New Thoughts on Old Books

The reasons to read contemporary works, and older ones, by people of color, indigenous peoples, and other groups underrepresented in anthologies until recently are compelling and should be obvious. The reasons to continue reading “classic” texts that have until recently held places of honor in anthologies and English curricula are, however, less obvious to many contemporary readers. This book is emphatically not a defense of the literary “canon” of generations past, but does bring the thoughts of a range of professors of English to bear on a question about which many undergraduates and adult readers wonder. These thoughtful, engaging, personal responses to why read Homer or Milton or Spenser or James, among others, are meant as invitations to revisit “old assignments” in new terms.