How Education Shapes Literary Canon: A Reflection on 'Of Mice and Men' and Ancient Greek Tragedy

A whole generation in England has some familiarity with John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. This widespread recognition is not an accidental reflection of popular taste but a direct consequence of its inclusion in the national curriculum for the teaching of English literature at high schools until 2015. This example illustrates the significant role educational curricula play in the promotion and dissemination of certain texts, thereby sidelining many others. This practice of shaping literary canon through education is not unique to modern times. A similar phenomenon can be observed in antiquity with the Greek tragedies, as detailed in a recent paper by William Marx, "How Canonization Transformed Greek Tragedy."

The Canonization of Greek Tragedy

Of the hundreds of Greek tragedies written in the 5th century BC, only 32 are extant today. Twenty-four of these (seven by Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles, and ten by Euripides) share distinctive features in the manuscript tradition. A 19th-century hypothesis, which still stands as the best explanation of the evidence, proposed that by the late 2nd century AD, there existed a widely diffused anthology of these 24 tragedies used in schools. This anthology explains why the plays often appear in the same order in the manuscripts, come with scholia (explanatory notes), and why after the 2nd century, papyri containing plays not included in these 24 tragedies become suddenly scarce.

The Criteria Behind the Selection

There is no preface to indicate the principles behind the selection of these particular 24 tragedies. Aristotle, for instance, highly rated Euripides' Cresphontes, but it is not among the 24. It is likely that the selection was primarily educational. The anthology allowed references to the Homeric canon, already familiar to students, which explains why tragedies drawing their subjects from the Trojan War are so frequent in the surviving corpus. Additionally, the selection arranged a progressive level of difficulty from one play to another and provided parallels between the works of the three authors.

Our modern understanding of Greek tragedy has been shaped partly by Aristotle's theoretical discussions in the Poetics and partly by this 2nd-century selection of 24 tragedies, chosen based on unknown criteria. But what about the other eight surviving tragedies?

The Alphabetical Collection

Some medieval manuscripts include, in addition to the ten selected plays by Euripides, nine more plays (one of which is the satyr play Cyclops). These additional plays come without any scholia, unlike the selected ones. They are classified more or less according to the initials of the Greek titles: epsilon, eta, kappa, and iota.

These eight alphabetical plays form a collection totally independent of any academic choice, preserved by accident according to the random order of the alphabet. This makes a significant difference: it provides a statistically representative sample that allows us to know Euripides' tragedies more objectively.

A Comparative Analysis

The comparison of these alphabetical plays with the school-selected tragedies yields striking results. The alphabetical plays include some of the most atypical tragedies in the entire corpus, such as Helen, Ion, and Iphigenia in Tauris. Among the eight alphabetical tragedies, only one, Heracles, ends badly. In contrast, among the ten selected plays, only two end well. This stark difference highlights the potential bias in the educational selection process, which favored certain themes and structures over others.

Conclusion

The example of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and the canonization of Greek tragedy both illustrate how educational curricula can significantly shape literary canon. By selecting specific texts for educational purposes, certain works are promoted and disseminated widely, while others are sidelined or forgotten. This practice has long-lasting impacts on how literature is perceived and valued across generations.

References

• Marx, William. How Canonization Transformed Greek Tragedy. Chapter 6 in Canonisation as Innovation, edited by Agut-Labordère & Versluys, Brill online.