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De klassieke canon als gesprek
Lessen uit het nationale canondebat
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Lampas, Volume 57, Issue 4, Dec 2024, p. 326 - 362
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- 01 Dec 2024
Abstract
This article takes the recent national canon debates in the Low Countries as a starting point to explore contemporary views on canons and canonicity, and their implications for the so-called classical school canon. In 2005, the Dutch Education Council recommended that history education should pay due attention to its socialization task: to provide a common, national historical frame of reference for all people living in the Netherlands in order to counteract social disintegration caused by increasing individualism and migration. This new initiative was anchored successfully in the familiar cultural concept of ‘the canon’. It led to a veritable boom of canons in the Low Countries but also to sharp criticism, especially from academic specialists. What lessons can classicists draw from the controversies over the national canon? This article explores the history of the canon concept, reconstructs the national canon debate and compares the national canon with the classical canon. It reflects on and brings in concepts and tools, primarily from the adjacent field of heritage studies, for the ongoing conversation about the classical school canon.