Скачать или смотреть Reading the Canon - How Literature Turns Back Time

The literary canon is controversial - some people insist upon the importance of literary tradition, whilst others insist upon a need for diversity and representation for excluded people and issues.

I explore what is valuable about the Canon for how it helps us to navigate our lives and the passage of time. Literature creates “mental wealth” and I provide practical illustrations of this from various authors and artists - especially those from Nineteenth Century Russian literature and painting.

I defend the notion of the Western Canon and argue that all cultures need their own literary traditions to provide a reference point and sense of continuity.

How do you value other people’s culture and history if you do not know anything about your own culture’s artistic heritage?

There are many reasons for the advent of what Jonathan Haidt calls “The Anxious Generation” - Gen Z that is has recorded unprecedented levels of mental illness and unhappiness - but the loss of the Canon as a useful psychological reference point may be a contributing factor.

*Correction* - towards the end of the video I show a quote that, on the slide, says it is from the novel “Oblomov” - I mention during the talk that it is actually from an article instead, but I failed to remember the specific reference for the quote which is - Chapter 7 of Milton Ehre’s book “Oblomov and his Creator: Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov”.


Isaac Levitan artworks: @https://www.wikiart.org/en/isaac-levitan

Ilya Repin artworks: @https://www.wikiart.org/en/ilya-repin

#reading #literature #russianliterature