Shared References

I've been thinking lately about the disappearance of shared cultural references.

A while ago, I read a book in which an old man was described as "a Nestor". He was, admittedly, a minor character, but it still struck me as unusual that this description was not extended or elaborated upon. Clearly, the reader was assumed to be sufficiently familiar with Homer to associate certain characteristics with Nestor, and these were to form the image of the old man in the book.

I was heartened by the fact that an author felt confident enough to make such an assumption in a general interest book, until I noticed that the book was written in the mid fifties; perhaps a time when such an assumption was justified.

I remembered this recently when reading a 'The Labours of Hercules', a series of short stories by Agatha Christie. This was written at least ten years earlier, and yet the reference to Hercules (the demi-god, not the Belgian) had to be explained in the first chapter. The book would have read more naturally without this discussion, which is certainly the worst part of the book. And yet Christie presumably felt that a sufficient section of her readership would not know the story of Hercules for it to be worth discussing.

Highly contestable point: So by the middle of the last century, it was still reasonable to assume a knowledge of Homer, but not of anything even slightly more esoteric.

A hundred years ago, such references were common time-savers. One finds references to Hesiod and Ovid quite commonly. If these references have disappeared, what replaced them?

References to Harry Potter, perhaps the only book read widely enough today; or to television and movies? Somehow, I doubt the timelessness of these new cultural landmarks, and their universality.