Panel: Size Matters: Big Books and the Idea of the Classic(al)
Talks
- Classics, Commodification, and the Edwardian bookshelf
- Big Classic, Little Classicisms
- Multi-vocality and Cervantes’ Catalog of Classics
Introduction
In this panel, we explore the idea of the Classic(-al/-s), class performance, and consumerism through three different lenses.The first talk takes a macro-approach by examining the idea of the Classic through the lens of consumerism and capitalism on the one hand in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and self-identification and authenticity through the example of the Everyman’s Library on the other. The second talk continues this strand of self-representation by how Tolstoy positions War and Peace as another Iliad, whilst incorporating but few de facto classicisms. Two allusions (one to Andrei’s copy of Caesar’s Commentaries, the other to Offenbach’s La belle Hélène) tease out similar questions of class performance and the role of the Classic within it. The final talk shifts to Don Quixote as it considers the Prologue’s classical and generic expectations and the titular character’s bookshelf in connection with class and gender readership. In short, this panel contributes to understanding the interrelationship between performance of class and status, and consumerism and the all-pervading influence of the Classic/al.
Paper #1: Classics, Commodification, and the Edwardian bookshelf
What happens when ‘classics’ and capitalism meet, and who benefits from their consumption? We propose a joint presentation on how ‘classics’ developed as a commercial property, straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tensions between the original and the copy (Benjamin 2018 [1935]), the acquisition of antiquity, and the atavistic pursuit of the ‘classical’ as a consecrating device are all in full force during this period. Placing emphasis on the role of cultural intermediaries in bringing ‘C/classical’ books into non-elite venues (Hall and Stead 2020), our work centers on the rise of the mass market as a crucial phenomenon that illuminates contemporary discussions around ‘C/classics’ from an interdisciplinary perspective (viz. Denecke 2019; Most 2021). One of our projects explores the post-industrial revolution impetus to select among ‘lifestyle markers’ as a means of self-identification (Outka 2009), and the role of the ‘classic’ text as illustrative of a wider desire for contemporary ‘authenticity’ grounded in a sense of cultural heritage. The other’s research takes Everyman’s Library as a central case study to build on similar theories, investigating what the ‘classic’ reprint series (Hammond 2006) can tell us about constructed notions of ‘great books’ as cultural commodities and looking at the intersections between competing sets of ‘classics’ within a uniform literary collection.
Bibliography
Benjamin, W. 2018 [1935]. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. In F. Frascina and C. Harrison (eds.) Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Boulder: Routledge, 217–20.
Denecke, W. 2019. ‘What Does a Classic Do? Tapping the Powers of a Comparative Phenomenology of the Classic/al’. In M. Maufort (ed.) Recherche littéraire/Literary Research. Peter Lang International Academic Publishing Group, 29–57.
Hall, E. and Stead, H. 2020. A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland, 1689 to 1939. London: Routledge.
Hammond, M. 2006. Reading, Publishing, and the Formation of Literary Taste in England, 1880–1914. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Most, G. W. 2021. ‘What is a Classic Text?’. Poetica 52, 1–12.
Outka, E. 2009. Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paper #2: Big Classic, Little Classicisms
Tolstoy claimed that “without false modesty, War and Peace is like the Iliad” (Griffiths and Rabinowitz 1983, 97), alluding to his vision for a Russian epic with the consequent vivid battle scenes and contrasting international and interpersonal dramas. Yet despite its immersion in a classical idiom, there are few references, most brief and oblique in their significance. This talk considers two of these ‘little classicisms’ illuminate Tolstoy’s engagement with classical antiquity: Prince Andrei’s possession of a copy of Caesar’s Commentaries and Hélène Kuragina’s being referred to as “la belle Hélène.” Andrei’s self-identification connects Napoleon to Homeric heroism through ideas of kudos and aidos (Jepsen 1978, 38) as well as to Caesar’s military conquests. Moreover, Hélène’s epithet refers to Offenbach’s eponymous opera despite Tolstoy’s avid disdain for the genre (Lowe 1990, 74). Through parody, La Belle Hélène interrogates the question of Helen’s culpability (Magure 2009, 183, Munteanu 2012, 94), thus unsettling her Russian namesake’s traditional portrayal as pure “antitype” (Jepsen 1978, 54).
Like Talks 1 and 3, this talk evaluates the force of the classic and the effects it can have
on one’s perception of the owner of a classical text. In short, both these examples show the
gravity that seemingly minor allusions can grant and activate to these characters’ self-fashionings that its author imagined as a classical epic on a broader scale.
Bibliography
Griffiths, F. T., and S. J. Rabinowitz. (1983). “Tolstoy and Homer.” Comparative Literature 35.2: 97–125.
Jepsen, L. (1978) From Achilles to Christ: The Myth of the Hero in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Tallahassee: Jepsen.
Lowe, D. (1990). “Natasha Rostova Goes to the Opera.” Opera Quarterly 7.3: 74.
Maguire, L. E. (2009). Helen of Troy : From Homer to Hollywood. Chichester, U.K. ; Wiley- Blackwell.
Munteanu, Dana. (2012). “Parody of Greco-Roman Myth in Offenbach’s Orfée aux enfers and La belle Hélène.” Syllecta Classica 23: 77-101.
Paper #3: Multi-vocality and Cervantes’ Catalogue of Classics
In the prologue of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, an authorial, step-fatherly voice has a friend suggest that the author insert Latin phrases (including a misquotation of Cato, which is in fact from Ovid [Tristia 1.9.5]) not only in order to present the proper persona and expectations to the reader but also to foreshadow questions of transformation, exile, and censorship through the Metamorphoses and Tristia intertexts respectively (De Armas 2013 and 2014, 283-5). The friend offers a catalog of names (ranging from the Old Testament Goliath to Ovid’s Medea). These references anticipate the novel’s internal readership, including illiterate listeners — and witnesses — such as Don Quixotes’ niece and housekeeper, as well as literate readers like Luscinda and Dorotea. Cervantes inscribes an internal audience of readers that “[cuts] across class and gender lines” (Triplette 2018, 118). In this talk, we examine Luscinda’s references to Ovid’s Heroides to show how Cervantes’ internal imagined readership draws on the idea of the classic(al) to bolster social and economic claims to power. In turn, we reflect on our own roles as readers of the now-classic Don Quixote and its embedded classics throughout (Andino Sánchez 2023). These layers of reference reflect centuries of economic market developments that continue to shape readers’ tastes (Wilkinson and Lorenzo 2017). These developments, and the prestige that classic-awareness imparts to Cervantes’ characters, lead us back to the question: why does Don Quixote himself, who apparently ekes out a meager living, have such a large library of chivalric books? Much like Talks 1 and 2 (Cervantes, too, refers to Caesar’s commentaries), this talk examines the effects of book-owning on class and character creation and the tensions that it creates between Don Quixote’s class, classicism, and consumerism.
Bibliography
Andino Sánchez, A. d. P. (2023). “Cervantes y el espejo de la «Eneida» en el «Quijote». Estudio filológico de los capítulos 17 y 18 de la Segunda Parte.” Hipogrifo. Revista de literatura y cultura del Siglo de Oro. 11.2: 431-68.
Armas, F.A., de (2014). Don Quixote as Ovidian Text. In: J.F. Miller and C.E. Newlands (eds.) A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid.
Nadeau C. A. (2002). Women of the Prologue: Imitation Myth and Magic in Don Quixote I. Bucknell University Press; Associated University Presses.
Triplette, S. (2018). “The Triumph of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part I.”: In Chivalry, Reading, and Women’s Culture in Early Modern Spain: From Amadís de Gaula to Don Quixote (pp. 117–152). Amsterdam University Press.
Wilkinson, A.S. & Lorenzo, A.U. (2017). A Maturing Market : The Iberian Book World in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century. Brill.