ABSTRACT
Perhaps the least controversial attribute of a classic is its durability. The ability of a work of art to survive changing times and tastes seems to secure for it a permanent niche in the public sphere of the cultural tradition that gave birth to it. Not surprisingly, this durability also ensures the value of a classic as usable capital in the cultural marketplace, a commodity that can be profitably recycled. But the travels of a classic through time and across genre boundaries demand alterations that may affect not only the form and structure of the work in question but perhaps involve shifts in its ideological direction.
