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The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, by Harold Bloom
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Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of the aesthetic, " Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon. Shakespeare has become the touchstone for all writers who come before and after him, whether playwrights poets or storytellers. In the creation of character, Bloom maintains, Shakespeare has no true precursor and has left no one after him untouched. Milton, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Ibsen, Joyce, and Beckett were all indebted to him; Tolstoy and Freud rebelled against him; and Dante, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Whitman, Dickinson, Proust, the modern Hispanic and Portuguese writers Borges, Neruda, and Pessoa are exquisite examples of how canonical writing is born of an originality fused with tradition. Bloom concludes this provocative, trenchant work with a complete list of essential writers and books - his vision of the Canon.
- Sales Rank: #200716 in Books
- Published on: 1994-08-31
- Released on: 1994-08-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 6.75" w x 1.75" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 578 pages
Amazon.com Review
Discussed and debated, revered and reviled, Bloom's tome reinvigorates and re-examines Western Literature, arguing against the politicization of reading. His erudite passion will encourage you to hurry and finish his book so you can pick up Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens once again to rediscover their original magic. In addition, his appendix listing of the "future" canon - the books today that will be timeless tomorrow - is sure to be the template for future debate.
From Booklist
A review of 200 or 300 words cannot do justice to a book like this: it is the summation of a great critic's most fundamental beliefs--something like a dying Bernstein's last performance of Mahler's ninth, though in this case a lot less sad. In fact, this book of essays represents Bloom at his most celebratory, and there's a wonderful, vigorous energy about it. Why, one wonders, reading it, do we bother reading anybody but Shakespeare, Dante, or Chaucer? The argument for Shakespeare is particularly compelling. Bloom believes that Shakespeare is the canon: that he defines for the Western world the standards by which we judge all literature. And more: he defines for us what we are ourselves, what we understand of human nature. This argument, offered with Bloom's customary flare for the controversial, is akin to the remark that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, and like it, is probably in large measure true. Thus, modern psychology doesn't add very much to what people could have already learned from reading Shakespeare because Shakespeare defines the limits of what we know: we can't get beyond or outside him. Certainly, experience teaches that Bloom is right; indeed, the evolution of human consciousness seems to have taken one of its periodic jolts forward about the time of Shakespeare, and he above all seems to have captured the entire scope of what was new. As Bloom points out, Shakespeare is universally adored, in all languages, and perhaps it is for this reason. The essays on Dante and Chaucer are almost equally powerful, though in a sense less awesome. And the brief remarks about the powerful movements of resentment trying to push apart these great pillars of the Western canon, though perspicacious, are melancholy and incidental. Get this book for the great essays on Shakespeare. For lovers of literature, probably nothing more powerful or in an odd way more religious will be written this year. Stuart Whitwell
From Kirkus Reviews
One of our biggest critical gun fires a characteristically Olympian broadside into the canon debate, no quarter spared for the politically correct. In measures carefully calculated to raise the hackles of would-be canon revisers Bloom (The Book of J, 1990, etc.) assails ``the current disease of moral smugness that is destroying literary study in the name of socio-economic justice.'' He loftily derides the notion that literature either has a social mission or can profitably be discussed in its own social and historical context. For Bloom, literary interest is always a question of artistic merit, which rests on the degree of ``literary individuality and poetic autonomy'' a text achieves. Bloom disclaims any ideology, but his preferred model of literary study--a solitary one--is as unexceptionally conservative as the qualities by which he determines merit. So too is the reading list that emerges from his account of the endless contest between ``strong poets'' and their even stronger precursors (the agonistic principle of ``anxiety of influence'' familiar from Bloom's earlier criticism), the strongest being Shakespeare, whom Bloom adores with unqualified Bardolatry. Doubtless, much of the debate The Western Canon is intended to provoke will rage around the Cultural Literacystyle ``ideal canon'' Bloom sets forth in an appendix (no Behn, Gaskell, or Alice Walker--a favorite target of Bloom's ire--though it does include poet Rita Dove, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, and other geographically and culturally far-ranging writers). Bloom's vast learning and elegant prose don't always save him from tired tirades against the imagined evils of feminist or materialist criticism, nor from repetitiousness: One of the problems of Bloom's approach is that all great writing can end up sounding rather too similar. But even those who disagree fundamentally with Bloom will find him an engaging antagonist. An unashamed spur to contention, and all the better for it: an elegant and erudite provocation. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
An excellent list of books
By K. S. Dennis
A major part of the book reviews specific literature and compares and contrasts it with other works. This is very good reading and helps in selecting books to read. But, in my opinion, the list of literature in Bloom's canon is even more significant. I would not have known that some of the listed works were part of the great literature. And, the list is a good reminder of all that the great literature includes - even if it is Bloom's opinion. Given Bloom's background, I think his opinion as to which literature is the most significant deserves our attention.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
A tour of our foundational literature
By Craig Matteson
Love him or hate him (I love him), Harold Bloom is one of the great readers of all time. He has personally read more widely and more deeply than some entire towns. It is certainly not necessary to agree with him to benefit from his insights and analyses. This book examines the notion that there was a body of writing that was central to Western Culture. Each generation read these works and was taught about these works as an essential part of the transmission of that cultural to each rising generation to keep it alive.
It not only enriched the lives of those so educated, it benefited the world because of the great values and life giving force of the rich ideas they contained. He notes how this notion has not only been rejected by recent generations of academics, but is now almost unknown in the living generations of people who would constitute Western Culture if they knew what it actually was.
He opens with an elegy to the Canon. The book is worth reading just for this essay. The next section examines authors of the Aristocratic Age. All Bloom readers know he is a worshipper of Shakespeare (he calls himself a Bardolater). He opens with an essay titled "Shakespeare: Center of the Canon". This section also includes essays on Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes (another Bloom favorite), Montaigne & Moli�re, Milton, Samuel Johnson, and Goethe. An impressive list, no?
The next section is the Democratic Age and includes essay son Wordsworth & Jane Austen, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, and Ibsen. The Chaotic age follows and includes Freud vis � vis Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Borges, and Beckett.
Obviously, none of these sections is comprehensive. These are only representative writers of the periods Bloom is discussing with us. The final section is Cataloging the Canon and begins with an Elegiac Conclusion. This essay urges that he is not offering us a lifetime reading plan. Rather, he offers us a way to read. He offers advice on how to immerse yourself in certain kinds of reading. He urges us to seek better writing and to develop a taste that will lead us away that which is not worth reading because it takes you away from that which is. He talks about how to develop the taste of a good Critic rather than spewing the politics of resentment or being numb to the great and good.
Bloom then provides extensive lists of works from each of the three periods. You may like to read some things on the list and not others. As I said, agreeing with Bloom is really not the point. It is being exposed to what is worthwhile in our cultural tradition and getting good grounding in why it is important that is critical. Our emphasis on practical education and vocational training has left most of us with insufficient time in school to indulge our cultural education. We have to do the work more or less on our own. This book can be a real help in making headway in that part of our personal education.
Thanks, Professor Bloom!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
The pages of the copy I received are upside down ...
By AZ
The pages of the copy I received are upside down and backward. So I have to hold the book upside down and turn pages from left to right. Forgive my ignorance if it is intended to be so when it comes to canon. I am going to keep it anyway.
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