College aantekeningen
Lectures The Classical Canon
These are all the lectures for the course The Classical Canon: The Heritage of Antiquity from Klazina Staat and Vladimir Stissi for the bachelor Ancient Studies
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The Classical Canon 1: The Heritage of AntiquityLecture 1: The Canon
Main question: What do we mean when talking about ‘classics’, ‘canon’ and ‘the classical
canon’?
- classic & cannon are about things considered ‘outstanding’ and ‘masterpieces’
- Canon is about origins, it started in the 1600’s because that’s when we had the
Golden Age of Dutch culture, and that was when the Dutch state was formed (after
Spanish war)
- The best of the best, the idea that the works are excellent, better than others, divinely
inspired → important aspect: canon can be something national, something related to
how a nation is, how a group of people that belong together are looking at
themselves and their own history
Modern ideas about the ‘canon’ - some observation
- focus on authenticity and authorship: importance of the ‘great’, the ‘genius’, the
‘masterpieces’’
- ‘nice’ numbers
- 2-fold system of classification: authors/artists & genres/types of literature (‘the
dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides’, ‘classical composers’, ‘French
history painters’, ‘Dutch landscapes/still life/portraiture’)
- Traditionally nationally defined (e.g. canon of ‘English literature’, the ‘Dutch
17th-century Masters, the ‘French history-painters’)
- A way to reinforce national identity by canonical art
- Focus on origins: ‘foundational works or persons, the ‘first’ authors of a genre or
founders of a culture
- Cannon is matter of debate
- Canon is meant to ‘give meaning’ to history, and where you come from as a culture
- By including women and female artists it becomes more complete
- The canon is not fixed, it is a matter of debate
- Closed vs. Open:
- Canon often have a rather fixed character
- At the same time, there is much debate about the ‘upgrading’ of canons in
current media with ‘missing’ elements (women, black authors/artists, peole
from non-Western origins, etc.)
- The ‘great’ vs. the ‘marginalised’ (should we include the people/elements that
have been overlooked?)
- Inclusivity vs. exclusivity
→ Classics & Canon are western terms
The ‘canon’ definitions
, - ‘The list of works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest
quality.’ (Oxford English Dictionary)
- Canon is defined in terms of lists of a certain time, genre, cultural context, place etc.
- Idea of permanency, fixed character, which after all is an illusion, how permanent can
cannons be in the end?
‘Canon in Antiquity’
- In Antiquity the word ‘canon’ was not used the same as we do now
- Outside Christianity, the term ‘canon’ is never used to denote a list of Greek and
Latin authors
- In that case, other words are used for instance, hoi engkrithentes (‘those included’),
ordo (‘order’, ‘rank’)
- ‘Canon’ mostly used in the meaning of ‘model’ ‘standard’, ‘rule’ (e.g. the sculptor
Polyclitus’ lost book Canon – on the right proportions of artworks)
- The Canon of Polykleitos is for example about the right proportions of an artwork
(more about rules)
Hoi engkrithentes / ordo
- Comes from Hellenistic age (323-31 BC)
- Library of Alexandria, Mouseion
- Idea that there were Greek authors used as models → some authors better than
others and should be included in libraries so they could be studied (founding fathers,
foundational texts of greek models) and seen as models to be used by students as
good Greek writing and speech as a model
- For use of grammarians in their schools
- In Rome: term ordo, ordines (list) to denote accepted authors and their works
The ten Attic orators:
- Aeschines, Andocides, Antiphon, Demosthenes, Dinarchus, Hyperides, Isaeus,
Isocrates, Lycurgus, Lysias.
Nine lyrical poets:
- Pindar, Bacchylides, Sappho, Anacreon, Stesichorus, Simonides, Ibycus, Alcaeus,
Alcman
Nine Muses:
- Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erator, Polyhymnia, Urania
Seven Wonders of the World (they have an open character!)
- Pyramids, Walls of Babylon / Pharos of Alexandria, Hanging gardens of Babylon,
Zeus statue in Olympia, Artemis temple in Ephesus, Mausoleum of Halicarnassus,
Colossus of Rhodes
Mesopotamia: Sumerian king list
- List in Sumerian of Sumerian city states with their kings, probably composed in the
late 3th millennium BC to legitimise the position of later rulers
- Sumer: Mesopotamian civilization, c. 4000-2000 BC
- To create a common culture
‘Canon’ as a ‘list of authors’
- Used for the first time in early Christianity
, - Origen of Alexandria (Greek theologian, ca. 184-254 AD) speaks about a ‘New
Testament canon’ of four gospels (cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.25.3) •
- Alexandria was a famous centre of learning in Hellenistic times, strong tradition there
of thinking about what do we see as important authors and works to follow
- Athanasius of Alexandria (Greek Church father, ca. 370 AD): kanonizô (to include in
the canon’, De decretis nicenae synodis 18,3)
- Origins lie in the debate about the Tanakh, i.e. the Hebrew Bible: the source of the
Christian Old Testament, canonized in ca. 1st cent. BC
- Christianity: debeate out the canon of the New Testament
- Is the canon closed or open?
‘Canon’ as a list of classical authors
- David Ruhnken: first to use the term ‘canon’ for classical (i.e. non-Biblical) authors
(1768), based on the idea of the Biblical canon
- Nations that have their own canons appearing
The phenomenon canon in antiquity - some observation
- The term canon is for the first time used in the meaning of selected list in early
Christianity
- The term canon is applied to Greco-Roman classical authors only in the 8th century
- Idea of a selected lists exists in earlier times (e.g. Ancient Mesopotamia, the
Hellenistic Age)
- Influential lists having a closed character but also open (cf. Sumerian kings’ list,
Horace on the lyric poets)
- Often nice numbers
- In the Greco-Roman tradition: list of authors & genres/texts
‘The Classical’: ancient definitions
- Classicus: a Roman term denoting social stratification - belonging to the ‘first rank’ /
‘first class’ of citizens
- Classic is a term for a model to imitate
- Firs metaphorical use denoting a ‘classical’ writer: Fronto, quotes in Aulus Gellius
Noctes Atticae
- When having a grammatical problem, Fronto suggests to consult a model
author (classicus)
- From here the meaning of ‘first-class’ in the meaning of ‘useful’: for imitation,
because of grammatically correct speech (in school, the class)
- Classicus = those authors who stand the test of time
→ Basic for the modern understanding of the term ‘classical’
Modern definitions
- Oxford English Dictionairy: ‘A work of art of recognized and established value’’
- A broad term, with many meanings
Schein:
1. To denote worth, rank, or perfection and recognition of exemplary status → First
class authors/works (‘deutsche Klassiker’ Schiller, Goethe, Hölderlin, ‘the ancient
classics’)
, 2. To denote a chronological period considered best → E.g. ‘Classical period’ of ancient
Greece (5th-4th c): Peak of (Athenian) city state, increased autonomy from the
Persian Empire
3. To denote a specific historical style → E.g. ‘Classical style’ in ancient Greek sculpture
(against ‘archaic’ and ‘hellenistic’ style)
4. To denote an aesthetic category → A type of art fully imitative, not deviating from
nature
→ still very influential today
Canon and the classics in Rome
- Roman culture: preservation of the culture and literature of the Greeks (the
‘conquered’) e.g. in public libraries
- Also creative reception: Roman literature and art as the imitation of emulation of the
Greek tradition, especially in the Augustan era and beyond
- Questions for Roman authors/critics:
- Who are the successors of the Greeks as the greatest authors in Latin
- How does the Latin canon relate to the Greek one?
- The Greek canon is expanded with a Roman counterpart
- Augustan ‘project’: Virgil - Homer, lyric poetry - Horace
- In art there is a return to Greek models
- This is heightened in the Augustan era
Quintilian: expansion of the Greek canon with a Latin one
- First state-subsidized teacher of rhetoric under Vespasian, c. 70 AD, perhaps to
redefine Roman identity under the second imperial dynasty (Flavian age, 69-97 AD).
- Wrote handbooks for orators in which he went back to Greek models, that
students should follow in their own work
- He compiled list, his own Greek canon: Overviews of best authors in Greek and
Latin. These list follow those compiled in the library of Alexandria
- More or less closed (more closed than Roman lists of authors, in which is
more variation of sources)
- Schein highlights the importance of the school as the site of transmission of the
classical languages and cultures cannot be overestimated → school is the place of
canonization
- especially the ability to read and write classical Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek,
was a path toward upward social mobility, enabling students of the ‘humanities’ in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to gain employment as secretaries and legates of
city-states and teachers in noble families → So it was also about power, social
mobility, human capital (leads to inclusion and exclusion)
Schein 2008 on the ‘classical’
- Link classics and class)room): classica are those works having educational or
institutional authority in the sense that they are used in or belonging to the classed of
colleges and schools
- Classes are the place in which ideas about the canon and classical are formed an
transmitted to students
- Classical authors and texts are taught as models for imitation
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