Example from the 'Canon': The Great Tradition

The Canon: The Great Tradition by F. R. Leavis

 F. R. Leavis' The Great Tradition, first published in 1948. The date is important. It helps explain the central aim of the book, to determine the significance of the novel after the war, the atom bomb and the concentration camp. Leavis' central criterion for great writing, that it has "a vital capacity for experience, a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity" is a clear reaction to an age characterised by the ideologies of fascism and communism. Where they sought to define, control and close down, literature creates, explores and opens up.

The Great Tradition survives because it throws down the gauntlet in a way no other work of criticism does. Sadly, few bother to read it through. If they did, they would find far more to inspire, provoke and engage them than can be found in many a current work.