What Is a Classic?

Overview

About fifteen pages, one of the Monday Chats Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve wrote for the Paris press, dated October 1850. He asks what makes a writer a classic and answers that it is not conformity to ancient rules but the enrichment of the human mind in a form that is at once new and old, large and fine, easily contemporary with every age.

He surveys Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and the French seventeenth century, and imagines the classics as a temple of taste that keeps admitting new members.

What happens

Asking what makes a classic. Sainte-Beuve opens by directly asking what makes a writer a classic, framing this as a genuine question requiring careful analysis rather than assuming the answer is already obvious or settled.

Rejecting conformity to ancient rules. Sainte-Beuve rejects the common assumption that classic status depends on conformity to ancient rules, dismissing this narrow formal criterion as inadequate to actually explain why certain works endure.

Defining enrichment of the mind. Sainte-Beuve offers his own definition instead, the enrichment of the human mind in a form that is at once new and old, large and fine, easily contemporary with every age.

Surveying Homer and Dante. Sainte-Beuve surveys Homer and Dante as examples, testing his definition against figures from genuinely distinct historical periods and literary traditions.

Surveying Shakespeare and Goethe. Sainte-Beuve extends his survey to Shakespeare and Goethe, demonstrating his criterion’s applicability across English and German literary traditions alongside the classical and Italian examples already considered.

The temple of taste. Sainte-Beuve concludes by imagining the classics as a temple of taste that keeps admitting new members, treating canon formation as a living, continuing process rather than a closed and permanently fixed inheritance.

How to read it

Read Sainte-Beuve’s definition of a classic as enrichment of the human mind in a form that is at once new and old as offering a genuinely productive alternative to defining classic status through mere conformity to ancient rules, relocating the criterion in ongoing freshness.

Pay close attention to the image of the classics as a temple of taste that keeps admitting new members; this treats canon formation as a living, continuing process rather than a closed inheritance fixed permanently by earlier generations alone.

Notice how surveying figures across such different eras and languages, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and the French seventeenth century, demonstrates his criterion’s genuine cross-cultural applicability rather than remaining a parochial defense of any single tradition.

Consider how this essay, written as one of the regular Monday Chats for the Paris press, shows serious literary theorizing about canon and value emerging directly from ongoing periodical criticism rather than only from more formal academic treatise.

Arnold’s own Study of Poetry makes a natural companion: it takes Sainte-Beuve’s open, living model of canon formation and builds from it a more systematic account of poetry’s criteria and cultural significance across different national traditions.

Questions it raises

• Does defining a classic as enrichment of the human mind that is at once new and old successfully avoid the arbitrariness Sainte-Beuve identifies in mere conformity to ancient rules, or does this alternative definition remain similarly vague and difficult to apply consistently?
• How persuasive is the image of the classics as a temple of taste that keeps admitting new members? Does this open, evolving model of canon formation adequately explain how genuinely new works actually achieve classic status over time?
• What does surveying figures across such different eras and languages, Homer through Goethe, accomplish for Sainte-Beuve’s argument? Does this range successfully demonstrate cross-cultural applicability, or does selecting already-canonical figures simply confirm assumptions rather than test them?
• How does this essay’s original context as a Monday Chat for the Paris press shape its argument and tone? Does periodical criticism’s format and audience influence how Sainte-Beuve develops and presents his definition of classic status?
• Given that this essay was written in 1850, how has the specific canon Sainte-Beuve surveys, and his underlying criterion for classic status, held up against subsequent nearly two centuries of literary and critical development since its original composition?
• What does this essay’s continued relevance to ongoing debates about canon formation and literary value suggest about the durability of Sainte-Beuve’s specific alternative to formal rule-based definitions of classic status? Does his criterion still offer useful resources today?