Classic book

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A classic is a

Many universities incorporate these readings into their curricula, such as "The Reading List" at St. John's College,^[2] Rutgers University,^[3] or Dharma Realm Buddhist University.^[4] The study of these classic texts both allows and encourages students to become familiar with some of the most revered authors throughout history. This is meant to equip students and newly found scholars with a plethora of resources to utilize throughout their studies and beyond.

History

In 1850, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869)^[5] stated his answer to the question "What is a Classic?" ("Qu'est-ce qu'un classique?"):^[6]

The idea of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence, and which produces unity and tradition, fashions and transmits itself, and endures.... A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.

In this same essay, Sainte-Beuve quoted Goethe (referring to the 'classics' concept): "Ancient works are classical not because they are old, but because they are powerful, fresh, and healthy."^{[Note 1][7]}

The concept of 'the classic' was a theme of

In 1920, Fannie M. Clark, a teacher at the Rozelle School in East Cleveland, Ohio, predates Calvino's similar conclusions by 60 years when she also essayed the question of what makes a book a "classic" in her article "Teaching Children to Choose" in The English Journal.^[16] Over the course of her essay, Clark considers the question of what makes a piece of literature a classic and why the idea of "the classics" is important to society as a whole. Clark says that "teachers of English have been so long trained in the 'classics' that these 'classics' have become to them very much like the Bible, for the safety of which the rise of modern science causes such unnecessary fears."^[16] She goes on to say that among the sources she consulted was a group of eighth-graders when she asked them the question: "What do you understand by the classics in literature?" Two of the answers Clark received were "Classics are books your fathers give you and you keep them to give to your children" and "Classics are those great pieces of literature considered worthy to be studied in English classes of high school or college". Calvino agrees with the Ohio educator when he states "Schools and universities ought to help us understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite." Clark and Calvino come to a similar conclusion that when a literary work is analyzed for what makes it 'classic', that in just the act of analysis or as Clark says "the anatomical dissection",^[16] the reader can end up destroying the unique pleasure that mere enjoyment a work of literature can hold.

Classics are often defined in terms of their lasting freshness. Clifton Fadiman thought that the works that become classic books have their start in childhood, saying that "If you wish to live long in the memory of men, you should not write for them at all. You should write what their children will enjoy."^[17] In his view, the works we now judge to be classics are "great starters". Fadiman unites classic books through the ages in a continuum (and concurs with Goethe's thoughts on the vigour and relevance of the ancient Classics), when he states that classic books share a "quality of beginningness" with the legendary writer of the Iliad and the Odyssey – Homer himself.^[18] Ezra Pound in his own tome on reading, ABC of Reading, gave his opinion when he stated, "A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rule, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."^[19] Michael Dirda, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winning critic, concurred with Pound's view regarding the vitality of a classic when he wrote that "...one of the true elements of a classic" was that "they can be read again and again with ever-deepening pleasure."^[20]

In the 1980s, Italo Calvino said in his essay "Why Read the Classics?" that "a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say" and comes to the crux of personal choice in this matter when he says (italics in the original translation): "Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him."^{[Note 2][21][22][23][24]} Consideration of what makes a literary work a classic is for Calvino ultimately a personal choice, and, constructing a universal definition of what constitutes a Classic Book seems to him to be an impossibility, since, as Calvino says "There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics."^[25]

While blogging on the website

Columbia's Core Curriculum, the Common Core at Chicago, and the Core Curriculum at Boston University, each heavily focused on the "great books" of the Western canon, are prominent examples of Classic Books programs that the majority of enrolled students participate. Fordham University's Honors Program at Rose Hill incorporates the Great Books curriculum into a rigorous first four semesters in the program. Loyola University Chicago's Honors Program combines a Great Books curriculum with additional elective classes on subjects not covered in traditional Western thought over a rigorous four-year program.^[32] Over 100 institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, and Europe maintain some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students.^[33]

In addition, a handful of colleges offer a major whose pedagogy is structured around the Great Books. The University of Notre Dame's Program of Liberal Studies, established in 1950, and housed in the College of Liberals Arts, the Integral Program^[34] at Saint Mary's College of California (1955), and the Bachelor of Humanities program offered by the College of the Humanities at Carleton University in Ottawa (1995) are three such examples.

Great books colleges

Despite the prevalence of Great Books style courses and majors at a number of universities, there are only a few colleges that teach their curriculum exclusively through the Great Books model . The first, and most well known, of these schools is

Thomas Jefferson^[37] frequently composed great books lists for his friends and correspondents, for example, for Peter Carr in 1785^[38] and again in 1787.^[39]

Publishing houses (e.g., Easton Press, Franklin Library, and Folio Society) and colleges/universities (such as Oxford University Press and Yale University Press) frequently publish collections of classic books. Publishers have their various types of "classic book" lines, while colleges and universities have required reading lists as well as associated publishing interests. If these books are the works of literature that well-read people are supposed to have read or at least be familiar with, then the genesis of the classic book genre and the processes through which texts are considered for selection (or not) is of interest. The development of the Penguin Classics line of books, among the best-known of the classic imprints, can serve as a good example.

In 1954 Mortimer Adler hosted a live weekly television series in San Francisco, comprising 52 half-hour programs, entitled The Great Ideas. These programs were produced by Adler's Institute for Philosophical Research and were carried as a public service by the American Broadcasting Company, presented by National Educational Television, the precursor to what is now PBS. Adler bequeathed these films to the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, where they are available for purchase.^[41]

In 1993 and 1994, The

References