The Classic: Literary Images of Permanence and Change

by Frank Kermode

Overview

Frank Kermode attempts to determine the criteria for classical literature through an analysis of the social and intellectual importance of great works of the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674133983
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1983
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Frank Kermode (1919–2010) was a British literary critic and the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Sense of an Ending, a defining work of fiction theory. A regular contributor to London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, Kermode was knighted in 1991. He was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

1. tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes, quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi

2. urbem, quam dicunt Romam...putavi......huic nostrae similem...

3. magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo

4. atgue hic ingentem comitum adfluxisse novorum invenio admirans numerum...

Editorial Reviews

Kermode is one of the rare critics and scholars—it is in any case uncommon to be both—who offer a new and unusual insight on whatever author or topic they turn to.

New Statesman

Kermode has one of the finest minds in contemporary criticism, and there is nothing that he touches that he does not in some unexpected way—to use some of his own terms—translate, renovate, eternalize.

Robert Gorham Davis

The subtitle…modestly describes the tensions that generate the remarkable energy of this highly original study. The old conception of classic, Kermode argues, is tied to Virgilian attitudes of empire and eternity; the modern use of the term embraces change, plurality and secularization. The Classic brilliantly mediates between the two views of literature and culture… This closely argued and clearly articulated essay…rests on formidable learning.

New Republic - George Core

Taking as his central concept ‘the classic,’ the literary work we speak of as enduring, Kermode asks how a text can retain its identity as its time-bound readers change… The Classic is an enormously suggestive book, elegant and accessible.

Yale Review

Kermode has one of the finest minds in contemporary criticism, and there is nothing that he touches that he does not in some unexpected way—to use some of his own terms—translate, renovate, eternalize.

Commonweal

The subtitle…modestly describes the tensions that generate the remarkable energy of this highly original study. The old conception of classic, Kermode argues, is tied to Virgilian attitudes of empire and eternity; the modern use of the term embraces change, plurality and secularization. The Classic brilliantly mediates between the two views of literature and culture… This closely argued and clearly articulated essay rests on formidable learning.

The New Republic

Kermodehas one of the finest minds in contemporary criticism, and there is nothing that he touches that he does not in some unexpected way to use some of his own termstranslate, renovate, eternalize.

Commonweals