Student Life
Oxford, and the ongoing appeal of the literary canon
I remember my tutor asking us if we thought our literature options were broad enough at the end of an Italian tutorial last term. This question really stuck with me: not because I have a clear answer (I still don’t – could a reading list ever actually be broad enough?), but because, surely, whether I thought so or not, Oxford would continue to teach the same novels that it has been teaching for hundreds of years.
As a Modern Languages student at Oxford – a primarily literature-focused course – I am no stranger to reading lists built around canonical authors. In theory, we are given freedom within a reading list; we choose, to some extent, the works that we want to study (though of course these include Dante and Petrarch). It would be, as I answered my tutor’s question, easy to describe our literature options as broad. After all, I have managed to study female authors without having to choose a specific ‘women writers’ topic. And yet these choices are already framed by the same set of already-established works. The range of choices may appear to be wide, but its boundaries are clear.
In reality, while they seem to be fairly inclusive, our reading lists are composed entirely of works that form part of the literary canon – works deemed ‘essential’ and of the highest quality, historically chosen by a narrow and influential elite. These are the books that our tutors studied, as did the scholars teaching them, with their authority only accumulating over time. This status seems to justify their quality: they are good because they are famous, and famous because they are good. With this assumption, though, comes the question of whether we have inherited the habit of valuing these canonical works, rather than that of analysing and questioning them ourselves.
There is a certain pressure to enjoy the classics at Oxford, especially given our university’s emphasis on tradition, and yet I have found myself writing essays on novels that I didn’t actually like. Enjoying the texts feels like a marker of intellect, seriousness, and taste, while failure to do so is accompanied by a sense of guilt and a suspicion that I’m just not clever enough to “get it”.
I wonder whether our admiration of these books and the appeal of the canon itself is genuine or just learned. Appreciation of the canon can become performative, something that is expressed rather than felt. I myself have avoided expressing opinions on novels I’ve studied here (in all honesty, I am not a fan of Sand’s Indiana, nor of Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare): there is a certain awkwardness that arises in a tutorial when someone says that they didn’t like a set text, one which I would much rather avoid.
Oxford’s relationship with tradition only exacerbates the idea that the canon has endured because of its status: studying here comes with a continual awareness that we are not only reading a selection of texts, but the same novels that have been studied here for decades. There’s a sense of continuity, a link to the past – we are partaking in an intellectual conversation that began years ago. The canon, through our reading lists, is continually pushed onto us, and it can be difficult to form our own opinions on these novels away from the appreciation that is expected from us. When we read a classic, we are aware of its status even before we begin to develop our own opinions; they come with an implicit weight and an expectation of depth, of importance. Our response is shaped before we start to read, which we then do according to this expectation.
So does the canon only endure because we’ve learned not to question it, or is it actually because of the merit of the texts themselves? The canon isn’t simply imposed and followed – its works are (or at least most of the time) there for a reason, and I won’t pretend that I don’t love studying the majority of the works that comprise my degree. The same novels have often remained so influential and so widely read not only because of tradition, but because they continue to offer something to their readers. As a Languages student, reading texts in the original and finally understanding one of Petrarch’s sonnets or a canto of the Divina Commedia provides an intellectual satisfaction that is hard to replicate elsewhere. Though it can sometimes be difficult to separate authority from quality, in most cases, canonical and classic works are genuinely well-written. We have standards for everything else, so why wouldn’t we for books? And I think that’s why the canon is so hard to reject: it’s not just elitism and snobbiness, but its works have genuine appeal.
It’s easy to think that the canon endures only because of tradition, and because we are taught that it should, but perhaps it continues to hold so much weight because it continues to persuade us. Even as we are encouraged to question it – as I myself was in my recent tutorial – we find ourselves not only guided to but drawn to it. Maybe it has continued for so long just on status alone, but to say this takes away from the genuine appeal that a lot of its works have.
Since I have been considering this tension, I’ve become less interested in whether the canon deserves its status and more in how I respond to its texts. We can approach the canon with both scepticism and appreciation, and doubt about the canon’s prestige can coexist with a genuine enjoyment of its books.
Oxford City Council has approved plans for a new postgraduate medical college in Headington. The plans also include a mental health hospital and a modern facility for brain sciences research, forming a new Warneford Park development centred on mental health and brain research.
The proposal, led by the Oxford University Hospitals Trust in collaboration with the University of Oxford, was approved on 21st April. Permission, however, is not officially issued until details of the conditions are agreed with the council. Once official, phased delivery of the new campus will take place over the next ten years, with healthcare, research, and teaching provision to continue throughout construction.
The new college will be known as Radcliffe College, the first University of Oxford college to be located in Headington, and will admit postgraduate medical students. Plans for the development of the college include restoring the Grade II-listed Warneford Hospital building, which will form the centre of the college.
Radcliffe College will be the first new University of Oxford college founded since Reuben College was established, marking a relatively rare expansion in the University’s collegiate system.
The site is expected to provide newly-built accommodation for around 250 students, including graduates, DPhil, and postdoctoral researchers in medicine, life sciences, medical engineering, and other related subjects. Researchers and clinicians who currently have no college affiliation are also expected to find teaching roles and membership at the new college.
The plans have drawn criticism from local residents and councillors, particularly over proposals to increase parking provision on the site by more than 50%. Some have described the changes as “egregious” and “catastrophic”, raising concerns about traffic, environmental damage to Warneford Meadow, and the impact on children travelling to nearby schools.
The new mental health hospital would replace the current 200-year-old Warneford Hospital, which has been deemed no longer fit to provide modern clinical facilities.
The 200th anniversary of mental health care at the Warnerford Hospital will be commemorated with an exhibition scheduled to take place at the Museum of Oxford, over the summer, on the Hospital’s history. As part of the program of events for the anniversary, there will also be a new play performed at the Old Fire Station theatre which will focus on those who lived at the institution.
The centre is set to cost £750 million and will focus on mental health and brain sciences, forming a major medical research and innovation facility. Combining Oxford’s two Biomedical Research Centres, the research on brain sciences is projected to create an annual growth opportunity for the UK of over £1 billion.
Oxford University has been approached for a comment.
The University of Oxford has announced its 2026 honorary degree recipients, with seven individuals to be conferred with degrees at the Encaenia ceremony on 24th June.
The honourees come from a wide variety of careers. Those awarded include former world number one tennis player Billie Jean King; economist and Nobel Laureate Professor Daniel Acemoglu; and former chief executive of GSK, Dame Emma Walmsley DBE. They are joined by dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta CBE; biochemist Professor Katalan Karikó and Nobel Laureate Professor Shuji Nakamura; and Emmy nominated filmmaker and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The University has been granting honorary degrees since the 1400s, whilst the Encaenia ceremony can be dated back to the 16th century, assuming its current form around 1760.
Recipient Billy Jean King won 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles, including winning a record 20 Wimbledon championships. She is also known for campaigning to equalise prize money in professional competitions across both womens’ and mens’ professional championships. Carlos Acosta was awarded a CBE in 2014 and retired from Classical Ballet in 2016, but continued to choreograph and perform.
Professor Acemoglu was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2024 alongside two others for “studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”. Fellow recipient Professor Nakamura was also awarded a Nobel Prize, for Physics in 2014, for emitting energy-saving efficient blue light-emitting diodes, whilst Professor Karikó won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries enabling nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccines.
Dame Walmsley worked at GSK for 15 years and served as Chief Executive Officer of GSK for 9 years, retiring in December 2025. She is joined on the list of honourees by Henry Louis Gates Jr, known for his work as a literary critic, professor and history, as well as a literary critic. Gates was nominated for an Emmy Award for “Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking” in 2022 for his work as Executive Producer for the documentary Frederik Douglas: In Five Speeches.
Honorary degree recipients are recognised for their distinction in their field or service to society. Previous honorees include former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and Monty Python comedian Sir Michael Palin. Decisions on recipients of honorary degrees are made by a selection committee. Encaenia 2026 comes after Lord Hague awarded eight honorary degrees in February this year in a Special Honorary Degree Ceremony to celebrate the beginning of Lord Hague’s term as Chancellor at the University.
The ceremony involves the heads of colleges, university dignitaries and holders of Oxford doctoral degrees in Divinity, Civil Law, Medicine, Letters, Science, and Music. The honourees assemble and walk in procession to the Sheldonian Theatre. There, they are introduced by the Public Orator with a speech in Latin, and finally granted their new degrees by the Chancellor, Lord William Hague. Students at the University may attend the ceremony, with tickets released on 5th May.
“If he wanted to he would”. Look under the comments of any TikTok video about dating and you’ll see it repeated over and over again; it’s a promise of clarity, an explanation, a definitive answer to any and all problems that could arise in a relationship. But relationships aren’t that simple. With the rise of TikTok, and the generic, algorithm-driven dating advice that comes with it, we are continually encouraged to seek a one-size-fits-all answer to our problems. As more of us turn to an app rather than our partners or friends for advice, we risk reducing complex dynamics into 30-second videos that assume the worst, and ask for the impossible. TikTok has no shortage of “dating experts”, and their advice offers a bleak and overwhelmingly negative outlook on our relationships.
Today, I opened TikTok to see a video entitled “At the end of the day, dump him”, in which the creator listed a number of ‘flaws’ deemed worthy of a breakup. Among them, the simple act of questioning if your boyfriend has cheated on you: “at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether or not he was actually cheating on you, the fact is you’re questioning [it]”. Now, in some cases, this might be a valid point – yes, of course your boyfriend shouldn’t be making you feel like he has cheated on you. But I can’t help but wonder about the effects that this sort of content has on relationships where this isn’t the case. Or relationships where one party is naturally prone to doubts, and is convinced by someone they’ve never met to dump a boyfriend who is “trying his best”, because – as this TikTok put it – “his best ain’t it”. Every relationship is different, and when we simplify all problems down to one issue with the exact same solution, we strip away the nuance that real-life situations often require.
These TikToks, along with offering an overwhelmingly negative outlook, encourage unrealistic standards for our dating lives. Entering this side of TikTok, you are met with a barrage of content centred around communication.We’re not meant to be reachable 24/7, but by telling us to expect this, these “dating experts” are only setting us up for failure. Creators often make assertions about how long it should take to receive a reply to a text message (their answers all differ), but also about how often you should see one another (on which they also can’t agree). Their advice is the same for developing relationships; I have seen countless Tiktoks claiming that if someone is interested in you, they will make the effort to seek you out. But the reality is that this kind of constant open communication isn’t natural. If your partner is working, busy, or even just in need of an hour to themselves, not texting back does not mean that they don’t care about you, and TikTok should not tell us that it does.
This kind of advice doesn’t just set unrealistic expectations, but actively discourages real communication. Instead of having a conversation with our partners, we are encouraged to analyse, dissect, interpret, and ultimately to assume the worst. Even where there were no issues in the relationship, this ensures that they can be easily created. Tiktok constructs a paranoia, whereby taking time to reply to a message suddenly represents a lack of interest, spending too much time with friends becomes a sign that they don’t care. We begin to hold our partners to unrealistic standards, quietly “testing” them to see if they will fail, rather than being honest with them about what we need. But relationships aren’t built on mind-reading. A simple conversation would suffice to fix most of the issues that these TikToks claim to resolve. But that wouldn’t generate enough views. And therein lies the problem.
The people making these videos know exactly what will work to gain more clicks, more likes, more followers. They know that the more dramatic they are, the more likely their viewers are to continue watching, and this in turn ensures that the TikTok algorithm suggests similarly outlandish videos. And so the cycle continues; we see a video telling us that something our partner did is breakup-worthy (like when they took too long to reply to a text the other day), and we watch it until the end. This ensures that we are shown similar content. We then begin to overthink (how long will it take them to reply to this text?), and draw the worst possible conclusions when we don’t get the desired outcome. All the while the comments section continues to whisper “if he wanted to he would”. And so we continue to doubt our relationship, watching more videos for an explanation – and the one provided is ultimately generic and hollow.
At this point, the problem isn’t necessarily the relationship at all. It’s the way that we’re being told to interpret it. These videos, through capitalising on an insecurity, manage to create problems even where there were none, so that their creators can then offer a solution. These TikTok “dating experts” may offer us a quick fix to our problems, but relationships don’t need generic answers or universal solutions – they need communication. So, if we want a relationship, maybe we should look away from our screens and towards the person that we want to build it with.
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