Rebecca A. Huggins

Not Just Background Knowledge: The Case for Literary Touchstones

I read an interesting quote the other day from the RAND Corporation, which claims that math teachers reportedly use at least “one standards-aligned curriculum material” which is “twice as high as the percentage of ELA teachers” (Doan et al., 2025). This statistic doesn’t surprise me. I was a high school English teacher for most of my career, so I know how particular English teachers can be about what texts they teach. Literature has always been a controversial topic in public education, particularly when it comes to text selection. State standards generally are very careful to avoid naming which texts schools should purchase, to preserve local control. Even the authors of the Common Core ELA standards argued that standards should define what students should know and be able to do, not which specific texts teachers should teach. In the United States, this is part of a broader, intentional effort to avoid the adoption of a national curriculum.  Yet this is also to preserve the assumption that students can develop reading and writing competencies through many varied texts and not specific texts in general. Afterall, if students learn to comprehend by demonstrating competency of abstract skills in reading comprehension, then any text should suffice, so long as it is complex enough. Right?

Interestingly, some texts are alluded to and emulated more frequently than others in both classic and contemporary literature. When I was in the classroom, this often guided my text selection. After all, a reference like “Et tu, Brute?” may mean very little to a reader unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, just as an epigraph in T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men— “Mistah Kurtz—he dead”—loses much of its significance for readers who have never encountered Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 

The truth is, some works have become so deeply embedded in Anglophone literary and cultural discourse, that knowledge of them facilitates comprehension of countless other texts. Familiarity with these touchstone works often gives students access to both the texts themselves, as well as a network of references, themes, symbols, and ideas that subsequent authors assumed their readers would recognize. 

When we talk about background knowledge, researchers frequently are referring to a bank of information a reader brings to a text, drawn from life experiences, prior learning, reading, conversations and exposure. Most students will relate new learning to their existing understandings. E.D. Hirsch argues in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, that background information is a shared body of specific, culturally transmitted information that enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in their community. He writes that background knowledge pertains to a core set of concepts, names, dates and cultural references that are common to a society and essential for literacy, communication and civic life. 

While I hear educators talk about background knowledge and the importance of increasing student’s understanding of an author, the historical context of a literary work, even the vocabulary within a text prior or during reading, I don’t often hear them address the concept of intertextuality. Intertextuality—the idea that texts exist in conversation with one another—is certainly not new. Literary theorists have long noted that authors frequently reference, echo, and build upon earlier works, under the assumption that readers will recognize those connections. As a result, understanding one text can sometimes depend upon familiarity with another. 

In literature, these often appear in the form of allusions, analogies, symbols, archetypes, adaptations, and even direct references to other literary works. Unsurprisingly, these are places in text that students frequently struggle, unless they are provided access to or explicit instruction in the other connecting works that these texts build upon. Once, while students were wrestling with a particularly challenging text in my class, they asked me whether readers from previous centuries were simply “smarter” than readers are today.  This led to an interesting conversation about what it means to be “well-read” and how shared cultural knowledge, often organized through a common literary canon, allows writers and readers to operate within a shared interpretive framework. It also required me to remind my students which texts had long functioned as shared reading materials across Anglophone societies, and therefore, became common reading material for hundreds of authors and political speakers.

Authors, particularly in earlier periods of political and literary writing, frequently relied on allusions to texts that were assumed to be familiar to their audiences. In T.S. Eliot’s 1919 essay, Tradition and Individual Talent, Eliot argues that no poet or artist has complete meaning in isolation. He claims that writers must be understood in relation to the writers who came before them. Perhaps this is why his own poetry was filled with references to the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare and classical mythology.  Similarly, Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, reiterates this point: literature forms an interconnected system of recurring myths, archetypes, and symbols. Readers who know earlier texts can generally recognize patterns that appear across centuries of literature.  

This background knowledge becomes increasingly important, particularly as students are exposed to more complex literary works. Biblical narratives, for example, contribute to countless references, metaphors, and archetypes that appear throughout English literature and public discourse; Greek and Roman mythology provides a shared symbolic vocabulary—Achille’s heel, Trojan horse, Midas touch, Pandora’s box, Narcissus, Atlas—while also serving as allusions in countless literary works; Homer shapes enduring narrative patterns such as the hero’s journey, the homecoming, the heroic quest; and Shakespeare contributes not only stories and characters, but also language, quotations, and archetypes that continue to resonate throughout centuries of English writing.

Students who are familiar with these works are often much better positioned to recognize allusions, understand symbolic meanings, and perceive relationships among texts that might otherwise remain obscure. Now I know what you are thinking: the naysayers in the room (my fellow literary people) are already leery of my suggesting that there are just some works that students really do need to know, to understand other works. And some would buck against that: some would say that you don’t need to know all the literary allusions made in the Great Gatsby or Romeo and Juliet to comprehend the stories.

But in middle and high school, students are frequently asked to go beyond surface-level comprehension of texts. Higher-level literary analysis is not just about decoding meaning, but situating texts within traditions of language, genre, and prior texts—and that requires intertextual knowledge. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) is perhaps best known for his theories of cultural capital, and how unequal access to these literary and cultural reference points can create inequities by giving some students an interpretive advantage when texts and classroom practices assume those cultural reference points.

Students in Anglophone schools are not only learning a language but entering a literary tradition whose foundational texts have shaped the symbolic and rhetorical resources of English writing. Equity therefore involves more than comprehension; it also requires access to the interpretive frameworks that enable fuller participation in the literary conversation students already inhabit. This also has implications on a student’s future success or failure in advanced academic discourse. Students who acquire the shared cultural, historical, and literary knowledge embedded in many canonical texts are better positioned to access the academic discourse of higher education, Advanced Placement courses, and International Baccalaureate programs, which often require challenging analytical reading and writing.

Take, for example, this excerpt from a frequently taught piece of literature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: 

“Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom though drives from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” 

Here, it is difficult for students to grasp the ethical weight of the Creature’s plea without some familiarity with the biblical conception of creation and the figure of the creator. Shelley is not simply writing a science fiction story here; she is reworking a theological and mythical template for creation, responsibility, and moral consequence.  The Creature’s self-comparison to Adam invokes the biblical narrative of Genesis, while his identification as a “fallen angel” draws on Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the relationship between creator and created is framed in terms of obedience, rejection, and moral rupture. The novel echoes the structure of the Fall narrative: creation begins in relative innocence, a transgression occurs, and the result is alienation, suffering and exile. The Creature explicitly frames his experience in Edenic terms, but that expectation is progressively inverted by rejection and abandonment, transforming Genesis’s promise of relational order into a condition of contradiction.

Biblical allusions appear in tens of thousands of literary works across Western literature, and likely far more if one includes indirect references, idioms, and structural echoes. When authors draw on these references, they often use them to activate shared narrative and linguistic frameworks that permeate English and much of European literary tradition. These allusions are not intended to exclude readers, but ultimately, to make connections with their assumed audiences. Similarly, Greco-Roman mythology constitutes one of the densest intertextual networks in Western literature. For centuries, educated European writers were trained within the classical tradition, which included Latin and Greek texts, Roman history and rhetoric, and mythological poetry, particularly Ovid and Virgil. As a result, writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, and later Romantic poets were deeply immersed in myth as a shared cultural and literary framework. Greco-Roman myths function in later literature as archetypes (e.g., Narcissus as self-obsession, Icarus as overreach), narrative templates, and symbolic shorthand. Many texts assume that readers can recognize these references without explicit explanation.

As European literary education expanded globally through schooling systems, universities, and the formation of the Western literary canon, these mythological frameworks became embedded in English-language literary production. As a result, countless literary and cultural texts continue to rely on this shared mythological vocabulary including Dante’s Divine Comedy, James Joyce’s Ulysses, many if not all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, poetry by Edgar Allan Poe—and even modern-day references in works like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, and J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.

Beyond Greco-Roman myth, classical works such as Aristotle’s Poetics and The Republic occupy a significant place in the development of Western literary and rhetorical traditions. Aristotle’s Poetics offers one of the earliest systematic attempts to describe what tragedy is and how it functions, and these conceptions have continued to shape how narrative structure and characters are analyzed in subsequent literature. 

Similarly, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is frequently invoked as a conceptual framework across literature, philosophy, political discourse, and education theory. Familiarity with the allegory allows students to recognize a recurring pattern in which enlightenment is framed as a transition from illusion to truth, a structure that appears in a wide range of later texts, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where moral and political claims are developed through extended philosophical reasoning, appeals to shared moral premises, and a dialogic engagement with opposing viewpoints.

Even Transcendentalist literature like Walden by Henry David Thoreau was shaped by classical frameworks, with hundreds of references to ancient Greek, Roman and Eastern texts. He treats classical figures like Homer, Plato and Hindu sages as contemporaries with vital lessons for the modern world. In his chapter titled “Reading,” Thoreau argues that readers should learn ancient Greek and Latin to study original Classical texts, arguing that these works possess “inherent dignity.” 

I would be remis not to mention William Shakespeare in this list of literary touchstones. Credited with coining or popularizing roughly 1,700-3,000 words that are still used today, Shakespeare is so deeply embedded in the English language that everyday speech often carries traces of his phrasing without speakers even realizing it. Shakespeare is widely considered the most frequently referenced single author in Western literature. His works are continually cited, adapted, and structurally echoed across tens of thousands of texts, making his influence a foundational layer of narrative and linguistic structure in English literary tradition. 

But reading Shakespeare is widely considered challenging for both students and teachers. Beyond the language barrier, he also made many allusions to existing literary and mythological material. In fact, much of what we now think of as “Shakespearean” draws heavily on earlier texts and traditions he assumed his audience would recognize. Among Shakespeare’s sources are Greco-Roman mythology, the Bible, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, historical and literary sources (in particular, Plutarch’s Lives), and common proverbial expressions and rhetorical conventions of his time.  

Shakespeare’s reliance on shared cultural references illustrates a broader reality about literacy: readers understand texts most fully when they possess the knowledge those texts assume. Just as Shakespeare’s audience benefited from familiarity with myths, biblical narratives, and historical accounts, modern readers benefit from familiarity with Shakespeare and other foundational works that continue to shape contemporary literature and culture.

I know conversations about a required literary canon are controversial, to say the least, but there are some conclusions we can make about teaching canonical texts that are framed in research:

1. Reading comprehension depends on stored knowledge structures

We know that comprehension is not just decoding words on a page; it is the integration of prior knowledge structures. Exposing students to touchstone literary works enables them to draw on their existing knowledge structures to interpret the new works they are exposed to. For instance, understanding the tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, helps students to see how Shakespeare’s structure of the tragic hero follows a consistent, often similar progression in the story arch. Similarly, knowing about the Creation story and John Milton’s Paradise Lost helps students better access and consider the moral and ethical implications presented in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and countless other literary works.

2. Background knowledge is a stronger predictor of comprehension than general reading skill

We know that domain knowledge often outperforms reading ability in predicting comprehension (Willingham, 2006). Providing students with touchstone literary works that permeate commonly taught texts in Anglophone schools actually promotes greater equity in comprehension by ensuring that students have access to common interpretive background knowledge. Students who possess this knowledge are generally better positioned to comprehend complex texts that draw upon the same literary, historical and cultural reference points. 

3. Fluency in intertextual reference supports deeper inference-making

We know that skilled readers make more inferences because they recognize patterns and understand allusions automatically. Exposure to certain texts supports higher-level inference, theme identification, and analytical reading (Lenski, 1998). It also helps students who come from non-Anglophone traditions to better interpret, analyze, and access complex reading material(Espinas & Chandler, 2024). Truly, providing students with this access is a question of equity.

4. Expertise develops through repeated, varied exposure to structured knowledge domains

Experts organize knowledge into interconnected systems (Richter et al., 2019), so pre-teaching canonical frames before deep reading texts allows students to build expert-like interpretative networks (Neumann & Kopcha, 2018). Advanced literary interpretation depends on intertextual and cultural reference points. Schools can either assume they exist or teach them explicitly. 

5. Cultural literacy improves transfer across texts

Transfer is more likely when underlying structures are familiar across contexts (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). Canonical texts act as transfer anchors, allowing students to apply interpretive frameworks (i.e., tragic structure, mythic archetype, allegory) across new and unfamiliar texts.

6. Deep reading requires stable reference points

Advanced reading involves recognizing how texts reference other texts within a discipline (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012). A canon supports disciplinary literacy in literature by providing stable intertextual reference points that enable analysis rather than surface-level comprehension. Adolescent readers, who are frequently asked to analyze literary works, must be provided these references explicitly in order to engage in the type of analysis they are often required to do. 

The authors and texts I have mentioned here are by no means exhaustive. There are many other touchstone works that would help students access additional, complex literary material that is frequently required reading in middle and high school. We are doing our students a disservice when we omit instruction in these texts without providing equivalent, explicit scaffolds, because doing so assumes students already possess the cultural and intertextual knowledge those works presuppose. The Common Core standards in the United States named several exemplar texts to illustrate complexity and range for middle and high school, and many of those works remain staples in classrooms across the nation. Works such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Of Mice and Men, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet often rely on references to biblical, Greco-Roman, and classical frames that supply students with high-quality schemata recurring across the literary canon. Modeling, pre-teaching, and providing students with exposure to and practice with these works allow students to recognize allusions, map structural patterns, and make deeper inferences in novels that otherwise assume such background knowledge. If we want students to read deeply and analyze texts for meaning, explicit scaffolding of this kind is essential, even if it’s not always a popular position to take. 

References

Alfaro, M. J. M. (1996). Intertextuality: origins and development of the concept. Atlantis, 18(1/2), 268–285. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054827

Bourdieu, P. (1983/1986). The forms of capital (R. Nice, Trans.). In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood. https://home.iitk.ac.in/~amman/soc748/bourdieu_forms_of_capital.pdf

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2010). English Language Arts Standards » Standard 10: Range, Quality, & Complexity » Texts illustrating the complexity, quality, & range of student reading 6–12. Common Core State Standards Initiative. https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/standard-10-range-quality-complexity/texts-illustrating-the-complexity-quality-range-of-student-reading-6-12/

Doan, S., Woo, A., Shapiro, A., Bellows, L., & Kassan, E. B. (2025). Teachers’ use of instructional materials from 2019–2024: Trends from the American Instructional Resources Survey. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA134-30.html

Edison, J. (2026, April 9). Texas gives first OK to required reading list with Bible material. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/09/texas-education-board-required-reading-list-bible/

Eliot, T. S. (2009, October 13). Tradition and the individual talent. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69400/tradition-and-the-individual-talent

Espinas, D.R., Chandler, B.W. (2024). Correlates of k-12 students’ intertextual integration. Educ Psychol Rev 36, 48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09889-8

Frye, N. (2020). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays (D. Damrosch, Ed.). Princeton University Press. https://www.press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691202563/anatomy-of-criticism

Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (2006, Spring). Building knowledge: The case for bringing content into the language arts block and for a knowledge‑rich curriculum core for all children. American Educator. https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2006/hirsch

Lenski, S. D. (1998). Intertextual Intentions: Making Connections across Texts. The Clearing House, 72(2), 74–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30189562

Neumann, K.L., Kopcha, T.J. The Use of Schema Theory in Learning, Design, and Technology.TechTrends 62, 429–431 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0319-0

Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1992). Rethinking transfer: A simple proposal with multiple implications. Stanford University, AAALab. https://aaalab.stanford.edu/assets/papers/earlier/Rethinking_transfer_a_simple_proposal_with_multiple_implications.pdf

Plutarch. (1894). Plutarch’s Lives (A. Stewart & G. Long, Trans.). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14033/14033-h/14033-h.htm

Rice, M., Wijekumar, K., Lambright, K. et al. (2024). Inferencing in reading comprehension: Examining variations in definition, instruction, and assessment. Tech Know Learn, 29, 1169–1190, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-023-09660-y

Richter, F.R., Bays, P.M., Jeyarathnarajah, P. et al (2019). Flexible updating of dynamic knowledge structures. Sci Rep 9, 2272. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-39468-9

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. (n.d.). Shakespeare’s Words. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-words/

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2012). What is disciplinary literacy and why does it matter? Topics in Language Disorders, 32(1), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0b013e318244557a

Shelley, M. W. (2012). Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Penguin.

Thoreau, H. D. (1854). Reading. In Walden. Digital Thoreau. https://commons.digitalthoreau.org/walden/reading/

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Willingham, D. T. (2006). How knowledge helps. American Educator. https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2006/willingham.