Revisiting Classics, Revitalizing Meaning: Reading Classics through Contemporary Theoretical Perspectives
Classics establish the benchmarks and conventions that literature is generally anticipated to produce. Matthew Arnold regarded classic literature as embodying “high truth and seriousness,” aesthetic beauty, and a lasting quality that imparts moral and intellectual significance. He asserted that such works attain a “poetic” magnificence through superior subject matter and expression, employing a “touchstone” approach to evaluate a poem’s worth by contrasting it with those revered classics. By revisiting classics in the contemporary context through current theoretical frameworks, one opens up avenues for critical engagement, facilitating familiarity with the enduring norms and competencies that have received lasting recognition, while also questioning the dominant narrative authority and the author’s ideological stance, notions of class, race, gender and so on. Revisiting traditional works with a contemporary theoretical framework also facilitates readers’ comprehension of the universal and conditional aspects of meaning as shaped by material and socio-cultural contexts. Revisiting classic literature with an awareness of the current socio-cultural and economic frameworks illuminates the relevance and influences of these classics within today’s literary expressions, promoting critical conversations surrounding the notions of ‘anxiety of influence’ and ‘tradition and individual talent’. However, in the present age, classics are primarily formed by the educational elites and, in turn, thoroughly institutionalised problematising its very essence as a historical and collective formation. In this manner, the creation of classics evolves into an ideological process that becomes estranged from collective recognition and representation. Nonetheless, it is essential to align the integration of fresh perspectives with a nuanced understanding of the text’s historical and cultural context that facilitated condition and stimulus for production of classics, avoiding anachronism and over-interpretation.
P.S. In both the Abstract and the Introduction, the author should briefly explain why the selected text(s) may be considered as ‘classic.’
For paper submission, the submission window on our website will remain open for the period between January, 1, 2026 and January, 10, 2026. Authors writing in Assamese must submit their articles in both PMD (typed in Geetanjali) and PDF formats. Regarding modalities to be followed for submission, scholars are requested to go through the general CFP published on our website and in this issue. Scholars of folklore may send articles authored on any subject of their choice (to be written either in Assamese or English).
