"What is literary tradition? What is a classic? What is a canonical view of tradition? How are canons of accepted classics formed,and how are they unformed? I think that all these quite traditional questions can take one simplistic but still dialectical question as their summing up: do we choose tradition or does it choose us, and why is it necessary that a choosing take place, or a being chosen? What happens if one tries to write, or to teach, or to think, or even to read without the sense of a tradition? Why, nothing at all happens, just nothing."

You may also like:

• 

  Camille Paglia
  Teacher

• 

  George Steiner
  Literary critic

• 

  Hart Crane
  Poet

• 

  John Ashbery
  Poet

• 

  Lionel Trilling
  Literary critic

• 

  Paul de Man
  Philosopher

• 

  Wallace Stevens
  Poet

• 

  Walt Whitman
  Poet

• 

  William Shakespeare
  Poet