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On the existence of objectively excellent texts

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Rottweiler Dog and Pony Show from Portland, Oregon Since: Dec, 2009
Dog and Pony Show
#51: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:03:02 PM

@Humor:

There's certainly such a thing as an objectively important book, but I don't think there's such a thing as an objectively good (that is, well-written) book.

There's probably much to be said for literary style being subjective, but I gave two frameworks for evaluating objective importance: depth, breadth and temporal length of influence or the "great ideas" model.

It can't decide whether it wants to be a storybook or a law book or a history or a genealogy.

You can't judge it as a book. It's a library of every text Hellenistic Jewish teachers (Old Testament) or Constantine-era bishops (New Testament) came to a consensus on the divine inspiration of. Particular books have a consistent genre.

Actually, this is another example: at least in the Communist Manifesto, I found Marx's writing to be very clear. Mostly wrong, of course, but clear.

I meant mediocre in truth value, not quality of prose.

@Karalora:

Just look at Rottweiler's primary criterion for a work being considered objectively excellent—it must have influenced a large number of people both living and dead. Well of course newer works don't qualify!

If you read The Battle Of The Books by Jonathan Swift, you'd intuitively grasp the peril of crowning recent books as equal to the classics. Most of the names Swift drops in the Modern book army have long since fallen out of print, having only been meaningful to readers of Swift's century.

I don't doubt that numerous 20th century books will endure, just as numerous 19th century books joined the Western canon. The question is which, a question that must be approached with humility, lest we put together an army like Swift's aforementioned Moderns.

Nitpick: Not that everything he wrote was necessarily wrong, but, e.g., Aristotle's Physics has been proven almost completely wrong.

Are you seriously saying that because the scientific method empirically falsified most of Aristotle's Physics, most of his Poetics must be false?

Protip: The scientific method isn't useful for empirically falsifying someone's literary criticism. Horses for courses, dude.

@khamul:

A minor question, Rott, but if classics are taken to be works that have had a large influence on a large number of people through time, would something like The Kalevala qualify, even though it was only compiled into a book from oral traditions 200 years ago?

I'm sure it's vital to cultural literacy if you're Finnish (that's why they call 'em national epics), but I wouldn't induct it into a classical curriculum for all Western students. Its influence is deep but not broad. We Anglos say 'What the hell's a Sampo?'

@Karalora:

On the subject of Shakespeare, do not get me started on Shakespeare. I've seen literary scholars openly admit that he intentionally wrote cheap entertainment for the masses of his time and place, and in the very next sentence declare his works timeless masterpieces while dismissing the cheap entertainment for the masses of our time and place as tripe. If that doesn't prove that I'm onto something...

Shakespeare created the greatest English pop culture of the 16th century, which was then declared England's best literature period by Samuel Johnson (a judgment we're free to dispute) and spread internationally by German Romantics. That's where he gained breadth of influence.

Being pop culture doesn't preclude literary excellence. The question is who, if anyone, produced pop culture in the 20th century equal to or greater than Shakespeare.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard
Karalora Since: Jan, 2001
#52: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:04:26 PM

kashchei, you seem to be conflating two of my dismissals.

I dismiss "the classics" as potentially enriching reading material for me, on the basis that I've never positively enjoyed a single "classic" I've ever read, either as part of a school assignment or a personal experiment.

I dismiss the concept of "the classics" as arbitrary, self-reinforcing and harmful to the development of modern literature.

Neither of these two things means that an individual "classic" can't be very good for another person.

(Incidentally, the only reason I dropped references to my intelligence and studiousness was to forestall the otherwise-inevitable accusation of being too dumb to perceive their brilliance, or a hater of education, or something along those lines.)

Most of the names Swift drops in the Modern book army have long since fallen out of print, having only been meaningful to readers of Swift's century.

Of course they have. They weren't "the classics," so academics didn't bother to assign them.

The question is who, if anyone, produced pop culture in the 20th century equal to or greater than Shakespeare.

Walt Disney. And he did it without royal patronage. And now you're going to say, but all his big projects were adaptations of pre-existing works, at which point I'm going to eyeball you until you remember that we were talking about Shakespeare.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:15:59 PM by Karalora

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#53: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:06:45 PM

Rott: Your "definition" (if we can even call it that-three "generalized criteria" I guess) basically boils down to "The classics are what people thought were important." Not just as in, influential, but also as to what previous people valued.

That's fine and all, but I disagree with it-the fact that a bunch of dead guys all agree on something doesn't make it right.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:07:04 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

DrunkGirlfriend from Castle Geekhaven Since: Jan, 2011
#54: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:09:11 PM

You can't judge it as a book. It's a library of every text Hellenistic Jewish teachers (Old Testament) or Constantine-era bishops (New Testament) came to a consensus on the divine inspiration of. Particular books have a consistent genre.

It's like the Readers Digest of that religion.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#55: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:10:29 PM

Also, if the bible cannot be judged as a book, it certainly shouldn't be referred to as one.

Playing both sides-"It's in a book in the ways I want it to be considered a book"-is detestable.

Rottweiler Dog and Pony Show from Portland, Oregon Since: Dec, 2009
Dog and Pony Show
#56: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:10:57 PM

@Tomu: What, don't you believe in democracy?

Seriously, we all agree (I think) that children need to go to school. What's the best curriculum to give them?

I can think of at least three possible answers. You can say "Whatever the individual teacher wants to teach", which is educational monarchy. You can say "Whatever is popular today", which is educational oligarchy. Or you can teach them the Western canon, which is truly democratic because it includes the votes of our ancestors.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#57: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:12:10 PM

I don't believe in democracy as it pertains to deciding the truth. Moreover, I agree in the democracy of those present as being valuable, and the democracy of those past as being by and large irrelevant except in as far as it affects the democracy of those present. Dead guys aren't around to be oppressed, basically. If dead guys don't get a vote, no one is going to cry-except the people whose votes the dead guy's votes would have reinforced.

In other words, if you're claiming it's democracy? All you're doing is trying to have your vote be double counted.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:13:12 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Karalora Since: Jan, 2001
#58: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:13:14 PM

Rott, the dead don't get to vote in a democracy. Not unless you live in Chicago or Miami, anyway.

Besides, I thought you hated democracy and loved monarchy.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:13:32 PM by Karalora

JosefBugman Since: Nov, 2009
#59: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:13:21 PM

Something is not rendered good simply though being popular. Look at Jersey shore.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#60: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:13:34 PM

Kara, you nearly made me spit iced tea all over my Vizio and keyboard.

DrunkGirlfriend from Castle Geekhaven Since: Jan, 2011
#61: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:13:42 PM

@Tomu: No, but you can certainly keep them down. tongue

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
BlackHumor Since: Jan, 2001
#62: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:13:43 PM

There's probably much to be said for literary style being subjective, but I gave two frameworks for evaluating objective importance: depth, breadth and temporal length of influence or the "great ideas" model.

Ok, so given that we're talking about importance here I don't have much of an argument with you.

You can't judge it as a book. It's a library of every text Hellenistic Jewish teachers (Old Testament) or Constantine-era bishops (New Testament) came to a consensus on the divine inspiration of. Particular books have a consistent genre.

Granted, but even within single books (or even single paragraphs) it's not great writing.

Also granted I'm judging it pretty harshly for a 1000+ year old book.

Are you seriously saying that because the scientific method empirically falsified most of Aristotle's Physics, most of his Poetics must be false?

Protip: The scientific method isn't useful for empirically falsifying someone's literary criticism. Horses for courses, dude.

I'm not saying it must be false. I'm saying that since Aristotle has been proven wrong on matters of fact in the past, he's not reliable as a source for literary criticism either.

He could still be right about it; I'm just saying he's not necessarily right.

RadicalTaoist scratching at .8, just hopin' from the #GUniverse Since: Jan, 2001
scratching at .8, just hopin'
#63: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:14:43 PM

I am wary of the "memetic importance=status" definition of classics, since I dread the thought of future students having to read Slendy creepypastas or "Bitches don't know" t-shirt reaction images. When video games are as culturally accepted as film and can get their own courses, it'll be interesting to see them teaching about Portal and Chrono Trigger, but there's got to be more to cultural value than memetic weight.

Part of it has got to be the ability to create imagery. Writers who read the fine literature should be able to become better writers for having read it, including the ability to make the world on their pages more engrossing. Take Ursula K Le Guin, for instance. If students aren't reading The Left Hand of Darkness or The Faded Sun a hundred years from now, something is deeply wrong.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
Usht Lv. 3 Genasi Wizard from an arbitrary view point. Since: Feb, 2011
Lv. 3 Genasi Wizard
#64: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:15:56 PM

Actually, the Bible being mentioned reminds me of something... how does translation affect a good book? A Thousand Years of Solitude was originally Spanish but it's considered a classic by the English community, but does any of the translations hold a match to the original? Or did they improve upon the original? Etc.

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.
kashchei Since: May, 2010
#65: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:16:59 PM

kashchei, you seem to be conflating two of my dismissals.

I dismiss "the classics" as potentially enriching reading material for me, on the basis that I've never positively enjoyed a single "classic" I've ever read, either as part of a school assignment or a personal experiment.

I dismiss the concept of "the classics" as arbitrary, self-reinforcing and harmful to the development of modern literature.

Neither of these two things means that an individual "classic" can't be very good for another person.

1. How has the existence of the classics influenced the development of modern literature? Recent literature still distinguishes between high and low, and newer works are constantly entering the body of the classics, provided that they have been around for long enough (50 years seems to be the minimum, which is fairly generous).

2. How is it legitimate to discount a body of works if you accept that its individual parts do have merit for people who aren't you?

3. How is it possible that you have not liked or appreciated a single book of a corpus that is A) quite loose and debatable, and B)comprises hundreds?

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?
feotakahari Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer from Looking out at the city Since: Sep, 2009
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
#66: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:18:55 PM

Personally, I'm not convinced that high schools should even teach literature. It's true that there are books that can only be understood through the analytical skills taught in those classes, but I consider those books to be badly written by definition—if you really have something important to say to the masses, you must write it so that it can be understood by the people least likely to have already heard your message, i.e. the least-educated people.

As for what makes for good writing, I believe that there are certain patterns of syllables and sentence lengths that the average person considers aesthetically pleasing, and in theory a sufficiently complex computer program could "solve" the problem of style by writing according to those patterns. It would probably have more difficulty with plot and characterization, though, and I'm not sure objective excellence can be found in those areas.

Edit: Okay, maybe I'll make an exception for Shakespeare, Beowulf, and all the stuff that's just too old to understand. But they ought to be covered under electives, not mandatory. And learning how to write stories by learning how to read them seems more like something that should be done in college.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:21:53 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
BlackHumor Since: Jan, 2001
#67: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:19:34 PM

2. How is it legitimate to discount a body of works if you accept that its individual parts do have merit for people who aren't you?

Because she's not discounting the actual body, she's discounting the concept of a classic?

If I picked a random 100 books from a bookstore, I'm sure you'd like a few of them. The classics are essentially picked randomly, thus they have no more inherent merit than a random selection of books.

Karalora Since: Jan, 2001
#68: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:20:00 PM

1. 50 years is too long with the current profligacy of publication across multiple media.

2. Please rephrase this question, it makes no sense.

3. I guess I'm just defective. That is the answer you wanted, right?

edited 9th Apr '11 4:49:35 PM by Karalora

Rottweiler Dog and Pony Show from Portland, Oregon Since: Dec, 2009
Dog and Pony Show
#69: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:20:39 PM

Of course they have. They weren't "the classics, " so academics didn't bother to assign them.

Well, which of the Moderns in The Battle of the Books deserve to be on the curriculum?

Walt Disney. And he did it without royal patronage. And now you're going to say, but all his big projects were adaptations of pre-existing works, at which point I'm going to eyeball you until you remember that we were talking about Shakespeare.

No, I'm not going to say.

When I have children, they'll most definitely be raised on Disney, some of whose films even improve on the source material and use the medium to such extra-literary effects with music and visuals as Richard Wagner did in his stage adaptations of legends (I'm particularly thinking of Sleeping Beauty here).

However, we still need to address the matter of what texts are most important for a school curriculum.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#70: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:21:51 PM

As on-topic threads, I would request that any analysis of Karalora's distaste for "The Classics" at least tentatively relate back to the notion of the existence of such texts to begin with. A "Well, how can your preferences be your preferences" really is a subject that no one else can comment on meaningfully, thus monopolizing the thread not because one person has a stance on the topic itself, but simply because the thread becomes about a person.

And that happens enough as is!

^Are you using "Important for the School Curriculum" as a synonym of Objective Excellence as it pertains to text?

edited 9th Apr '11 4:22:59 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

kashchei Since: May, 2010
#71: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:23:34 PM

Granted, but even within single books (or even single paragraphs) it's not great writing.

Off the top of my head, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes 9:11 have beautiful writing, at least in the King James translation. YMMV, but I don't think it's fair to say that it's not well-written, especially considering that scripture has a specific style that modern readers are not used to.

The classics are essentially picked randomly, thus they have no more inherent merit than a random selection of books.

Not true in the least. See my post in the other thread.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:24:35 PM by kashchei

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?
BlackHumor Since: Jan, 2001
#72: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:24:58 PM

Very few of them.

English classes, in my view, should not teach specific works of literature so much as the ability to read literature on your own time. The reason being that there is so much good (both in the sense of well-written and in the sense of important) literature out there it is not seriously possible to cram it all into any sane length of time.

So teach basic reading skills, and maybe very common allusions, but nothing too specific beyond that.

EDIT:

From Song of Solomon:

Friends 8 If you do not know, most beautiful of women, follow the tracks of the sheep and graze your young goats by the tents of the shepherds.

He 9 I liken you, my darling, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariot horses. 10 Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings, your neck with strings of jewels. 11 We will make you earrings of gold, studded with silver.

She 12 While the king was at his table, my perfume spread its fragrance. 13 My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. 14 My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi.

He 15 How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.

She 16 How handsome you are, my beloved! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant.

He 17 The beams of our house are cedars; our rafters are firs.

Maybe it's not bad for the time, but by modern standards this is pretty crappy love poetry. "I liken you to a mare among Pharaoh's chariot horses?" Really?

edited 9th Apr '11 4:30:18 PM by BlackHumor

JosefBugman Since: Nov, 2009
#73: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:25:21 PM

[up][up][up][up] Since when did a curriculum come up? You just randomly deciding that "now I will insert my gripe about the song of roland not being required reading" into this discussion seems a tad ham handed.

That and I think it would be great if it was put in, it'd mean more people go off that style of literature with a passion. I know that I have a longstanding vendetta with twelth night because I had to read that constantly in English Lit.

edited 9th Apr '11 4:25:48 PM by JosefBugman

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#74: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:26:06 PM

TV Tropes should be required reading, and nothing else.

RadicalTaoist scratching at .8, just hopin' from the #GUniverse Since: Jan, 2001
scratching at .8, just hopin'
#75: Apr 9th 2011 at 4:26:10 PM

For a school curriculum? I'd make all the work project-based, and let the students decide themselves where they want to look.

Seriously. Collaborate between the history and language teachers as necessary, require weekly progress reports on the status of their project, and point them in the direction of their local library. They want to study Negro spirituals and the oral tradition of stories like Br'er Rabbit (formerly Anansi)? Cool. They want to study Acadian - read, Cajun - holidays and history? Cool.

Cultural self-determination is a right. Kids can't exercise that right if they can't determine their culture on their own. Mark them on their ability to do independent research, not read the list of books we tell them to.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

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