Pop Canon

[jbor]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0010/07/spectrum/spectrum2.html

Excerpt:

    The literature departments of our universities have been turning their
   backs on the literary classics that make up the so-called canon of great
   literature. Fewer students study Shakespeare or get to chart the
   structure of *Paradise Lost*. Academic relativity ordains that literary
   classics have been constructed by vested interests; there is no intrinsic
   value and you might as well be pushing sectional writing (gays, blacks,
   you name it) or analysing the reservoir of the popular imagination, TV
   soaps and cartoons. The interesting thing about this academic bypassing
   of the classic (and the contemporary writing that might become classic)
   is that there has been a parallel movement back to the canon exemplifed
   by the rash of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and every other kind of literary
   film.