International Dopers: National Literary Canons

Cafe Society
1

No, this question is not as weighty as it appears. During a lull in my Chinese class today, I got to chatting with other students about literature, and specifically about the question of national mandatory reading. I was under the impression that every country on Earth had some books that every student has to read, as part of a sort of nationalist education - part of being an educated member of every society is having read a few particular works of literature, and every adult will have had a copy of these books shoved into their hands.

For Americans, the only other American and I agreed that Mark Twain, specifically Huckleberry Finn, was mandatory. We couldn’t reach any further agreement, however - she insisted on ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ which I’d never studied, and I insisted on ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ ditto for her.

My Spanish friend told me that everyone in Spain has had to look at Don Quixote, albeit in a modernized version. Although he was aware of South American literature, particularly the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he himself attended high school in the early 80s and it hadn’t really become a thing there yet.

The one French girl in my class, who admittedly attended French-language international school in China, told me that the number 1 was Les Miserables. There were a few others she mentioned that I’d never heard of, one of which was ‘The Fables’ of someone.

What struck me as being particularly interesting was that among the 3 Japanese students, they could not agree on a single thing that they’d all read, or that they’d all had to read. The most likely work, the Tales of Genji, was a washout - one had studied it intensively, one had studied it slightly, and one had never studied it at all. After some frantic discussion amongst themselves, no agreement could be reached. (My suggestion of the Imperial Rescript on Education was not taken kindly.)

I only had 30 seconds to talk to some Iranians between classes, but while they agreed that there were some works on the Iranian revolution that they’d all read, they couldn’t give me any names, though our discussion was cut short. (I specifically excluded the Qur’an when talking to them, because that’s not Persian-language.) Both had heard of the Baburnama, but neither had studied it.

So here’s my question for the dissembled assembly. In what country and language did you attend secondary school, and what were the literary pieces - books, poems, and the like - that you had to study? Are there any such works that are mandatory throughout your country and culture, such that every educated adult is familiar with them?

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Nationalist must mean a different thing for you and for me; we read books written in Spanish as part of our Spanish Language class, but it wasn’t “Spanish literature” in the sense of “written by Spaniards” and there certainly wasn’t any “look how great our writers are!” aspect to it; there was a lot of it from Spain simply because people started writing in Spanish in Spain several hundred years before they started doing it in Latin America, much less in Latin American countries.

I attended high school in the mid-80s and had to pick Cien años de soledad or El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, among other works by Latin American authors. As for “modernized version of the Quixote”, modernized my ass, we had to read several chapters in 7th grade and “your pick of any two Novelas Ejemplares” in 10th (in the end, the whole class ended reading all of them, we just liked them that much). But then, the fragments from medieval poems weren’t modernized either - both medieval and 16th century Spanish are perfectly understandable without any translation (you’re likely to need a dictionary for specialized words which have fallen into disuse, though, such as agricultural or military terms).

Those who picked the humanities track got Universal Lit: Molière, Shakespeare, the Oddisey… for some reason a huge amount of it seemed to be in verse.

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I think he just means national education plan, rather than nationalist. Also, Odyssey.

The UK National Curriculum mostly only has classics at the secondary school level. These are “challenging” works for primary school readers (up to age 12) from the secondary list:

4

Ju pipol yust spel funi. Appreciate the correction, I really should have looked it up.

5

I wouldn’t feel bad. I typed it incorrectly three times when I tried to correct you. :slight_smile:

6

Probably Jean de La Fontaine.

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Are you sure the UK has a National Curriculum?
Surely it’s just for England and Wales as Scotland has a different education system.

Sunset Song seemed to be mandatory for all Scottish schools in the 80’s & 90’s.

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It’s not clear me whether the OP meant to ask “What works of literature have the vast majority of educated citizens of Country X had to read as part of their formal education?” or “What works of Country X’s own literature have the vast majority of educated citizens of Country X had to read as part of their formal education?” But I suspect he intended the latter. Either way, I think it’s an interesting question.

I wonder if this is an age/generational thing. I suspect To Kill a Mockingbird may have replaced The Scarlet Letter as required reading sometime shortly after I left high school in 1985. For America, The Great Gatsby at least comes close to canonical. If you don’t restrict it to novels, there are some political writings that most Americans have had to study (The Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, at least the Preable to the Constitution); and maybe there’s some poetry on the list (Frost? Longfellow?).

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Babarnama is rather a stupid choice. It was written in Farsi yes, but by a Central Asian conqueror of India and moreover, the founder of a dynasty that would fight against the Iranian for centuries. Farsi was at the time the lingua franca of the region, meaning Iran, C Asia, South Asia. I must say, you really have little understanding of the region and Iran if you did not think of Shahnameh by Firdowsi. Plus the Quran (like the Bible) is scripture not literature.:rolleyes:

Actually, for Pakistan I cannot think of much. All the provincial and regional languages have their own canon (much of which you have to read in school anyway wherever you are…fun). There is Urdu poetry byIqbaland Ghalib parts of which most people are somewhat familiar with. Plus there are the English books/literature everyone has to read in school, like many Dickens novels, Shakespeare’s plays like Merchant of Venice and some others.

10

In Korea almost every student is exposed to the exact same reading list. The old traditional tales that highlight filial piety and general virtue. The wartime poetry that hits you over the head with a stick with its patriotic symbolism. And the short stories written during the Japanese occupation and after it, all incredibly bleak. There’s this one story called “My Lucky Day” in which a poor tuktuk driver has a great day and finally earns enough money to buy his sick wife some proper food, but when he gets home, she’s dead. Another famous short story (the title escapes me) about a country boy who falls in love with a city girl but then she dies.

There’s a famous poem where the speaker is mourning the departure of their beloved and says things like “please walk over me gently as you leave” which is supposed to be about the pain of losing your country (to the Japanese) but to me always seemed like a weird ode to sadomasochistic relationships.

We also read some traditional poetry which I hated with a passion because a lot of it was written in classical Chinese.

The thing about Korean literature classes in high school is that students are not encouraged to discuss possible interpretations of the text. The teacher tells you what it means and that’s the end of it.

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I apologize for being inarticulate; I meant the latter. Obviously exceptions have to be made for people in the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds (and, to a lesser extent, the French-speaking world) because we have access to so much literature in our language that is nevertheless not from our country.

The whole thing got kicked off in my mind because over the weekend, I had to wear my white suit because I had no other clean clothes. Somebody made a comment about the Great Gatsby, because of the movie, and it occurred to us both that not only he and I, but - after a quick consultation - every other American we knew had read it. That got me thinking about equivalents to that in other countries, cultures, and societies. The image I had in my head was of some Eastern European romanticist poet from the 19th century with a goatee who wrote some definite national epic about liberation from Austria, and now everyone in that country (Hungary? Croatia?) has to study it in school.

It’s funny that you should talk about the generation gap, because the other American in my class is substantially older than I am; I’m 26, and have read only the Scarlet Letter; she’s in her 40s, and had read only Mockingbird.

And the Baburnama is probably a stupid choice, but it’s the only piece of Farsi literature that I’ve read even a little bit of.

Alright, let me clarify my question with finality:

What works of literature are necessary reading to be considered an educated member of a particular country or multi-national culture of letters, originating in that language, to the effect that every member of that country or culture will be familiar with them?

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“International Dopers”? Strange way to put it, since you seem to mean “non-US”.

In the Netherlands there is no national curriculum. Students pick their own books for what is termed their “literature list”. The list is ok’d by the teacher. It must contain 18 books, one of which must be poetry, from which 5 poems must be analysed. A certain number of books must be from before 1900, but I forget how many. Maybe 5?

The most common examples, that almost everyone has read:

De Donkere Kamer van Damokles (The Dark Room of Damocles) - Willem Frederik Hermans
De Aanslag (The Assault) - Harry Mulisch (watch the film!)
De Avonden (The Evenings) - Gerard van het Reve
Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) - Jan Wolkers (watch the film!)
Karel ende Elegast (Charlemagne and Elbegast) - 13th century epic poem, author unknown
Max Havelaar - Multatuli

For Mulisch, Reve and Hermans I picked their most famous works, but it could be anything by them. They are known as “the big three” of Dutch literature.

ETA: these books are absolutely necessary reading to be considered an educated Dutch national, to the effect that every Dutch person will be familiar with them. I think…

13

La Fontaine, I imagine.

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Everyone in England (can’t speak for Wales and Scotland as their curriculums vary) will study several Shakespeare plays over their school education. Not the same ones, necessarily – I never did any of the biggies such as Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream for instance, whereas my partner did them all.

Otherwise, I can’t think of a single novel or author that everyone reads, no matter what. There’s an awful lot to choose from. I did Chaucer, but I’m not sure everyone does. Lord of the Flies (Golding) and Animal Farm (Orwell) seem to be done by most people I know.

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New Zealand person checking in. Books that I recall are ‘Lord of the Flies’, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’. We read Shakespeare at high school, but different classes read different plays.

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In Korea we don’t read novels in high school lit class. It’s all poetry or essays or short stories. Lit classes consist of memorizing facts about the text, the author, the historical context, the subtext (there is a single correct interpretation) and the various literary devices used. This is probably why Koreans don’t read a lot of books once they leave school.

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What about foreign languages? If you take English at school, and you do English lit, do you approach that the same way?

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For Puerto Rican literature I read: (includes a LOT of poetry, short stories, and essays)

  • Some pre-Colombian myths written down by the friars before Taíno society was completely destroyed.

  • Parts of Manuel Alonso, who wrote the first book, Jíbaro (poems, poetic prose).

  • The Benítez family of poets

  • Lots of poems and/or essays by Nemesio Canales, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Julia de Burgos, Virgilio Dávila, José de Diego, Eugenio María de Hostos, Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Luis Lloréns Torres, Luis Palés Matos

  • Short stories by Abelardo Díaz Alfaro, José Luis González, Ana Lydia Vega

  • Novels or drama such as: Felices días, tío Sergio (Magali García Ramis), La charca (Manuel Zeno Gandía), La víspera del hombre and La carreta (René Marqués), La guaracha del Macho Camacho (Luis Rafael Sánchez), and works from Alejandro Tapia y Rivera

Latin American literature:

  • Pedro Páramo y el llano en llamas by Juan Rulfo

  • *Crónica de una muerte anunciada , Cien años de soledad *by Gabriel García Marquez

  • La casa de los espíritus by Isabel Allende

  • Poems by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, José Martí, and Nicolás Guillén, among others.

  • Short stories by Carlos Fuentes and Alejo Carpentier

  • Essays by Eugenio María de Hostos and Eduardo Galeano

Spanish (from Spain) literature:

  • Slug through El cantar del mío Cid either attempt the original old Spanish or get the translated to modern text.

  • Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea (La celestina) a bawdy Romeo and Juliet.

  • El Quijote (duh)

  • Works from Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, and Federico García Lorca, as well as others who died or suffered through the Spanish Civil War.

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Is all of it that alliterative or only the title?

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Assonance, I think. Alliteration is when the first letter is the same sound. [/nitpick]