Harold Bloom's Master List

[stlukesguild]

You see, that's the problem with this sort of rubbish. It's all about whose can[n]on s bigger.

Its about experience. Ultimately, our own personal opinions are what matter most to each of us as individuals, but I am far more likely to lend serious consideration to the opinion of an individual with a great deal of experience in a given art form than I am to someone lacking the same. "Elitist?" Perhaps... but art is "elitist" in that in involves making value judgments... deciding that something is or is not worth my time.

[Jackson Richardson]

It is called the Western canon, not the Western canon for English readers.

Oh please! You can't be that dense.

I don’t understand why if a Swede, Croat or Greek followed Bloom’s advice, they can read every other work in Swedish, Serbo-Croat, Greek or the original, but in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament they can only read it in an English seventeenth century translation.

I haven’t read Bloom’s original book. I have only read the list in the link at the top of this thread. He may not be responsible for that list and its inconsistencies, so I may have been unfair to him.

Happy hiking, ecurb!

[JCamilo]

Oh, he is responsable, old man Bloom is a bordeline sionist with islamophobic tirades about how they stole the hebrewish culture to create something destructive (this being the Koran). He is not very nice with St.John Gospels either. I guess it is only fair if you feel angst towards Shakespeare.

[Pompey Bum]

You see, that's the problem with this sort of rubbish. It's all about whose can[n]on s bigger.

Its about experience. Ultimately, our own personal opinions are what matter most to each of us as individuals, but I am far more likely to lend serious consideration to the opinion of an individual with a great deal of experience in a given art form than I am to someone lacking the same. "Elitist?" Perhaps... but art is "elitist" in that in involves making value judgments... deciding that something is or is not worth my time.

Why do you assume JR lacks the experience to draw his own conclusions? That is not elitism but narrow-minded condescension. Art does not require your (or Bloom's) permission to be meaningful. Why should it? I suppose it must be gratifying to one's ego to pretend that "your personal opinions" (as you say) constitute orthodoxy, but neither you nor I nor Bloom is as important as all that. Experience may teach you as much in time. For now you have my condolences.

[Jackson Richardson]

As a matter of interest I have read all Firbank's novels. I never said they shouldn't be part of any canon, only that they weren't major, eg compared to Ulysses. I'd much rather read Firbank though. (He is claimed as a precursor of Modernism.)

[Poetaster]

There's some bad blood in this thread?

[Red Terror]

[Pompey Bum]

"Mikey, Mikey, I nevah wannit it ta be diss way fa'you..."

(That was for TC, just in case he's bothering with this thread).

[heartwing]

No matter the list, who can argue, at least theoretically with, what Bloom is saying on Rose, what one will "get:" cognitive power - an increase in one's ability to think and talk, rhetorical power - the ability to understand the uses of metaphor, and a real capacity for apprehending others (We are trapped in our own mortality. And we read books because we can only know so many people. As one gets older, it is difficult to know more and more people and so one goes back to books.) Memory is the major element in cognition, in everything that we call the humanities. If you cannot remember, you cannot think, you cannot imagine, and you cannot write, and you can hardly read.

In my opinion, and I have read quite a few books of the canon though I'm still deprived of a full education, I believe certain works can have a more formative impact than others. The writers I most admire and who have had the greatest impact on me, even if they have not made "the list" have nonetheless had more or less of a traditional Western education. This kind of education is vastly disappearing. I mean, in humanities departments English literature as it has been traditionally known is slipping away. I believe in its value. I believe in the value of a large number of writers from a variety of places all over the world who imaginatively bring us to our own conclusions of who we are. I think that is what academics, however much people believe them simply to be driven by market concerns, are generally aiming to do: To introduce us to works that will help us understand who we are, that will strengthen and educate, to help us feel more in touch with our humanity and the humanity of others. (If list makers and writers of books based on lists were solely pushing stock at Barnes and Noble, for example, wouldn't they be suggesting work that is more status quo, more generally accepted as canon?)

We all make discerning choices all of the time. Some of us are drawn to what it is we are already used to and I think we go to lists such as a more typical Western canon list to better understand ourselves and the culture that we, if we are older, and our parents and grandparents were educated in. That being said, I'm not going to wait until I finish the entire list to read in the traditions of other cultures, or that I'm not going to sprinkle in work I find more immediately accessible because of the point of view of the narrator or protagonist. I'm not going to tell my child he can't read Harry Potter. I also like reading college and graduate course syllabi when they are online and seeing what's new. I have a few off-the-beaten path publishers whose output you won't find at Barnes and Noble and I like to get their emails. I like to go to writers' conferences and meet authors and publishers.

It is a both/everything approach. I think it is easier to become discerning the more you read, but taste can still be just as subjective as ever and tied to old loyalties and/or odd proclivities. Yet there are the rare ones among us who have put in a brutal amount of labor to intellectually discern some of the gems and those are the men and women with extensive academic experience who are at least worthy of our respect. Without some humility, none of us can say anything and they are examples of people who had to be humble before they could write or speak with originality.

[ennison]

Don't cringe so much please. We can all read even if we don't make our living from it. I am quite happy if some "expert" like Bloom agrees with me at times. Our own lit net list - befouled as it is by the temporary democratic views of those who voted at the time- is just as good a list as the monoglot? Bloom could muster.

[Jackson Richardson]

One last post here - a canon is not decided upon by an individual. It is those works recognised by a community (maybe inspired by God or not - historically that is irrelevant) which are foundational.

[Pompey Bum]

And as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one.

[heartwing]

Just expressing myself. Sometimes it comes out in 1,000 words, not less, but alas, I am not ashamed. I can "cringe" as much as I want though that would not have been my word for it but we all have our words. You have yours and I have mine. And yes, God bless. ha.

[JBI]

As someone who has digested a large chunk of the Western and a so called East-Asian Canon, I can say that the list is good for 1994. The list is written in regard to a cultural war, with the direct intention of contradicting major shifts in English departments since the 80s. In that sense, the Canon won in the end; theory is over and we are back to the classics more or less along the lines of Bloom, perhaps narrower at the top for non-specialists.

As for German etc., Bloom's mother tongue is a German dialect, I would also assume he is fluent in standard German. But, one must see this as a sort of suggestion for English world English departments, not in the context of world literature, and literary studies in translation, which are hardly literary studies, since you cannot really comment too well on books you can't read in the original; the basics that you get out of the translation are hard to transform into strong scholarship.

That being said, the English tradition is relatively isolated compared to the continent, with a persistant resistance to European gernal trends. Being of that generation, it is understandable that this book reflects that; Bloom being American necessarily suggests an American focus.

Treat it like recommendations, not scripture. If you like an author's books, you more likely than not will read other books by them or of a similar type.

[ajvenigalla]

As someone who has digested a large chunk of the Western and a so called East-Asian Canon, I can say that the list is good for 1994. The list is written in regard to a cultural war, with the direct intention of contradicting major shifts in English departments since the 80s. In that sense, the Canon won in the end; theory is over and we are back to the classics more or less along the lines of Bloom, perhaps narrower at the top for non-specialists.

As for German etc., Bloom's mother tongue is a German dialect, I would also assume he is fluent in standard German. But, one must see this as a sort of suggestion for English world English departments, not in the context of world literature, and literary studies in translation, which are hardly literary studies, since you cannot really comment too well on books you can't read in the original; the basics that you get out of the translation are hard to transform into strong scholarship.

That being said, the English tradition is relatively isolated compared to the continent, with a persistant resistance to European gernal trends. Being of that generation, it is understandable that this book reflects that; Bloom being American necessarily suggests an American focus.

Treat it like recommendations, not scripture. If you like an author's books, you more likely than not will read other books by them or of a similar type.

I have looked into Harold Bloom's Genius and The Daemon Knows. The Western Canon is great, but it is only the tip of the iceberg of an interesting, always stimulating, profound, if often frustrating, intellect. His seminal work The Anxiety of Influence, and also The Anatomy of Influence, are also examples of what I speak of.