ABSTRACT
Films, art, drama, novels, and even comic books return time and again to these narratives. While many assert that "classics" are "beyond time, beyond vernacular corruption and change", Frank Kermode claims that "all authors need do is bring down to earth". In 1973, the University of Kent invited Kermode to deliver the T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, an honor given to eminent scholars and poets. He wants to rethink the relationship between permanence and change, and he offers us a more nuanced reason why we continue to read "old books." And this means that over and over again in time, those old books are accommodated to the sense of readers whose language and culture is different. Kermode questions Eliot's demand that readers make the effort "to speak to the classic in its time", lest we overestimate the importance of our own time. In short, it is the difference between a closed and open system, a determinate and indeterminate text.
