Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each statement by whether it describes the canon as a record of QUALITY or as a record of TRANSMISSION.
Groups: Quality · Transmission
- Thirty-two of a thousand Athenian tragedies survive
- Greek texts reached us through Byzantine and Arabic copying
- Calvino: never finished saying what it has to say
- Eliot demands maturity of mind, manners and language
Hints
- One column is about what a work IS; the other about how it reached you.
- Survival rates and copying practices are transmission; tests you apply while reading are quality.
Show the answer
Quality: Eliot demands maturity of mind, manners and language, Calvino: never finished saying what it has to say
Transmission: Thirty-two of a thousand Athenian tragedies survive, Greek texts reached us through Byzantine and Arabic copying
Why
Both stories are true at once, and the interesting question is where they diverge. Transmission explains why we have three tragedians rather than thirty; quality tests explain why those three keep being worth the shelf space. A history that uses only one of them gets the canon wrong.
Practise The Canon, Tradition and the Idea of a Classic
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More questions on The Canon, Tradition and the Idea of a Classic
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