Speaking of weird high culture projects

The New York Public Library has a show, or, according to the New York Times, a showette, about John Milton (volume 4):

"...it is startling that this work, once central to the literary and religious experience of the English-speaking world, is so much a curiosity, sentenced to the margins by its preoccupations with biblical interpretation, condemned by the density of its prosody, which does not instantly seduce but, instead, commands the reader to give way before it, persisting until no resistance is possible."

On the other hand, they do have Milton-inspired music by a band called Cradle of Filth.

And, while we're speaking of Canons, I should point out this Dial M for Musicology post about old-fashioned musicals as another kind of canon which high-schoolers are exposed to.