Harold Bloom's Master List

[Red Terror]

Since I'm no literary expert I have learned a lot from Bloom's book the Western Canon and from his list at the end of the book on the greatest works from ancient times to when the book was written in 1994. Since then, he has added several more titles to his list like Phillip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral and DeLillo's Underworld. What list(s) do you guys depend on??? I remember before I heard of Bloom I relied on the Cliff's Notes list.


http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

[desiresjab]

A long list. One could find things to cry about here and there. There are authors on the list whose work does not warrant so lofty a perch IMO, but I am impressed he even can name so many authors and that he must have some familiarity with their work to include them.

[mortalterror]

The Clifton Fadiman lifetime reading list is better than Bloom's. I also frequently refer to Mortimer J. Adler's Great Books of the Western World.

[Poetaster]

It's not a bad list though - but I wouldn't treat it as a bible.

[Jackson Richardson]

As a socialist, red terror, I'm sure you would want to read (if you haven't already) Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and consider it canonical.

PS I just browze the Oxford Companion to English Literature if I want to learn about an author I don't yet know.

[ajvenigalla]

It's not the "bible," but it's a great list, a good introduction. And it has some great names, not just the well known ones like Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton, but also some interesting names like John Cowper Powys, William Cowper, George Chapman, Edmund Spenser, and even John Bunyan.

I also do appreciate the inclusion of Paradise Regained and The Pilgrim's Progress, two classics written in simple styles and which are somewhat underrated these days among literary people, in the list.

But, interestingly, Harold Bloom has renounced the list.

[Red Terror]

Yeah, it is interesting he would renounce a list that is meant to enlighten readers on what to select to study and what writers to avoid. For those of us who are not experts this list is necessary. He said he made the list up off the top of his head in a couple of hours one day. He should have taken more time to draw up the list and maybe in a new edition refine it to perfect it. Hmmm ... just a thought ...

It's not the "bible," but it's a great list, a good introduction. And it has some great names, not just the well known ones like Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton, but also some interesting names like John Cowper Powys, William Cowper, George Chapman, Edmund Spenser, and even John Bunyan.

I also do appreciate the inclusion of Paradise Regained and The Pilgrim's Progress, two classics written in simple styles and which are somewhat underrated these days among literary people, in the list.

But, interestingly, Harold Bloom has renounced the list.

[JCamilo]

Yeah, it is interesting he would renounce a list that is meant to enlighten readers on what to select to study and what writers to avoid.

That was not the objective of his list. It was just to sell a book. Not only Bloom is limited on his scope to tell anyone what to read (his knowledge about latin american literature is small), as he basically repeated the same classical book that almost every student of literature would know. The Canon book is a commerical book, not meant to be used by students at all. (Even because the study of the canon is hardly an big topic).

For those of us who are not experts this list is necessary. He said he made the list up off the top of his head in a couple of hours one day. He should have taken more time to draw up the list and maybe in a new edition refine it to perfect it. Hmmm ... just a thought ...

Why would people read Bloom instead of the books in any classic list? They are already there: pick penguin or wordsworth list of classics and you will be fine if you want to read classics. Bloom, most of times, is not even industrious enough to sellect the works in the list putting things like "complete works". The list says nothing about the books, it is rather lazy to follow them, ready the texts and bloom may convice someone why to read Emily Dickinson or Milton.

[Danik 2016]

I agree with Camilo. I don´t like reading lists because they usually are biased.

[Jackson Richardson]

I only glimpsed the list, but I came across two things I know a bit about where he was inaccurate.

He gives Roland Firbank "Five Novels". Firbank wrote eight novels. Which ones did you have in mind Harold, and have you actually read them all?

Then under early works he gives two seperate items: Holy Bible (King James Version) and The Apocrypha. If he'd looked at a copy of the Bible translated under James VI/I's patonage he'd see it includes the apocryphal books as a section between the Old and New Testaments. (They are those books like Tobit and Judith that are in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures but not in the Hebrew. Their status is still a matter of dispute between Christians.) They are not two separate books.

And if he is including early texts, surely we need to read a translation in the light of current scholarly opinion? If the King James version is (quite rightly) included because of its cultural importance, surely it counts as Jacobean literature? The Bible has been very important for the majority of Christians and Jews throughout history who have not spoken English, many of them prior to the Jacobean translation.

Bit of WASP elitism going on here, I suspect.

[ennison]

Lists - autism - luv em. What about just saying you'll make your own. Isn't that what your teachers said when they dissected/ mangled texts? "We're making you hate this great text so you can lean to lurv others" No? Ok Go with the Know-alls.

[Marcus1]

I follow the lists and tastes of random Internet friends, in literature, music and film.

[Jackson Richardson]

I’ve noticed two odds things about the inclusion of the Bible.

ONE

It is included under the heading “The Ancient Near East”. There is another section called “Hellenistic Greeks”. (I thought “Hellenistic” meant “Greek” in any case, but Professor
Bloom is presumably better informed than I am.)

Fair enough, the Hebrew Scriptures are in the Ancient Near East, but if Professor Bloom had read three quarter of the way through “The Holy Bible” he would have come across the Christian New Testament, which has been moderately influential in Western culture. It was written in Greek in the second half of the first century, contemporary with Plutarch. Plutarch comes under “Hellenistic Greek”, so why doesn’t the New Testament?

TWO

I’ll leave for tomorrow.

[stlukesguild]

I only glimpsed the list, but I came across two things I know a bit about where he was inaccurate.

He gives Roland Firbank "Five Novels". Firbank wrote eight novels. Which ones did you have in mind Harold, and have you actually read them all?

"Five Novels" was the title of a particular collection:



Then under early works he gives two seperate items: Holy Bible (King James Version) and The Apocrypha. If he'd looked at a copy of the Bible translated under James VI/I's patonage he'd see it includes the apocryphal books as a section between the Old and New Testaments. (They are those books like Tobit and Judith that are in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures but not in the Hebrew. Their status is still a matter of dispute between Christians.) They are not two separate books.

The Bible is a collection of individual books. The Jews don't include the Christian texts or "New Testament". The Apocrypha is not accepted as canonical by most Christians... and many editions of King James Bible do not include these texts.

And if he is including early texts, surely we need to read a translation in the light of current scholarly opinion? If the King James version is (quite rightly) included because of its cultural importance, surely it counts as Jacobean literature?

Bloom is only interested in aesthetics. The King James translation still stands as the finest English translation of the whole of the Bible and this is likely the only reason he puts forth a particular translation in this instance. A good many modern translations might be more literally accurate... but they are also often crap as literature. Of course there are many excellent translations of individual books of the Bible for those who wish to delve deeper. Bloom offers no insight as to which translations to seek out in his list, but has done so in various essays. Of course many of the greatest writers exist in multiple translations of real merit.

Personally, I appreciate Bloom's list for having introduced me to several authors that I quite love... although I have admittedly come to as many more through individual essays. Having said this, no single list could possibly be deemed the "Canon" of Western Literature. Over the years I have "discovered" endless writers of the greatest merit through the writings of various critics, other authors, suggestions of friends and colleagues, suggestions made on the Internet... and through simply browsing in old book stores.

[mortalterror]

I follow the lists and tastes of random Internet friends, in literature, music and film.

Then I presume that you think Old School is the greatest film of all time, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the quintessential bildungsroman, and Skrillex is the modern Mozart. Say what you want about Bloom but at least he's an expert.

Then under early works he gives two seperate items: Holy Bible (King James Version) and The Apocrypha. If he'd looked at a copy of the Bible translated under James VI/I's patonage he'd see it includes the apocryphal books as a section between the Old and New Testaments. (They are those books like Tobit and Judith that are in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures but not in the Hebrew. Their status is still a matter of dispute between Christians.) They are not two separate books.

And if he is including early texts, surely we need to read a translation in the light of current scholarly opinion? If the King James version is (quite rightly) included because of its cultural importance, surely it counts as Jacobean literature? The Bible has been very important for the majority of Christians and Jews throughout history who have not spoken English, many of them prior to the Jacobean translation.

Bit of WASP elitism going on here, I suspect.

Harold Bloom is Jewish, so he may be forgiven for not knowing various facts about bible publications, such as which versions contain which books of the Bible. Catholics, Protestants, and Hebrews all have slightly different bibles which contain several different books in several different orders. Sometimes the Apocrypha is included in a King James edition and sometimes it is not.

As for why he suggested the King James, it's probably not elitist but artistic and practical. The aesthetics of the King James are probably the best of any English edition of the Bible and he is writing for an English audience. And no, I don't agree that it would count as Jacobean literature. Just translating something in one era doesn't make it more of that time than the time of it's original creation. The Bible clearly falls into the category Ancient Near East.

It is included under the heading “The Ancient Near East”. There is another section called “Hellenistic Greeks”. (I thought “Hellenistic” meant “Greek” in any case, but Professor
Bloom is presumably better informed than I am.)

The Hellenistic era comes after the Classical Greek era and before the Roman period.

Fair enough, the Hebrew Scriptures are in the Ancient Near East, but if Professor Bloom had read three quarter of the way through “The Holy Bible” he would have come across the Christian New Testament, which has been moderately influential in Western culture. It was written in Greek in the second half of the first century, contemporary with Plutarch. Plutarch comes under “Hellenistic Greek”, so why doesn’t the New Testament?

Bloom probably didn't want to split the books of the Bible into Old and New Testaments, since most people know it as one work. It would make almost as much sense to break it up into seventy-three different books spread over fifteen centuries as to do that. Also, since the New Testament is based in the same tradition as the Old Testament it makes sense to read them together.