Origins of the Western canon

The root of the Western canon is discovered! Like so many other aspects of modern curricula and modern modes, it goes back to Rome. Specifically, first century Rome when the fashion in literary circles swung from studying living poets to looking much further back to the early Latin poets (your Virgils and your Terences).

As I noted before, there's a certain arrogance inhering in studying works of your own time. As I type that, the fact that modern education actually teaches a lot of contemporary writing comes to mind. But under current circumstances and in our current system, it's not arrogant to use modern writing in teaching. Why? Because there's just so much of it.

Antiquity was a great stranger to the printing press. Scrolls and codexes took time to make, along with various resources of great value. People had to be sure that they wanted to write down what they were writing down because it might well cost them an otherwise valuable sheep or scroll of papyrus (not to mention the ink and time needed).

In a way, then, authors had to have a high opinion of themselves (or others had to, at least) to go ahead and write. It could be argued that the "traditional" publishing model is a continuation of this sort of valuation before writing, only the value isn't necessarily of the materials it takes to make a book, but rather the returns that a third party can expect on the content (and context) of a book.

Because we have so much writing in print and publicly available today, I think there's an unspoken understanding that no single perspective can be privileged over another (the foundation of any literary canon).

All writers (and all perspectives) worth studying have insightful things to say, and so the onus of arrogance is really taken off of the society at large and put onto the individual instructor when modern works are taught. Of course, at this point in the conversation "arrogance" becomes the wrong word. "Confidence" or "interest" are better - "passion," even.

After all, the massive variety of great works across genres and forms works as a silent rust that's settled onto the Western canon. And rust never sleeps.