"It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a history"
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Calling Aristotle a great man for something as basic as noticing literature changes over time is a sly way of praising a habit of mind: historical thinking. Murray, a classicist turned public diplomat, isn’t really doing hero worship here; he’s recruiting Aristotle as an ally against the perennial temptation to treat culture as fixed scripture. “Grows” is the tell. It drags literature out of the museum and back into the messy conditions of life: politics, religion, war, commerce, translation, audience taste. If texts evolve, then criticism has to evolve, too. Authority becomes provisional, not priestly.
The subtext lands squarely in Murray’s era. Writing across the late Victorian world, the First World War, and the interwar crisis, he watched Europeans weaponize “the classics” as badges of civilization while the supposedly civilized powers shredded the continent. In that context, insisting on literary history is a quiet rebuke to cultural complacency: the canon isn’t a timeless moral shield; it’s a record of human change, including failure.
As a diplomat, Murray also signals something practical. If literature has a history, nations do as well, and neither can be managed by slogans about eternal character. The quote frames empathy as method: to read well is to locate a work in its moment, see what pressures shaped it, and recognize that our moment will shape us in turn. Aristotle becomes less a marble authority than the patron saint of context, useful precisely because he makes “greatness” look like disciplined attention.
The subtext lands squarely in Murray’s era. Writing across the late Victorian world, the First World War, and the interwar crisis, he watched Europeans weaponize “the classics” as badges of civilization while the supposedly civilized powers shredded the continent. In that context, insisting on literary history is a quiet rebuke to cultural complacency: the canon isn’t a timeless moral shield; it’s a record of human change, including failure.
As a diplomat, Murray also signals something practical. If literature has a history, nations do as well, and neither can be managed by slogans about eternal character. The quote frames empathy as method: to read well is to locate a work in its moment, see what pressures shaped it, and recognize that our moment will shape us in turn. Aristotle becomes less a marble authority than the patron saint of context, useful precisely because he makes “greatness” look like disciplined attention.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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