In applying strict standards to language, the humanists sought to elevate the discipline of literature above the attainments of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages had distinguished its own set of auctores, that is, authors whose work exemplified principally grammatical correctness. The auctores were simply the textbooks one used in learning to read and write Latin. The list of auctores was drawn from various periods without regard to historical and stylistic distinctions. Silver Latin (1st and 2nd centuries), late antiquity, and the Middle Ages contributed auctores as well as the Golden Age of Cicero and Vergil.
Under the humanists, the canon of auctores became our notion of the “classics” in the wider sense, that is, works exemplifying the ideal in all respects: morally, intellectually, and artistically as well as linguistically. The canon collected and displayed all the virtues to which European culture aspired, and the works of the canonical authors became the standard against which people judged themselves. Vergil’s pius Aeneas, who led his people out of a defeated Troy and sacrificed the love of the Carthaginian queen Dido to go to Italy and found the Roman people, was no longer just a character in a compelling story; he implicitly reproached anyone who failed to perform his duty to family and country.
The literary canon purports to conserve our ideals and therefore to comprise “the best that has been thought and said,” as Matthew Arnold put it. However, the real cultural power comes from the idea of a literary canon, not the specific books on the list. In fact, the books that people consider timeless classics change over time. Each age grows tired of books that the previous era lauded and rediscovers other books that better fit its sensibility. The reputations of all of the great writers suffer their ups and downs: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare…
The notion of a canon itself is what endures. It endures as a style of engagement with books, and it makes the ambitious claim that it defines the culture. It represents an instinct—almost an ideology or an institution—called classicism. Classicism involves an aesthetic predisposition toward balance and restraint (think of Cicero’s sentence), along with a set of obligations for how readers and writers should fulfill classical ideals.
The Future of Reading 