Pride and Prejudice. David Copperfield. Jane Eyre. When you think of classic literature, these are just a few of the many titles that spring to mind. You most likely read them in school, or picked one off of a ‘100 books you have to read before you die’ list in a bookshop. But have you ever stopped to ask why?

The literary canon is a collection of works that are widely considered to be important and influential, forming an essential part of British education. It’s used to teach writing, reading, how creative thought is formed and what it can do, serving often as a paradigm for what great literature is. But one of the key parts of education is teaching students to question, to think critically. And so I ask: who decided which books form the canon? Why is their opinion the ‘right’ one? And is the canon even relevant today, if it’s made up only of older literature?

“With an ever-increasing range of literary material, narrowing down the paradigms of literature seems counterproductive”

There is no simple answer to these questions. It goes without saying that the literary canon is important. Not only does it give us a sense of chronology, a way to understand how literature has shaped and been shaped by the world, but suggests there is endless joy to be found in the perusing of stories from the past. But with an ever-increasing range of literary material, narrowing down the paradigms of literature seems counterproductive. There should be a way to make the canon more accessible and malleable for today’s scholars – and people have begun to try. In an article in The Guardian, teacher Jeffery Boakye discusses all the texts he used to supplement existing canonical ideas and writers with his students – he juxtaposed the poetry of William Blake with lyrics written by Dizzee Rascal, and laid Zadie Smith, Wilfred Owen, and Eminem side by side in his curriculum. In this way, the traditional literary canon remains intact in the English classroom – it would be difficult for it not to – but while interacting with the ideas of the modern day.

This then raises the question of how far we are willing to go. New material with which to supplement teaching of the canon becomes endless when the internet is taken into account. Instagram poets, TikTok lyricists and political debates on X (formerly Twitter) push the boundaries of what can be considered literary or intellectual discourse. But a boundary is necessary at some point. Without one, any string of randomly collated words could be considered important enough to be a part of the literary canon. And that would be crazy. Right?

“Like history, the literary canon can exist while also being questioned for its values, and reframed where necessary”

Arguably, doing away with the canon altogether and considering everything that involves words to be literature would provide an entirely new, quite postmodern foundation upon which to base learning. But throwing the canon into a metaphorical skip would restrict the study of literature, because the works and writers within it shaped literary history, and that fact cannot be changed. What can be changed, however, is the canon’s relevance. Teaching it in conjunction with new and different works causes the canon to become less about building up unshakeable values that match those our Victorian predecessors would respect, and more about being in dialogue with the way things are now. Education is not built upon immoveable pillars. It lies outside objectivity, and within the lived experiences of scholars and educators. In such a way, the supposed problem of subjectivity (who gets to decide what’s best?) broadens our scope for knowledge.

There is always the argument that teaching the literary canon is no different to teaching history. Books are artefacts that provide insight into the lives of their authors, events from history, and political affairs. Thus, they must be taught as historical facts usually would – in a rigid, set method that clearly delineates what is and isn’t correct. However, it is narrow-minded to think that history operates in such a way. There are always contrasting perspectives and ideas because the world is not binary. Ideas of right and wrong can be argued into oblivion. Complexity of thought must be valued – people can hold multiple viewpoints at once. Thus, like history, the literary canon can exist while also being questioned for its values, and reframed where necessary.

The traditional idea of the literary canon as an established selection of works that form the basis of education is therefore, on its own, unsustainable in an ever-changing modern era. But, when literary history is taught as part of a wider conversation, and in conjunction with the immediate issues we find ourselves facing today, its importance is re-established. It becomes part of the framework for a literary tradition that encompasses the present and the future as much as it does the past.