited, independent,
and a bit naughty.  Mansfield Park is an equally well crafted
story and Fanny Price's dilemmas are more pertinent to the great
ideas (duty, for instance), yet because Fanny is quiet, unsure
of herself, and very good, Hollywood will never make a movie of
Mansfield Park and most English students prefer to read Emma.

Each of these novels is a great book.  Perhaps Emma speaks more
to the needs of our age, simply because Mansfield Park is too
far from our current preoccupations to be accepted.  The 1990
GBWW's editors probably chose correctly to include Emma rather
than Mansfield Park, but only because they were publishing a set
of books for the readers of the 1990s.

When Alfred the Great was attempting the revival of letters in
England, following the devastation of the Viking raids, one of
the books which he chose to republish is Gregory's "Pastoral
Care".  Who reads this now?  I have not been able to find a copy
in any of the used book stores which I frequent, although
fortunately it is online in a collection of writings of early
church fathers.  For Alfred this was, and rightfully so in terms
of the needs of his age, one of the great books.  Whether it
should be a great book for our age also I leave to others to
discuss. 

Ken R.


Response:

Ken, I agree with you, but only up too a point. Yes there is change 
in fashion among intellectuals as there is among other groups, 
and different eras have there own unique concerns, but I do not think 
that the quality of a book is totally determined by fickle taste 
alone. If the selection of a canon were truly relative to time and 
place, then even the concept of a canon would be useless. Since 
bashing the canon has itself  become a fashion these days, I suspect 
that its loss would be welcomed my some.

I think that in spite of changes that occur in taste and interests 
from century to century there is still a small but definite number 
of authors whose works are truly canonical. They achieve this status 
by surviving those changes. I personally would include Plato, 
Shakespeare and Newton on such a short list, and I dare say there are 
others that could make the cut. To separate that canonical from the 
near canonical can make for great debate, but this debate should not 
itself undercut the very concept of the canon. So I must agree with 
Adler, there is a quantitative gap between the truly canonical works 
and other works that are in the same area of thought. The only 
problem is to determine what is truly canonical and what is not.

Paul John Barnette Jr.


*********************************************************
The Western Canon Mailing List
pbarnett@geocities.com
The Western Canon WWW Site
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6681/index.html
*********************************************************