by David Cathel

One day over the past summer I saw a book that had been reviewed as a “must-read.” At that time, I wondered whether that book was more necessary to read than any of the Shakespeare plays I have thus far neglected, Plato’s dialogues, or the Aeneid, or any other number of excellent works that I have not yet taken the time to read.

As someone attempting to lead an examined life, these wonderings prompted me to ask: what qualities in a literary work lead to the judgment that it ought to be read? In considering this question of worthiness, I first took recourse to my understanding of the importance of literature: Literature is a distorted mirror reflecting human life. It takes human life and compresses, magnifies, and reshapes it into a work of art which forces us to reconsider how we experience our lives. 

Literature is a distorted mirror reflecting human life.

The works that do this the best are called the great books, which are great because their particular “distortion” points toward something inherent to the human experience. However, the great books obfuscate their universality by a strange fact: they are all intensely particular. Although I admit I grew weary of reading the seemingly endless notes appended to the Inferno and Purgatorio, Dante’s Divine Comedy would certainly be worse if they had not been necessary.

One example of this is cantos seven and eight of the Purgatorio, in which some souls remember Compline, a confessional service. In this scene, the service of Compline becomes a medium upon which the author paints a narrative about ascent to the divine. The way one begins to ascend towards God (that is, by repentance) could not have been illustrated without a particular example. 

Hence, great books do not spring fully formed from the minds of geniuses without some  intermediary but instead grow from a conglomeration of particular human experiences arranged into a commentary upon universal human experience. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; the text is greater than its context.

Although this short excursus is insufficient to describe literary merit, I hope that this at least gestures at the following: that literature has universal import, that it acquires such import by being rooted in particular human experiences, and that what we call art is the book’s ability to discuss the universal through the particular. The most meritorious books will therefore be those which point towards the universal human experience by art rooted in particular expressions of life.

 However, collections of these “must-read” texts have different effects than their component parts. Literature grabs us and forces us to examine our lives. Literary canons do something similar, but on a larger scale. By arranging texts into lists of “must-reads,” they provide an approach to human life which is shared within the community.

Canons of “must-reads” arise in communities from the perceived value of literary works. This phenomenon may be observed, even in our own times, whenever someone insists their friends must watch the “Star Wars” movies or read the “Harry Potter” books, if only to remain culturally relevant. It is not difficult to imagine ancient Greeks similarly prodding their friends to listen to a traveling rhapsode recite Homer. 

What might have begun as a recognition of the epic nature of Homer’s poetry did not remain mere aesthetic appreciation. Homeric language and imagery began to undergird the lyric poetry recited at symposia, and the tragedy performed in the theater, and the philosophy of the divine. In all of these, Homeric poetry was not a model to which all had to conform, but a medium through which all could engage with the world more richly. 

Homeric poetry was not a model to which all had to conform, but a medium through which all could engage with the world more richly.

Just as an individual work of literature, when read thoroughly, grabs the reader and forces him to consider his life in a new light, a canon of works shapes the community’s perception of human existence by systematically presenting its texts to the people. Texts presented in this way cease to only reflect their origins and begin to constitute the societies for which they are canonical, just as Homeric poetry did for ancient Greek society. At this point, engagement with the text shapes and molds the community’s perspective on human existence.

Canons are the product of choices made within a community, but the fact that choice is involved raises this question: to what end? I argue that canons ought to be ordered towards human flourishing, both in a universal and particular sense. If reading literature involves reflecting upon our lives so that we can see more clearly, live more richly, and love more dearly, then a good canon will strive to achieve this in a whole community. 

Although I find myself hesitant to agree fully with the well-known dictum of Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living, it presupposes that the examined life, because it can be ordered towards its proper end, is better than the unexamined one. Literature, as a distorted mirror of human life, provides an excellent image for us to contemplate and examine. Canons should likewise help us reflect on what it means to live well. And what, after all, is human flourishing other than living well?

Human flourishing is never done alone. Similarly to how literary art consists in describing the particular in such a fashion that the universal is revealed through it, understanding the universal human condition not only entails knowledge of the human being as such but especially what it means for me to be a human right now in my own context.

No human is without a social, historical, political, and religious context. For anyone to know how to live well, he will have to consider whence he came, where he is, and where he is going. Because human flourishing should not be judged by the standard of an individual isolated from community, but by an individual embedded within a network of relationships, a canon which points toward how to live well will include works whose relevance is both particular and universal.

The importance of a literary canon is therefore not only that it presents a series of texts which on their own merits ought to be read, but that by systematically presenting these texts to the whole society, the canon gives a society a lens with which to view the world and their place within it. The great hope is that such a lens will help people better their lives, not as atomized individuals, but as people with deep relationships to others and to God.

The great hope is that such a lens will help people better their lives, not as atomized individuals, but as people with deep relationships to others and to God.

Canons are constructions, and as such are ordered towards certain ends. A good canon will be constructed with human flourishing as its end, and other canons should be judged in light of this end. Since they arise from communities, canons will exist even though the ends to which they are ordered vary. We ought to judge them according to their ability to fulfill the end to which they are directed, which is human flourishing.

Because literary canons train the eyes how to see human experience in both a particular and universal way, they provide a cultural framework oriented towards a common vision of human flourishing. Our times, in which such a framework is conspicuous by absence, demonstrate daily how impactful shared cultural beliefs are for the health of society. I would even go so far as to say that if a common understanding of human flourishing were ever to be restored in our country, it would be accomplished with the help of a literary canon.

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David Cathel is a senior majoring in Latin.