Why is using Collection.class illegal?

Question

I am puzzled by generics. You can declare a field like:

Class> clazz = ...

It seems logical that you could a

Answer 1

I agree with the other answers, and would like to explain one point further:

Class objects represent classes that are loaded into the JVM memory. Each class object is actually an in-memory instance of a .class file. Java generics are not separate classes. They are just a part of the compile-time type-checking mechanism. Therefore, they have no run-time representation in a class object.