Fiction_L Archives Definition of "Classics" Dates: 2/22/04,4:55 PM  through  2/22/04,10:05 PM  (2 postings) Search for: Select one or more indexes to search: 2011-current     2009-2010     2004-2008    1995-2003    (Matches from each index will be displayed separately in the results page.) Return to February 2004 thread menu   |   Fiction_L Archives Menu

FROM: "Harwood, Robin" <[removed]@cslibrary.org>
REC'D: 2/22/04, 4:55 PM

A coworker of mine was recently asked to recommend a website that provides concise, authoritative guidelines for determining if a book is a "classic." The website will be used by eighth graders as part of an assignment. We found numerous definitions/descriptions in print resources but were unable to find an appropriate website that fit the teacher's requirements. Part of the problem, of course, is that making this kind of determination is somewhat subjective.

Can anyone recommend a website that might give students some guidelines to help them evaluate books to decide if they are classics? (We are hoping to find a list of criteria, but that might be too much to ask for.)

TIA,

Robin Harwood
Carol Stream Public Library
Carol Stream, IL

FROM: "Smith, Jeff" <[removed]@marshall.usc.edu>
REC'D: 2/22/04, 10:05 PM

This may be what the patron wants:

http://www.google.com/search?q=define:classic

A web search for "What is a classic?" also turns up a number of essays, mostly written in the highfalutin' style typical of discussions of this subject but, nonetheless, containing brief definitions -- for instance:

http://www.bartleby.com/32/202.html: "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."

http://www.hardiehouse.org/theword/classics/cb03.html: "In my view, a classic must have larger recognition in space and in time. It must withstand the ravages of history, of criticism, of translation. It must have something to say to people across many boundaries. If this sounds too general, it is. Herbert Kastle's works may be classics for all we know, and Kastle may join the pantheon in the future. There is in this business something of a quantum effect -- it happens statistically, over time, with a great deal of uncertainty at any one point. To push the metaphor to its limit, a classic is a particle that acts like a wave, vibrating and spreading indefinitely in all directions."

http://www.ditext.com/anastaplo/classic.html: "THE WESTERN classics, I have suggested, make possible an education (what we know as liberal education) that permits one to grasp the best in such a way as to provide one as well with a reliable grasp of the mundane things of this world. Thus, classical poetry takes the variety of human passions and deals with them authoritatively in one form or another. Thus, also, the classics inform and arrange, and make sense of, much that we 'experience.' There is seen in them an abiding respect for common sense, as well as an awareness of its limitations."

Jeff Smith

-----Original Message-----
From: Harwood, Robin [[removed]@cslibrary.org]
Sent: Sun 2/22/2004 2:55 PM
To: Fiction_L
Cc:
Subject: Definition of "Classics"



A coworker of mine was recently asked to recommend a website that provides concise, authoritative guidelines for determining if a book is a "classic." The website will be used by eighth graders as part of an assignment. We found numerous definitions/descriptions in print resources but were unable to find an appropriate website that fit the teacher's requirements. Part of the problem, of course, is that making this kind of determination is somewhat subjective.

Can anyone recommend a website that might give students some guidelines to help them evaluate books to decide if they are classics? (We are hoping to find a list of criteria, but that might be too much to ask for.)

TIA,

Robin Harwood
Carol Stream Public Library
Carol Stream, IL


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