1. Characteristics of Classic Literature
Learn the defining characteristics of classic literature such as timelessness, dealing with universal themes
and experiences and communicating across cultures.
Timelessness
A good piece of literature can be enjoyed by readers from generation to generation. That is timelessness. FOR
EXAMPLE: Shakepeare's works are enjoyed as much today as they were when they were first written,
hundreds of years ago. But why? How did he do it? Well, by carefully choosing his theme is one way.
Theme
A theme is the underlying meaning of a piece of literature. It usually includes an observation about life. It
could be the moral of the story, a teaching or an observation of human experience.
How Can You Determine a Theme?
You are never actually TOLD what the theme is in a story. You determine the theme from the characters,
action in a story. In short, you must determine the theme on your own. Some examples include:
Aladin - The theme could be describe as: love is not earned through riches of the wallet, but of the
heart. How would you describe it?
Beauty and the Beast - The theme could be described as: You must look beyond the package and
look for what's inside.
Universal Themes
Universal themes add to the timelessness of a piece because they relate to us all--either in our experiences or in
our dreams. Some universal themes readers enjoy include:
love conquers all
good vs. evil
rags to riches
Communicating Across Cultures
Literature is an excellent vehicle for communicating ideas
across cultures. Writers from around the world speak
from their own experiences and write about theme that related to their own land. By reading the literature from
other countries or different areas of our own country, we can learn so much about how others view life.
1. We used to debate this question all the time. We started from the idea that a good group of literary
experts agree a work is a masterpiece. Other than that, it is very difficult to pin it down. You could say
that a masterpiece is a work that speaks better than any other work of universal themes: love, conflict,
mystery, adventure. Is The Count of Monte Cristo a masterpiece where Jurassic Park is not? Another
idea is that masterpieces survive time. You have a mega-blockbuster novel like Love Story in 1970
but who reads it now? On the other hand, you have Lord of the Rings which has maintained its
longevity. A lot of this has to do with personal taste and changing populace trends. Also, works can be
labeled masterpieces if they capture and define an era like Invisible Man or Catcher in the Rye...or a
genre like Hercule Poirot-who can forget the little moustachioed Belgian? In the end, I guess it is a
composite of many factors.
1. artistry 2. intellectual value 3. suggestiveness 4. spiritual value 5. permanence 6. universality
7. Style
The concept of Magnificent Prose is self-explanatory, and yet the most difficult to
achieve. Only those blessed with a refined talent can produce beautiful, scintillating and

2. effervescent prose. And remember that I am referring to refined talent, talent that has been
perfected through years of study and practical application. Magnificent Prose includes word
choice, proper metaphor, turn of phrase, and all the specifics of beautiful writing that the
reader finds in the best written works. Shakespeare was the best at it; James Joyce was also a
master. Joseph Conrad achieved this spectacularly in “Heart of Darkness”. The benefit of
writing in Magnificent Prose is that it lends itself to representative translation from one
language to the next.
Symbolic Characters possess two qualities which at no time may fail one another if
the Masterpiece is to remain cohesive. The first, a uniqueness of being that clearly defines the
identity of the character in his place, time, and circumstance; and the second, a Jungian
wholeness of quality that may be identified as the Seeker, the Mother, the Warrior, the King,
the Maiden, the Beast, or etc.. The symbolic reality of the character can take any number of
mythic incarnations, but must be consistent, and must never be revealed except by inference
of action and belief. On the surface the character is a person, a whole being represented by
past history, present stature, and logical motivation. But below the surface the character is a
type which describes any one of a variety of spiritual realities that we know as suprahuman.
Mythic Delineation refers to the application of a mythic act (journey, search, love
affair, pilgrimage, sacrifice or etc.) onto the specifics of the concrete reality of the story. In
whatever time and in whatever setting the story takes place, the action of the story itself is
delineated by familiar mythic themes. An example can be found in the case of the novel
Ulysses where Joyce overlays the perils of Odysseus onto the contemporary story of Harold
Bloom and Stephen Daedalus. Mythic Delineation need not be limited to known examples,
but can also be found in any exalted act of human beings in relation to their world.
Mythic Structure goes beyond the simple definition of story conflict—the very
composition of the story and its execution must follow the patterns of myth and fable. While
Mythic Delineation provides the mythic sources the story reflects, Mythic Structure directs
the writer as to how to arrange the execution of events in the story to reflect the qualities of
events that take place in mythic sources. Again, using Ulysses as an example, the funeral that
Bloom attends represents a descent into Hades, and etc. The storm that rages as Shakespeare’s
King Lear goes mad represents in physical terms the maelstrom of the tortured mind, and
etc. Mythic Structure and Mythic Delineation work closely together to create an archetypal
representation of human life in ordinary terms. For instance (and despite his protestations to
the contrary) Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea presents an aged character in the
timeless battle of humanity’s ingenuity, strength and resolve against the unrelenting forces of
nature (and, beyond nature, the opinions of other human beings). So ancient is the mythic
structure of this story that it strikes a response in every human being who has ever tried to
control his or her fate in the world.
Specificity may be the most difficult quality for the potential writer of the
Masterpiece to accept, because it requires him to eschew all thoughts of loftiness in setting
and costume, and to present his story in one complete and absolutely consistent place in time.
The Masterpiece takes place in a specific time and place, with characters familiar to that time,
and settings and circumstances common to that time. The inclusion of external literary posits
must be directly relational to the story, or else the reality of the story fails and the work fails
to retain the unity of the Masterpiece. Inconsistency in this case destroys the unity of the
work, and disqualifies the story from the category. And so the most mythic American novel
ever written, Moby Dick, places its characters firmly in the contemporary world of whalers,
seaman and merchants of that nineteenth century New England reality even as it tells a story
of Symbolic Characters frozen in the Mythic Structure of an unrelenting archetypal
experience.