Aristocrats or Anarchists: Who Has Power over Literature?

Abstract

A traditional function of literary education has been to serve as a marker of class, to exclude those unable or unwilling to acquire it. Canonical literature plays the role today that quoting classical Greek and Latin authors once did: not as a “higher” form of communication, but a secret code among members of an elite. The fact that literature plays this role is a symptom of the failure of a general education of literature that should benefit every member of society equally. Literature as a liberating, even revolutionary force is the antithesis of such an aristocratic model and has allowed for the political justification of a “literary pedagogy for the masses”.