It's not true that "only the best automatically survives."
A huge amount of culture has simply been lost, including most of the
works of playrights like Euripides, Sophocles, many others. All or most
of the literary, musical, and dramatic works of whole cultures are gone,
probably forever.
Authors, composers, etc. are often ignored because they belonged to a
culturally ignored group. They were female, they belonged to the wrong
racial group, etc. It takes someone to do modern research, and in some
sense marketing, to "revive" them.
On the other hand, there are some English Lit works that aren't really
all that wonderful. Some of those interminable 18th-century novels from
the Days Before Editors? And face it, _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering
Heights_ are just romance novels. They're good romance novels, but are
now "great literature" because they're time-hallowed. If they appeared
on some publisher's list today, as new works, they'd get decent reviews
in a few places, then quite possibly get put out of print after a couple
years and forgotten.
And now, with the sheer, enormous, volume of stuff being published, a
lot of excellent books meet this fate.
Fran
Lavolta Press
http://www.lavoltapress.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 9/22/2005 7:06:50 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
The works of Homer and Shakespeare (if they were even single authors,
which is another issue entirely) were pop culture in their day.
Yes yes yes....but so were a bunch of playwrights and poets, who were
probably MORE popular, that we will never [thank goodness] hear of. Time weeds out
pop culture for you so only the "real" culture remains. Remember, Bach was
considered old fashion and Euripides lost the play contests.
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