Good point about current "political correctness" - it all seems a bit dated, to be honest.

I'm taking a course in the Politics of the Canon this year, though I really wanted to switch to 20th Century Crime Fiction (case in point, hee), so maybe I'll have more to say on this topic after that. But yes, I do share the frustration with the way the canon is constructed around dull things, especially in schools. (And I think there's a related false link between things that are "good" and things that are "worthy of analysis", and also the idea that something can become - be redeemed as? - a "Classic" just by being more than a hundred years old - Dumas and Conan Doyle are genre, dammit.)

And now I am going to bed, honest.