It seems that whenever one tries to explain, for instance, why a valuable novel is a valuable

one, the common answer is related to time: time always decides what is valuable or not. It is

like saying that time solves our problems and so on and so forth. If time is not the supreme

judge, then, there must be something else, the political, historical or social context, whatever

but something. What should be understood now is that there is no doubt that the resistance to

the passing of time is somehow important, but a resistant literary work does not always

satisfy our contemporary society’s needs and we cannot easily empathise with it, as E.

Lovinescu (1975:391) demonstrates. Surely, every new generation of readers may come with

new interpretations which could keep it alive, but more about the role of new interpretations

could be found in the second main section of this study.

On the other hand, those who really want to know what makes a literary work valuable admit

that there must be something that makes it resistant to the passing of time. And although they

try to go deeper into this issue find it difficult to give a concrete answer. This happens

because they realize they do not have access to everything that is behind the curtain; behind

everything related to the publishing process.

Furthermore, some critics believe that a certain combination between ethics and aesthetics

makes the work of art immortal. Considering that the most important books of the history are

taught in school, the presence of the second element is mandatory. According to Angela

Locatelli (2008:25), ‘from the Romantic poets we also derive the idea that the cognitive value

of literature is the ground of its morality’. So what type of books can really survive? Others,

like John Burroughs (1902: 15), think the ‘quality of mind or spirit’ plays the most important

role:

Hence, without attempting a formal definition of literature, one may say that the literary

quality seems to arise from a certain vital relation of the writer with subject-matter. It is his

subject; it blends with the very texture of his mind; his relation to it is primary and personal,

not secondary and mechanical. The secret is not in any prescribed arrangement of the words —

it is in the quality of mind or spirit that warms the words and shines through them.

Undoubtedly, this could be difficult to prove, although it may not seem so, because many

readers tend to say that a book is intelligently written and they even give significant examples

in order to support their arguments. But what happens to those books that are known as

masterpieces and do not involve or do not seem to involve cognitive values, being

appreciated for other reasons (the exaltation of the senses, irrationality)? They can also be

taught in school because they remain specific to certain literary movements. This could mean

that the cognitive value is a necessary condition but not always a sufficient one. But could be

these perceived as exceptions or does the aesthetic value represent the sufficient condition?