Many Americans read the following works in 11th-12th grade in English class and accept them as great literature:

• 1984
• Brave New World
• The Lord of the Flies
• Heart of Darkness
• Animal Farm (novella)
• Fahrenheit 451 (maybe not intended as political but interpreted that way)
• The Crucible (sorry, not a novel, a play)

All of these novels were published in the early-to-mid 1900s, and 4 out of the 7 were published in a single 5-year period, 1949-1954 (!). They are all written with a certain political message or theme in mind (except Fahrenheit 451, as Bradbury said it was actually about the impact of TV on literature).

Meanwhile, English language novels that are far more widely known from the same time period in other genres, like Lord of the Rings, are not taught as great literature.

My question is, how did juniors and seniors all over America end up studying these 7 books that were not even written a century ago? What was the process that turned these books into "great literature", excluding others?

Edit: Added Animal Farm to the list, and clarified that, as commenters pointed out, Bradbury didn't necessarily intend Fahrenheit as political, although it is certainly interpreted that way in high school English classes, which is very interesting by itself and, I feel, related to my question!

Title, basically. Why did clothing made from what seems like an impractical material become associated with transgressive sexuality and where did this stuff come from in the first place?

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In the famous Chinese novel "Journey.to the West" the protaganist is a buddhist monk and many of the Daoists he encounters on his journey end up being monsters in disguise, who try to kill or eat him, and in one story directly persecute buddhists. Does this negative portrayal reflect feelings in Early modern Chinese socoety?

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I'm totally out of my depth here. I'm an accounting major with a history minor, and I'm taking History of Rome. This is my first upper level history course, and I absolutely love the class, but I'm working on writing my historiographical paper and I'm clueless. All the other students (our class only has 7 in it) are history majors and have taken a course about writing types of historical papers, but I haven't and my professor hasn't been very helpful in explaining it to me.

My topic is pleasure in ancient Rome, focusing on baths, food, travel, and violence. It has to be ten pages and I've chosen ten scholarly sources. I feel like I have some good material and observations, but I'm unclear on what to do with it. Is this a summary, an argument, or something else entirely? Should I quote my sources directly more or summarize them?

Please give me any tips you have for writing historiographical papers or just taking upper level history courses in general. Thanks in advance!

I heard a long time ago from my history teacher that slavery was abolished in Mexico before the United States and civil wars. However slaves were still fleeing across the border of Northern and Southern US and getting hunted and returned to owner. Why did they not flee to Mexico?

The US Congress is comprised of the upper and lower chamber: the Senate and the House of Representatives, respectively. What was the intention, behind this decision? Does it currently function the way the founders intended, or has it strayed/changed/evolved/devolved over the years?

Were Finnish among the vikings, did they partake in the Viking raids what were their connections to the Vikings and neighboring countries/kingdoms during the Viking age?

So I am writing my Modern Middle East final paper on Mehmet Ali’s interactions with Napoleon. So far I can’t seem to find many sources, but my real problem is finding some good primary source documents for reference. Does anybody know of any sites or books with good info on this topic?