The Western Canon

[echou]

I am wondering if anyone has read "The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom. I am try to get through the first chapter An Elegy of the Canon and am finding his writing style quite difficult to follow. I am hoping that someone can shed some light. It can can be found here: http://mrbauld.com/elegy1.html
Thanks.

[JCamilo]

Why are you reading it?

[Dr Doom]

I have the book but never finished reading it. I really like his writing, but that's not to say that I may like what he writes. I love his treatment of feminist critics, Marxist critics, etc. Good for a laugh. It seems Bloom sometimes rambles on in The Western Canon. I hear that he's an elitist. He turned down Oprah Winfrey's invitation to her show. Oprah has that Midas touch, and he would have been set for life.

I like his Anxiety of Influence. Interesting theory.

[conartist]

I've never read it cover to cover, but I've gone through some of the chapters and thought that they were fantastic. From memory, the chapters on Dickinson, Joyce, Proust and Tolstoy were outstanding. I remember his readings of Dickinson taking my breath away the first time I read them; they changed completely how I thought of her as a poet. It's probably his best work for the public - the Shakespeare book was a bit repetitive.

What exactly are you struggling with? 'An Elegy...' is basically the heart of Bloom: that politically/racially/gender motivated studies of literature are useless and that the author's own background/sexuality/race etc should have no bearing on how their work is judged. He's lamenting the fact that this is not the norm (though really it is - he can be a bit hyperbolic when he feels threatened) and that deep reading is (supposedly) dead.

[echou]

I need to give a presentation on Harold Bloom and his theories for a grade 12 english presentation.

[Drkshadow03]

I have the book but never finished reading it. I really like his writing, but that's not to say that I may like what he writes. I love his treatment of feminist critics, Marxist critics, etc. Good for a laugh. It seems Bloom sometimes rambles on in The Western Canon. I hear that he's an elitist. He turned down Oprah Winfrey's invitation to her show. Oprah has that Midas touch, and he would have been set for life.

I like his Anxiety of Influence. Interesting theory.

Where did you get that information from about him turning down Oprah? I did a google search and I found a NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/29/books/oprah-gaffe-by-franzen-draws-ire-and-sales.html) about the time Franzen turned down Oprah:


Even some defenders of that high-art literary tradition took Mr. Franzen to task. The critic Harold Bloom said he would be ''honored'' to be invited by Ms. Winfrey. ''It does seem a little invidious of him to want to have it both ways, to want the benefits of it and not jeopardize his high aesthetic standing,'' he said.

[JCamilo]

I need to give a presentation on Harold Bloom and his theories for a grade 12 english presentation.

Western Canon is when he was getting senile, not much good for theory, but really, it does not help much if you find his text difficulty. His references are Freud, Jewish texts, Shakespeare... Perhaps the book about Shakespeare is the easier way, since Bloom ends making Shakespeare the center of the universe...

[fb0252]

Western Canon is when he was getting senile, not much good for theory, but really, it does not help much if you find his text difficulty. His references are Freud, Jewish texts, Shakespeare... Perhaps the book about Shakespeare is the easier way, since Bloom ends making Shakespeare the center of the universe...

jcamilo, i would be interested in your opinion after you finish Western Cannon. If you decide to read, you will indeed be an expert on Harold Bloom and likely on a lot of other things as well.

[JCamilo]

I have read it already, but really, it barelly touches Bloom theories. It is more a couple of essays where he gives his opinion guided for his notion of literature. Bloom excells at some authors, it is not that good with a few others.

Western Cannon does not make anyone an specialist even on Bloom. It is too generic, more like a small encyclopedia about a handfull of relevant authors. The english writers and Proust are his domain, so those are the best texts. He knows what he talks about. But when he goes out of it (Tolstoy for example, I think his anti-Dostoieviskian is too blatant to make a good view of the russians of XIX century. It is pretty obvious it is a way to adjust russian literature view on the Shakespearean's anxiety) he is not that good.

[fb0252]

Jcamilo maybe we r reading different western canons. Bloom is a great admirer of Dostoevfsky.

[JCamilo]

No, he is not a great admirer. If he was, he would have split the chapter between Tolstoy and Dostoievisky, because in the end, that is XIX russian literature second half. He cannt deny Dostoievisky, but just like Poe, he does not upheld him (specially because Dostoievisky make Freud useless in terms of literary merit to explain the psychological twist of XX century novels).
He is a great admirer of Proust, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Wordsworth... but Dostoievisky? He reckonizes the genius but cannt touch it with a stick.

[mal4mac]

Western Canon is when he was getting senile...

Do you have a reference to this medical diagnosis?

Just ignore these "it's a bad book" comments, echou. It's a well respected book, just look at the quotes from the luminaries on the cover! And as you are doing it in class your teacher must like it... he won't appreciate it if you put in a paper saying "Bloom is senile...", that's a guaranteed F...

It must be quite hard going for a 12th grader, though. Just think of it as one of your hardest textbooks and go through it *slowly*. Post questions here on each point you get stuck on.

[JCamilo]

Yes, it is called white hair.

You are seriously ignoring comentaries in the cover means square rat-***? It is just commun editiorial process to select friends to do it. It is not a text book, academic book, it is just a book, not deep or special.

[conartist]

'Senile' is an odd word to use, considering the guy has one of the most famous memories in the world. Bloom without question does admire Dostoevsky, though he definitely sees Tolstoy as the greater writer - just as basically every major literary figure has for the past 100+ years.

Also, of course Bloom rejects Poe! The only people ever not to reject Poe were the French! Have you read Poe? He's the most appalling-jingly-jangly-unintentially hilarious poet in history.

[JBI]

meh, The book was written in a different context, with the assumption that the "school of resentment" was a coherent movement and would win. In truth, it was just a reformatting of academic writing that sought to bring more things to the table - he saw it as the future, but it didn't stick. By 2010 it would seem that though one is able to discuss more things in depth, ultimately literary readings are far more along the lines of Bloom than people would imagine.

As for the influence of the book though, people totally misread it when it was written, and now read it and think it applies to today's context, when even Bloom has moved beyond it. Yet there are still Bloom-idolaters amongst us who cannot fathom a world without the school of resentment fighting against everything good and pure about literature.

[JCamilo]

I wont mention that senile means aged, he is obviously old, there is nothing new on his works except his jewish nationalism and somehow, religious devotion to Shakespeare. But Dostoievisky and Tolstoy? They are pratically even, there is several major literary figures equating both or praising Brothers K or Crime and Punishement over Anna Karenina or War and Peace that is not even fun argue this kind of absolute absurd.

Poe is easily the most influential writer of United States and in poetry, almost only Whitman can make up for him. Repeating Emerson jiggle remarks about Poe does not help - No crap poet would be fundamental for Pessoa, Borges, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Verlaine, Machado de Assis, Ruben Dario and a few others. And I am not talking about his critical essays or Short stories. Bloom mistake is typical and your ressort similar... Anglo-saxon bias seems to acknowledge only french as the rest of the world. It is exotic.

[conartist]

'Old' on its own is hardly a criticism.

No one in the english speaking world who reads poetry regards Poe as anything near good. Eliot devoted an essay to trying to figure out what Beaudelaire, Valery and Mallarme saw there. The point is that no one who was fluent in English and deeply read in English poetry would see Poe as more than a joke.

I like Doestevsky and he has been mostly admired. But I can't think of any major writer that has equated him to Tolstoy. And there have been more than a few (Joyce and Nabokov most obviously) that have dismissed him. Who has ever rejected Tolstoy?

[JBI]

'Old' on its own is hardly a criticism.

No one in the english speaking world who reads poetry regards Poe as anything near good. Eliot devoted an essay to trying to figure out what Beaudelaire, Valery and Mallarme saw there. The point is that no one who was fluent in English and deeply read in English poetry would see Poe as more than a joke.

I like Doestevsky and he has been mostly admired. But I can't think of any major writer that has equated him to Tolstoy. And there have been more than a few (Joyce and Nabokov most obviously) that have dismissed him. Who has ever rejected Tolstoy?


At the same time, Poe is the most read English poet in America I would wager. He is in every classroom, and even on the Simpsons - what other poet has benefited like he? The question of appeal and influence cannot be ignored - simply put, Poe is very much the American poet, and that is not deniable.

[conartist]

I would think Shakespeare would be the most read poet in America, but Poe certanly seems to be the most prominent American poet in American culture. However, considering American poets of the last century or so, with regard to Poe and Walt Whitman, you have Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and maybe a few others who don't seem to have cared much for either; then there are Eliot, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane and John Ashberry, all of whom were hugely influenced by Whitman and didn't care at all for Poe. Who came out of Poe? Is there a single strong English verse writer with any relation to him?

[JBI]

I would think Shakespeare would be the most read poet in America, but Poe certanly seems to be the most prominent American poet in American culture. However, considering American poets of the last century or so, with regard to Poe and Walt Whitman, you have Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and maybe a few others who don't seem to have cared much for either; then there are Eliot, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane and John Ashberry, all of whom were hugely influenced by Whitman and didn't care at all for Poe. Who came out of Poe? Is there a single strong English verse writer with any relation to him?

What's your Erdos number? Eliot and Pound very much read French Symbolism, which ate Poe up like pie. Eliot himself mentioned how at the back of everything there is a trace of Poe. I don't know what you are talking about in terms of lack of influence on those poets.

Beyond that too, modern poets reading Latin American and Southern European poets hit Poe too, as JCamilo has stated. Where is your historical basis?

In terms of modern poetry anyway, things aren't so clear, with the exception really of "big name American poets" most poets have rather eccentric patterns of influence, from Anne Carson's unknown Greek and Latin authors, to Haydon's Baha'i and Japanese influences, to Geoffrey Hill's intense European historicism and catholicism. Simply put, you cannot graph so easily influence, especially in a multi-lingual world - most poets now are at least bilingual, and read widely in the literature of more than one tradition.

Even music has gone through the effect, from jazz meditations on Chinese themes, to Martial Arts Soundtracks with Western motifs, there is a little trace of everything everywhere if you learn how the grid connects.

And don't get me wrong, I do not care for Poe's poetry either.

[JCamilo]

'Old' on its own is hardly a criticism.

It is not. It is a fact.


No one in the english speaking world who reads poetry regards Poe as anything near good. Eliot devoted an essay to trying to figure out what Beaudelaire, Valery and Mallarme saw there. The point is that no one who was fluent in English and deeply read in English poetry would see Poe as more than a joke.

Longfellow, diplomatically or not, called Poe a genius. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote compliments to him and his Raven. And the most amazing thing, all those authors I mentioned were fluent in english, read english poetry - and more important, poetry from other countries as well, as english is just a small dot in the ocean - so, it is a bit silly trying to move the goal higher and ignoring those guys knew english well. So did Paul Valéry (whom I forgot), Nabokov, Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson.

And Eliot said many things about Poe. Praised his genius, but mostly: in the same essay he mentions a educated reader (which can be himself) remember and was enchanted by a few of Poe poems. He do repeat it latter. He also defend Poe from a critic, claiming the same critic had not seen poe poetic originality, and I doubt he would consider mediocre or a jinggle writer the poet who was a major influence of symbolism (that Eliot could not see why, is irrelevant), the most important movement after romantism (as Eliot says) and that was very improtant influence (the movement) to eliot.

Robert Frost named Poe was the first poet he read all poems, wrote early pieces resembling Poe's poems.

Bloom himself, just like he avoids Dostoievisky but reckonizes the genius, list Poem Poems and Eureka in the canon and compared Poe capacity to go from bad to good easily with one of the bible authors. So, English is not a problem. Poe is undenyable.



I like Doestevsky and he has been mostly admired. But I can't think of any major writer that has equated him to Tolstoy. And there have been more than a few (Joyce and Nabokov most obviously) that have dismissed him. Who has ever rejected Tolstoy?

Borges Despised Tolstoy. Latin American literature has a strong tendecy towards Tolstoy. E.M.Foster equated both (Brothers k is often strongly praised, today stronger than Tolstoy).
Joyce dismissed who? He said Dostoievisky was a major influence for his and all moderm prose.

[JCamilo]

What's your Erdos number? Eliot and Pound very much read French Symbolism, which ate Poe up like pie. Eliot himself mentioned how at the back of everything there is a trace of Poe. I don't know what you are talking about in terms of lack of influence on those poets.

Beyond that too, modern poets reading Latin American and Southern European poets hit Poe too, as JCamilo has stated. Where is your historical basis?

Plus it is a bit complicated when it is Poe, because his heavy language that slips or is bullseye as easily is the same on principle of his tales. Baudelaire justify more his liking from Poe (I must point, Baudelaire is a much better poet than Poe) on Poe's overall production. His tales and criticism go to Russia (Dostoievisky and Tchekhov), Japan (Up for you, but Tanizaki and Akutugawa are poesque and anti-poesque, when they are western like and anti-western), Kafka knew poe, a bit beyond the south-american/southern europe side...

[mortalterror]

Much of Bloom's analysis is a little iffy. I think he overestimates the importance of Wallace Stevens because he was a personal friend. He also overestimates his anxiety of influence theory, which has a grain of truth in it, past all reasonable bounds. I think he mentioned on the Charlie Rose Show that he thought Hadji Murat was Tolstoy's best book and that no other writer but Shakespeare could have written Tom o' Bedlam. He also claimed female authorship of The Book of Job, which I don't see at all. He makes these leaps, from small grains of data, which I don't believe are supportable.

[JCamilo]

That because you havent seen his book on Yaweh and Jesus. It is insane and even sionist. According to him there was no influence of early jewish texts, as if it poped from the mind of lord almithy, he ignores Yaweh early versions, he is anti-islamic (he mentions a research that shows arabians do not approve suicid-bombers, just to say: of course they do!, because it would satisfy his notion that the Quran was inferior to old testament books because it had an active Yaweh, but only interessed on death)....

[JBI]

Much of Bloom's analysis is a little iffy. I think he overestimates the importance of Wallace Stevens because he was a personal friend. He also overestimates his anxiety of influence theory, which has a grain of truth in it, past all reasonable bounds. I think he mentioned on the Charlie Rose Show that he thought Hadji Murat was Tolstoy's best book and that no other writer but Shakespeare could have written Tom o' Bedlam. He also claimed female authorship of The Book of Job, which I don't see at all. He makes these leaps, from small grains of data, which I don't believe are supportable.

What do you expect from someone who reads Freud like his god? Seriously, all people who trust Freud as a sort of science, or actually a doctor need to examine their readings.

Either way, my quibble is with the notion of Western canon in itself - generally it is the Western European Canon, which, despite his great fight against resentment, essentially begins with Christian self-moralizing and justified isolation from a far more sophisticated Muslim world. The first Canon of Western literature is Dante, not Homer, as Homer was not traditionally in the place of the West - but rather, survived away from the West - Virgil is the closest to an early predecessor, since he at least wrote in Latin, and survived into the formation of "western society" - in general, there was a great communication of civilization from Rome to Han China which included cultural exchanges - these went on all the way until around the 14th century, when, while still there, they greatly diminished. Simply put, it was the west that created its idea of "Western literature" and the "Western literary tradition". IT cut itself off, because those heathens simply are heathens, and to be ignored, and Bloom, rather ironically, perpetuates this resentment in his book, despite the fact that it fits with his "resentment" paradigm.

[Dr Doom]

Where did you get that information from about him turning down Oprah? I did a google search and I found a NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/29/books/oprah-gaffe-by-franzen-draws-ire-and-sales.html) about the time Franzen turned down Oprah:

I rememeber hearing that from a professor many moons ago. If I recall, I might have googled it too, but I don't remember the details of what I found. He is an elitist though.

[mortalterror]

The first Canon of Western literature is Dante, not Homer, as Homer was not traditionally in the place of the West - but rather, survived away from the West - Virgil is the closest to an early predecessor, since he at least wrote in Latin, and survived into the formation of "western society" - in general, there was a great communication of civilization from Rome to Han China which included cultural exchanges - these went on all the way until around the 14th century, when, while still there, they greatly diminished.

I see what you are saying about Homer. His original Greek texts were lost for a thousand years; so there's a gap there in the middle ages. But he was the major force of influence for the preceding millennium, as well as a major force for the last seven centuries after he was rediscovered. I don't know that you could honestly make the case for Dante over Homer since Dante was popularized by Boccaccio at the same time as he was reintroducing Homer to Italy. If I'm recalling this correctly, Dante was always venerated in Italy but he doesn't approach the kind of universal acclaim he's known for until the Romantic era. I seem to remember him being out of favor during the Enlightenment, when Homer was definitely in vogue. Voltaire even wrote against him at the time. Either way, it's hard to make a claim that Dante is more central to the western tradition when Homer has been around during all of the time that Dante has and quite a bit before him. Dante wasn't particularly influential during the Dark Ages, before he was born, either; though you may make a case for Virgil.

But if we are going to talk about displaced texts reinserted into the canon we should really begin the conversation at Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

[JBI]

I see what you are saying about Homer. His original Greek texts were lost for a thousand years; so there's a gap there in the middle ages. But he was the major force of influence for the preceding millennium, as well as a major force for the last seven centuries after he was rediscovered. I don't know that you could honestly make the case for Dante over Homer since Dante was popularized by Boccaccio at the same time as he was reintroducing Homer to Italy. If I'm recalling this correctly, Dante was always venerated in Italy but he doesn't approach the kind of universal acclaim he's known for until the Romantic era. I seem to remember him being out of favor during the Enlightenment, when Homer was definitely in vogue. Voltaire even wrote against him at the time. Either way, it's hard to make a claim that Dante is more central to the western tradition when Homer has been around during all of the time that Dante has and quite a bit before him. Dante wasn't particularly influential during the Dark Ages, before he was born, either; though you may make a case for Virgil.

But if we are going to talk about displaced texts reinserted into the canon we should really begin the conversation at Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

Oh, I meant in determining a Western tradition - Homer went two ways, we know, with Alexander, and Greek work in general was supported by Byzantines and Arabs when it was lost to the "West" - my choice of Dante is simply because he seems the first major major author who comes from a tradition that has separated itself from the rest of the world - for all the xenophobia in Herodotus, there is still an awareness and a dialog - there is no separate tradition, any more than there was during the Roman times when, though Roman authors were flourishing, Greek was still being read - by the time you hit Dante though, it's as if the world shuts off everything that doesn't follow a single trajectory, even if he can name Avicenna, who he more likely than not hadn't read.


It's the same way how 19th century authors "discovered" that there was a huge amount of excellent literature written outside of Western Europe - oh my god, those Muslims can write! - just wait until you drag that all the way to the far reaches of the world - Japan essentially brought it to them when they defeated Russia at war, finally ending the idea of the West (I believe in the united States itself Japanese people won at court the distinction of being "white" people, though their literature didn't emerge well until the 1950s into the mass population, where Haiku became a dominant form. Likewise, Goethe reading Hafiz, or Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat show just how distant the tradition was until then, despite years of war between two neighbors, and even a conquering of the Iberian peninsula - in contrast, Chinese poetry essentially absorbed Persian influences in the 9th through 13th centuries despite being far more distant (at that point China didn't even extent into Sichuan) - why then did the West not feel a similar absorption of form - did it? the 1001 nights took long enough to make it to Europe (1704 in French).

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I agree with all points made by all posters. :nod:

[JCamilo]

But you can pick arabian philosophy on Dante, his obvious influence of the bible, the cabalistic influence with this 4 textual meanings, the returning favor toward rhymes in italian poetry, St. Agostine, plato... Well, being closed is medieval but he still paints some zephyr sky. I would not say it is much different from germanic tradition, they move towards to england, which remains closed until chaucer bring italian influence back.

But I would say, there is a fantasy about the Shakespearean center of canon, because he and Dante shared the status during romantic ages (both not exactly as popular during enlightment), Virgil was easy the top of top, from the time he was alive to the romantic period he was the model of perfection and he shared with Cicer the model of philosopher, Ovid the model of perfect imperfection and one can say western tradition is the roman tradition, they define the bible, they split orient and ocident, etc.

But I can see, the whole idea of Western or a date is fictional. Only good sell out and not really something pratical, time and geography mixed in the end of the day.

[mortalterror]

Oh, I meant in determining a Western tradition - Homer went two ways, we know, with Alexander, and Greek work in general was supported by Byzantines and Arabs when it was lost to the "West" - my choice of Dante is simply because he seems the first major major author who comes from a tradition that has separated itself from the rest of the world - for all the xenophobia in Herodotus, there is still an awareness and a dialog - there is no separate tradition, any more than there was during the Roman times when, though Roman authors were flourishing, Greek was still being read - by the time you hit Dante though, it's as if the world shuts off everything that doesn't follow a single trajectory, even if he can name Avicenna, who he more likely than not hadn't read.

There are more Muslims in the Divine Comedy than just Avicenna. Averroes, Siger of Brabant, and Saladin come in for a share of honor. Let us not forget that after the Muslim conquest there was an Islamic presence in Europe from the 8th century to the 15th, particularly in Spain. Venice was a major sea port which had regular commerce with the Muslim world. There have been numerous papers published about the indirect influence of Islam on the Divine Comedy, including speculation that he might have borrowed certain incidents from the "Kitab al Miraj."

I think Dante himself makes an argument for Homer being the center of the canon in the Divine Comedy. Though he's gone he's not forgotten.


Homer is he, the poets' sovran lord;
Next, Horace comes, the keen satirical;
Ovid the third; and Lucan afterward.

Just because they didn't have the text anymore doesn't mean they didn't know what was in it or the man's reputation in past ages. Petrarch even wrote a letter to Homer among his letters to famous dead people, so it shows his presence was felt, especially through Virgil. I might also remark that Ovid seems to have been more popular in the middle ages and during the Renaissance than Virgil was. To quote Petrarch himself from "An Excursion to Paris":

But, lest you should be misled by my words, I hasten to add that there are no Virgils here, although many Ovids, so that you would say that the latter author was justified in his reliance upon his genius or the affection of posterity, when he placed at the end of his Metamorphoses that audacious prophecy where he ventures to claim that as far as the power of Rome shall extend, - nay, as far as the very name of Roman shall penetrate in a conquered world, - so widely shall his works be read by enthusiastic admirers.

It seems as though Virgil has always been more admired than liked.



It's the same way how 19th century authors "discovered" that there was a huge amount of excellent literature written outside of Western Europe - oh my god, those Muslims can write!

I've found that most well read people seem to be aware of Firdawsi and the Mahabharata at least since the late 1700s. There was a flood of interest around the time that Goethe was imitating Hafiz with his West-Eastern Divan. This fascination with the far away and exotic seems to be an inspiration for such Enlightenment writings as Montesquieu's Persian Letters(1721). Sir William Jones takes up the torch later in the century translating all manner of Persian, Sanskrit, and Mandarin works, really doing some pioneering work in the area of Oriental Studies. However, there had been small chairs in language departments for Oriental Studies going back to the Renaissance, and I know that Christian missionaries were in those regions since at least the late 1500s. So you can't say we completely ignored them until the 19th century.



- just wait until you drag that all the way to the far reaches of the world - Japan essentially brought it to them when they defeated Russia at war, finally ending the idea of the West (I believe in the united States itself Japanese people won at court the distinction of being "white" people, though their literature didn't emerge well until the 1950s into the mass population, where Haiku became a dominant form.

I don't know that you can claim there was no interest in Japanese or Eastern literature before the 40's. Ezra Pound came out with his translation of Li Po "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" in 1915. He tried to translate some other Chinese poems, with varying success. Arthur Waley made a prominent career out of translating Chinese and Japanese literature around the same time. He publishes The Tale of Genji in the 20s and 30s. The Harvard Classics came out in 1910 and included the works of Confucius, the Koran, and the Bhagavad-Gita. The Chinese play The Orphan of Chao was popular in Voltaire's day. Arthur and Edmond Warner translated the complete Shahnameh into verse in 1905. Pearl S. Buck, a Nobel Prize winner, translated Water Margin into English in 1933. Rabindranath Tagor, an Indian, won the Nobel Prize in 1913. Ganguli translated the complete Mahabharata into English in 1896. Goethe talks about how much he admired Kalidasa, and you can see the influence of Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection on his Faust.

Before the 19th century, can you see the influence of European literature on China? What impact did Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, or Goethe make in those circles?

[JBI]

You can see both the Old Testament and the Bible, as well as sources of culture going as far back as Rome - the connection was there - as for Shakespeare, he is one author, in a rather isolationist tradition, as for Goethe, he is a late 18th / 19th century author, so his presence in China cannot be said to have been justified before the 19th century - as for Homer, who can say, though I know for a fact Greek culture, perhaps not literature directly, had influence on China itself. Fashion, art, music, poetics, food - all of that came, but not from Western Europe of course - hell, Russia was part of China for a hundred years - the last Mongol battles were well into the middle east, bringing the plague that was traditionally credited with kicking off the renaissance. That isn't to say that there wasn't ethnocentricity - but entertainment was highly multi-cultural way up until the Ming dynasty.

[JCamilo]

There are more Muslims in the Divine Comedy than just Avicenna. Averroes, Siger of Brabant, and Saladin come in for a share of honor. Let us not forget that after the Muslim conquest there was an Islamic presence in Europe from the 8th century to the 15th, particularly in Spain. Venice was a major sea port which had regular commerce with the Muslim world. There have been numerous papers published about the indirect influence of Islam on the Divine Comedy, including speculation that he might have borrowed certain incidents from the "Kitab al Miraj."

Well, Saladin the noble is more western than eastern. His fame decline and only him as the "great enemy" surived, being rediscovered much latter and a new cult to him was back on him land. Pretty much like the 1001 Nights. Albeit arabian, it is more western than eastern, in the sense their huge status is the history of western translations. In the end, like all generalization the notion of canon cann't survive critical analyses, but then, concepts like Canon, western culture, tradition cann't be trully limited, they somehow exist, but we affect only the center.


I think Dante himself makes an argument for Homer being the center of the canon in the Divine Comedy. Though he's gone he's not forgotten.

Dante basically build a canon. Let's be honest, everyone build a canon. That we agree Dante is there is a miracle. Even Dante and Shakespeare - if right now the format of literature is prose and novels, how they are more relevat to the canon than Cervantes (who by the way, had a more continuous reading than those two)? In a way, the formation of a canon can be interesting, we can pick details here and there, a good excuse for us to talk about Ovid without someone having a fit about it being out of place. But we will study the canon? I doubt so.




Just because they didn't have the text anymore doesn't mean they didn't know what was in it or the man's reputation in past ages. Petrarch even wrote a letter to Homer among his letters to famous dead people, so it shows his presence was felt, especially through Virgil. I might also remark that Ovid seems to have been more popular in the middle ages and during the Renaissance than Virgil was. To quote Petrarch himself from "An Excursion to Paris":


It seems as though Virgil has always been more admired than liked.

Virgil was always the perfect model. Let's face it, Ovid is much more interesting, he is richer - he do tell stories. Without him, the classic myths would have other format (so he basic build a canon of them), he goes more sentimental than Virgil (Dido or not), he is funnier, he is sensual, he wrote more (Or more has survived), he laughed of his own flaws. Everyone wanted to be like Virgil, but write like Ovid. Dante picks Virgil, but it is not Virgil who fills his path, it is Ovid, because Ovid who told all the stories of the many people Dante placed in hell. But it is Virgil, that Dante faces as superior. Maybe it is like Dante or Bocaccio or Dante and Petrarch. Not many Dantes (how much real epics like the Comedy?) ,but hundred of Petrarchs, who is basically the lyrical model for Sonnets in the world... Or many Bocaccios...





I've found that most well read people seem to be aware of Firdawsi and the Mahabharata at least since the late 1700s. There was a flood of interest around the time that Goethe was imitating Hafiz with his West-Eastern Divan. This fascination with the far away and exotic seems to be an inspiration for such Enlightenment writings as Montesquieu's Persian Letters(1721). Sir William Jones takes up the torch later in the century translating all manner of Persian, Sanskrit, and Mandarin works, really doing some pioneering work in the area of Oriental Studies. However, there had been small chairs in language departments for Oriental Studies going back to the Renaissance, and I know that Christian missionaries were in those regions since at least the late 1500s. So you can't say we completely ignored them until the 19th century.

Camoes had a chinese lover, so he knew it. But lets face it, Japan killed occidentals going near it. Hindu-Indian influence was reasonably spread, budhists legends, gypsies, fables arrived on europe since middle age.

I see only a problem with that is trying to imply the influence of China over europe (or vice-versa) is chronological. From the momment the Bible is accepted, there is a continual influence from orient... In the end, such questions is accepting the artificial aspect of the canon. For example, Garcia Lorca is clearly under muslim influence. His Duende is from there. He did not had influence from Muslims of XX century, but from Andaluzia past.





I don't know that you can claim there was no interest in Japanese or Eastern literature before the 40's. Ezra Pound came out with his translation of Li Po "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" in 1915. He tried to translate some other Chinese poems, with varying success. Arthur Waley made a prominent career out of translating Chinese and Japanese literature around the same time. He publishes The Tale of Genji in the 20s and 30s. The Harvard Classics came out in 1910 and included the works of Confucius, the Koran, and the Bhagavad-Gita. The Chinese play The Orphan of Chao was popular in Voltaire's day. Arthur and Edmond Warner translated the complete Shahnameh into verse in 1905. Pearl S. Buck, a Nobel Prize winner, translated Water Margin into English in 1933. Rabindranath Tagor, an Indian, won the Nobel Prize in 1913. Ganguli translated the complete Mahabharata into English in 1896. Goethe talks about how much he admired Kalidasa, and you can see the influence of Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection on his Faust.

Maybe he means as constant editions. Of course, Japanese culture after II war spread on american strongly, like never before, but Voltaire admired chinese philosophy, Schopenhauer too and he also came with Budhism, which arrived on Tolstoy too. In Brazil, japanese hai-kai magazines were present in the early XX century and the modernists of the first two decades worked with it. I do not know which is the point: Africa is more western politically wise and only recently there is a movement to read african authors. Before it, what we had ? Arabian-african literature. And Africa is just there and here.

[mortalterror]

Not many Dantes (how much real epics like the Comedy?) ,but hundred of Petrarchs, who is basically the lyrical model for Sonnets in the world... Or many Bocaccios...

Off the top of my head I can't think of many major authors who wrote like Dante (excepting Chaucer) until Blake. At least they don't seem to be imitating the Divine Comedy. Maybe his other poems have more imitators, especially in Italian. What about it JBI?

Boccaccio and Petrarch had an even larger effect on Chaucer what with Canterbury Tales being a reworked poetic version of the Decameron and him stealing sonnets out of Petrarch for Troilus and Criseyde. Everyone and their mother started writing sonnets after that and Boccaccio became the model for short stories and Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. On the one hand, Dante popularizes Italian as a language for poetry, but on the other Boccaccio and Petrarch are the major humanists who kick off the Renaissance. All three are highly influential, but who doubts that Dante is the better writer?

Surely, the canon changes with time. But I think there is still some manner of constancy, at least for the very greatest works. So shouldn't we call the canon, that which is canonical which does not change? At this point, I think it would be very difficult to displace Homer, the Bible, and Shakespeare. Everything else may still be up for grabs.

I'm reminded of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great English critic. In his time, Pope was almost what Shakespeare is in ours. And Joseph Addison's play Cato was the wonder of a century. Johnson called Dr. John Arbuthnot the finest man of letters in his day, and who remembers him now? Who remembers Johnson? If you look back upon his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, you will find a great many names which are no longer familiar. Of course, it can't be said that he left a single name of consequence out. This begs the question, in the creation of a canon, is it a graver sin to leave off a name of some worthy than to include one that may be unworthy?

[mal4mac]

You are seriously ignoring comentaries in the cover means square rat-***? It is just commun editiorial process to select friends to do it. It is not a text book, academic book, it is just a book, not deep or special.

Normally I'd agree with you, but Bloom gets positive comments from *really* heavy-hitters like Frank Kermode, A.S. Byatt, Cristopher Ricks, Malcolm Bradbury, James Wood, Peter Ackroyd... These are not "friends", these are the gatekeepers of literature. You can't dismiss Bloom's book with unsupported comments like "senile" or "not deep or special".

[mal4mac]

Much of Bloom's analysis is a little iffy. I think he overestimates the importance of Wallace Stevens because he was a personal friend. He also overestimates his anxiety of influence theory, which has a grain of truth in it, past all reasonable bounds. I think he mentioned on the Charlie Rose Show that he thought Hadji Murat was Tolstoy's best book...

"Think he mentioned"? I doubt he said it was "Tolstoy's best book".

He praises it to the heights in "The Western Canon"- saying it's "the best story in the world" and his "personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction", and goes on to discuss it in some detail.

But "best book?"

I doubt he would say that... it's too short to compete with the "loose and baggy" magnificence of W&P and AK. In fact it usually comes with his six other short novels in a book that is still smaller than W&P!

Bloom is very good on Tostoy, he inspired me to read beyond "the two big books". The big problem about Tolstoy is his turn to extreme Christianity after AK, which put me off reading beyond AK. Bloom, thankfully, turned me back on to reading late Tolstoy - all the short novels are wonderful.

I'm reading Resurrection at the moment and I think Bloom is spot on when he says, "So powerful and sustained is Tolstoy's narrative gift that his sermonizing digressions do not disfigure his fiction much or render it tendentious."

[mortalterror]

"Think he mentioned"? I doubt he said it was "Tolstoy's best book".

If you want, you can see where he mentions it at the tail end of the interview he gave when The Western Canon came out. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/7132 Skip to about 19:35 in the video to where Charlie starts reading his list of 26 canonical authors and questions him directly about Hadji Murat. Bloom says something about it being important in light of modern tensions in Chechnya. I don't own a copy of The Western Canon and it's been years since I read anything out of it; so I can't quote you anything he says there.

[JBI]

Off the top of my head I can't think of many major authors who wrote like Dante (excepting Chaucer) until Blake. At least they don't seem to be imitating the Divine Comedy. Maybe his other poems have more imitators, especially in Italian. What about it JBI?

Boccaccio and Petrarch had an even larger effect on Chaucer what with Canterbury Tales being a reworked poetic version of the Decameron and him stealing sonnets out of Petrarch for Troilus and Criseyde. Everyone and their mother started writing sonnets after that and Boccaccio became the model for short stories and Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. On the one hand, Dante popularizes Italian as a language for poetry, but on the other Boccaccio and Petrarch are the major humanists who kick off the Renaissance. All three are highly influential, but who doubts that Dante is the better writer?

Surely, the canon changes with time. But I think there is still some manner of constancy, at least for the very greatest works. So shouldn't we call the canon, that which is canonical which does not change? At this point, I think it would be very difficult to displace Homer, the Bible, and Shakespeare. Everything else may still be up for grabs.

I'm reminded of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great English critic. In his time, Pope was almost what Shakespeare is in ours. And Joseph Addison's play Cato was the wonder of a century. Johnson called Dr. John Arbuthnot the finest man of letters in his day, and who remembers him now? Who remembers Johnson? If you look back upon his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, you will find a great many names which are no longer familiar. Of course, it can't be said that he left a single name of consequence out. This begs the question, in the creation of a canon, is it a graver sin to leave off a name of some worthy than to include one that may be unworthy?

For the question addressed to me, Dante's metre is the Italian iambic pentameter or alexandrine though we credit Shakespeare and not the Earl of Surrey. There are traces elsewhere though, his tercets making there way into other places, such as Shelley.

Though, it can be said that epics in general lack imitators that succeed - Virgil has no imitator but translators, who is writing in the style of Milton? what about Homer? Surely Goethe's Faust has its imitators? I did read somewhere that there were Virgil-era rival epics, though none survived because of the prowess of Virgil - perhaps it is true. The only real writing in the style of is Pope following Dryden, and they are close, and yet so distant. Then again, Spenser plays with it a bit in the Faerie Queene, as he does with Virgil in the rest (book three in particular is a nice game with Ariosto, the most imitated of all the epic-poets arguably).

[JBI]

Normally I'd agree with you, but Bloom gets positive comments from *really* heavy-hitters like Frank Kermode, A.S. Byatt, Cristopher Ricks, Malcolm Bradbury, James Wood, Peter Ackroyd... These are not "friends", these are the gatekeepers of literature. You can't dismiss Bloom's book with unsupported comments like "senile" or "not deep or special".

Gatekeeper? seriously that's a ridiculous notion, how can a single individual be a gatekeeper, much less they.

[mortalterror]

Though, it can be said that epics in general lack imitators that succeed - Virgil has no imitator but translators, who is writing in the style of Milton? what about Homer? Surely Goethe's Faust has its imitators? I did read somewhere that there were Virgil-era rival epics, though none survived because of the prowess of Virgil - perhaps it is true. The only real writing in the style of is Pope following Dryden, and they are close, and yet so distant. Then again, Spenser plays with it a bit in the Faerie Queene, as he does with Virgil in the rest (book three in particular is a nice game with Ariosto, the most imitated of all the epic-poets arguably).

As far as Virgil's successful imitators go there's Lucan's Pharsalia and Statius' Thebaid, both of which Dante applauds in the Divine Comedy: mentioning Lucan in the same tercet as he mentions Homer and Ovid, then making Statius a major character and guide through Purgatory. I think that Milton is writing after the style of Virgil. To a certain extent so are Tasso, Camoes, and Spenser. Petrarch, like Dante, credits much of his poetic language to Virgil, though his prose is based on Cicero. So Homer and Virgil definitely have imitators, and they usually happen to be the greatest writers of all time.

I'm not sure what you mean about Virgilian era epics not surviving. We don't have Ennius' Annals, which was the canonical Latin text before Virgil's Aeneid, but Horace and Ovid were both contemporary with Virgil and their work survives. We have Lucretius epic poem De Rerum Natura, Statius, and Lucan's works, of course. We have the texts of two crummy epic poems by Italicus and Flaccus.

I think you might be confusing them with the lost epics that filled out the rest of the Trojan story around the Iliad and the Odyssey: The Cypria, The Nosti, Telegony, etc. Virgil actually borrowed from them, especially for Book 2, to write the Aeneid. However, it's likely that these other epics weren't anything special since Hesiod lived and wrote at the same time as Homer and we have his epics (which is not to say that only the worst die out).

Come to think of it, Apollonius imitates Homer a bit in the Argonautica, which really deserves more love.

I don't know that I'd claim Ariosto as the most imitated of epic poets. Surely, Spenser, Tasso, and Milton may lay claim to him but each of them have greater fathers still, and who else uses him for a model?

[JBI]

I meant in that sort of nationalist vein that Virgil was written in, that is, the founding of Rome myth, of course there are other writers. Milton may be imitating Virgil, but he is different, as are the Portuguese and Spanish poets before him. direct influence, and close imitation is far rarer, the closest being Spenser, who tried to mold the myth of himself as following the pattern of Virgil's career and life.

As for Ariosto, was it not that every Renaissance nobleman had a Trojan ancestor?

The exact imitation of an epic work though, that is something rare. Virgil is using a homeric model, but he is not imitating Homer. Very few canonical authors imitate.

[mortalterror]

I meant in that sort of nationalist vein that Virgil was written in, that is, the founding of Rome myth, of course there are other writers. Milton may be imitating Virgil, but he is different, as are the Portuguese and Spanish poets before him. direct influence, and close imitation is far rarer, the closest being Spenser, who tried to mold the myth of himself as following the pattern of Virgil's career and life.

As for Ariosto, was it not that every Renaissance nobleman had a Trojan ancestor?

The exact imitation of an epic work though, that is something rare. Virgil is using a Homeric model, but he is not imitating Homer. Very few canonical authors imitate.

Perhaps we are having a misunderstanding about what each of us believes to be the definition of imitation. When I say that Virgil imitates Homer I mean that he uses dactylic hexameter, the first half of his poem parallels point for point the Odyssey and the second half does the same for the Iliad. He fills his poem with characters, events, themes, and diction meant to evoke the earlier poet. Virgil had previously imitated Hesiod in the style and subject matter of the Georgics and likewise imitated Theocritus when he wrote his Eclogues.

Milton imitates Virgil 1) in his latinate grammar and rhetoric. 2) in the 12 book structure of Paradise Lost. Spenser likewise structured his epic into 12 books of 12 cantos each to draw the comparison to Virgil's Aeneid, whether he survived to finish it is immaterial. Camoes is imitating Virgil by trying to write a heroic epic glorifying the Portuguese people.

Just look at how each introduction is reminiscent of the earlier poems.

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men-carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Iliad Fitzgerald translation

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all —
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.
Odyssey Fitzgerald translation

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
Aeneid Dryden translation

My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me-or I hope so-with a poem
That runs from the world's beginning to our own days.
Metamorphoses Humphries translation

Wars worse than civil on Emathian plains,
And crime let loose we sing; how Rome's high race
Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword;
Armies akin embattled, with the force
Of all the shaken earth bent on the fray;
And burst asunder, to the common guilt,
A kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met,
Standard to standard, spear opposed to spear.

Whence, citizens, this rage, this boundless lust
To sate barbarians with the blood of Rome?
Did not the shade of Crassus, wandering still,
Cry for his vengeance? Could ye not have spoiled,
To deck your trophies, haughty Babylon?
Why wage campaigns that send no laurels home?
What lands, what oceans might have been the prize
Of all the blood thus shed in civil strife!
...
First of such deeds I purpose to unfold
The causes -- task immense -- what drove to arms
A maddened nation, and from all the world
Struck peace away.
Pharsalia by Lucan tr. Ridley

I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds- all from the time when the Moors crossed the sea from Africa and wrought havoc in France. I shall tell of the anger, the fiery rage of young Agramant their king, whos boast it was that he would avenge himself on Charles, Emperor of Rome, for King Trojan's death. I shall tell of Orlando, too, setting down what has never before been recounted in prose or rhyme: of Orlando driven raving mad by love- and he a man who had been always esteemed for his great prudence-
Orlando Furioso Waldman translation

I sing the reverent armies, and that Chief
who set the great tomb of our Savior free;
much he performed with might and judgement, much
he suffered in the glorious victory;
in vain hell rose athwart his path, in vain
two continents combined in mutiny.
Heaven graced him with it's favor and restored
his straying men to the banner of the Lord.

O Muse, who do not string a garland of
the fading laurel fronds of Helicon,
but far in heaven among the blessed choirs
wreathe deathless stars into a golden crown,
breathe into my heart the fire of heavenly love,
illuminate my song, and if I have sewn
embroideries of the truth in any place,
I ask forgiveness for their lesser grace.
Jerusalem Delivered Tasso tr. Esolen

ARMS and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing, on soaring pinions borne,
And all my country’s wars the song adorn;
The Lusiad by Camoes tr. Mickle

Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broade emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.

Helpe then, O holy Virgin chiefe of nine,
Thy weaker Novice to performe thy will;
Lay forth out of thine everlasting scryne
The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still,
Of Faerie knights and fairest Tanaquill,
Whom that most noble Briton Prince so long
Sought through the world, and suffered so much ill,
That I must rue his undeserved wrong:
O helpe thou my weake wit, and sharpen my dull tong.
The Faerie Queene Spenser

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos. Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th' Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view
Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause
Mov'd our Grand Parents in that happy State,
Favour'd of Heav'n so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his Will
For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?
Who first seduc'd them to that fowl revolt?
Paradise Lost Milton

WHAT dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing -- This Verse to C---, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view:
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my Lays.
Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel
A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?
Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor'd,
Cou'd make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
And dwells such Rage in softest Bosoms then?
And lodge such daring Souls in Little Men?
The Rape of the Lock Pope

[conartist]

JCamillo and JBI, I know that influence isn't a simple thing and that I was being simplistic. I wasn't trying to say that Poe hasn't been widely read; merely that I see Whitman's revolutionary way of dealing with self, country, God and breaking with form as far more prevalent in the poetry of the last 100 years than Poe's work. But I may be wrong.

As for the Joyce and Dostoevsky bit. Frank Budgen in his biography James joyce and the Making of Ulysses reports Joyce dismissing Dostoevsky (as well as Balzac, from memory) as poor renderers of real life and melodramatic, comparing them ill-favouredly with Tolstoy and Flaubert respectedly.

[conartist]

I'm reminded of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great English critic. In his time, Pope was almost what Shakespeare is in ours. And Joseph Addison's play Cato was the wonder of a century. Johnson called Dr. John Arbuthnot the finest man of letters in his day, and who remembers him now? Who remembers Johnson? If you look back upon his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, you will find a great many names which are no longer familiar. Of course, it can't be said that he left a single name of consequence out. This begs the question, in the creation of a canon, is it a graver sin to leave off a name of some worthy than to include one that may be unworthy?

I think it's better to do the latter. If you leave someone worthy off you'll be branded an idiot; if you pick someone out of left-field you at least have a chance of seeming merely eccentric. Johnson had his hand forced on a number of those eminent poets though, didn't he? I remember reading that as much of his employment was based around trying to find good things in mundane writers as it was discussing those he admired. I still love Addison though. I recommend his 2-3 page rumination Westminster Abbey to anyone.

[JCamilo]

Normally I'd agree with you, but Bloom gets positive comments from *really* heavy-hitters like Frank Kermode, A.S. Byatt, Cristopher Ricks, Malcolm Bradbury, James Wood, Peter Ackroyd... These are not "friends", these are the gatekeepers of literature. You can't dismiss Bloom's book with unsupported comments like "senile" or "not deep or special".

They all work for the market, they would all write nice to dude (they do not need to be friends, they all are up with the defense of classics, so they would hardly go against an academic critic trying to make a popular run. It is just academic courtesy. Like Dawkins complimenting Gould books, even if they disagreed about what was said.

And I read his book. It is not even theoretical and I never found Agnst of influence that original. His "enemies" Derridas and cia. are much more original than him, they do pointed to directions that nobody else looked then. Bloom is just reviewing Eliot, Borges and other champions of aeshetics.

Conartist:

Joyce, of course, drolls over Flaubert like crazy. It is his man. But he does not dismiss Dostoieviksy (how so, if the inner monologue, psychological narratives own so much to the russian), he just put him beneath Tolstoy and Flaubert. In terms of linguistic, there is of course, no comparassion, Tolstoy is superior. I have an theory, they all actually prefer Tchekhov who united the merits of Dostoievisky, Tolstoy (and even Gogol), but since Tchekhov is a short stories writer, and has not War and Peace or Brothers K on his pocket...

[JCamilo]

Perhaps we are having a misunderstanding about what each of us believes to be the definition of imitation. When I say that Virgil imitates Homer I mean that he uses dactylic hexameter, the first half of his poem parallels point for point the Odyssey and the second half does the same for the Iliad. He fills his poem with characters, events, themes, and diction meant to evoke the earlier poet. Virgil had previously imitated Hesiod in the style and subject matter of the Georgics and likewise imitated Theocritus when he wrote his Eclogues.

So, in the end, there was Virgil influences, not just Ovids around.
But still, of course, Virgil is model of all nationalistic epics of medieval age (Bewoulf, Roland, El Cid), his Dido, he is quoted, his verses, metric, etc. He is the model of excellence, no doubt.

Dante will be too, his metric, his terza rhyme, his Beatrice... But meanwhile the ambition of Comedy, nobody can copy. The sonnets of Petrach, the tales of Bocaccio, the tales of Ovid, his lyrics poems, etc.

One of failures of Bloom is not just western, is how he split it only from Shakespeare. This is a way to not deal with the millenar Homer, Esquilo, Sophocles, Ovid, Virgil... They have survived on top for almost 2000 years, while Shakespeare didnt got even clsoe of that. It would be bad for Bloom's arguments.

As the canon, it is not easy to get in, leave impossible. I think if Shakespeare is safe, Ovid is safe, because the canon is build more with relations. Virgil grants Homer, Dante grants virgil, Bocaccio grants Dante...

D.Johnson is certainly a good to remember, because he washes Bloom. He, without needing to build a theory, did more for the Canon and to preven the school of resentment than Bloom. In his case, the merit is not a correct judgment, but his culture to defend it. He will bash Hamlet? But Hamlet can obviously defend itself, it will swap a Coleridge to his side. What sometimes people don't see is for example, how much Tolstoy bashing of Shakespeare is strong. It is not ridiculous - it talks loud about Tolstoy.

[JBI]

Perhaps we are having a misunderstanding about what each of us believes to be the definition of imitation. When I say that Virgil imitates Homer I mean that he uses dactylic hexameter, the first half of his poem parallels point for point the Odyssey and the second half does the same for the Iliad. He fills his poem with characters, events, themes, and diction meant to evoke the earlier poet. Virgil had previously imitated Hesiod in the style and subject matter of the Georgics and likewise imitated Theocritus when he wrote his Eclogues.

Milton imitates Virgil 1) in his latinate grammar and rhetoric. 2) in the 12 book structure of Paradise Lost. Spenser likewise structured his epic into 12 books of 12 cantos each to draw the comparison to Virgil's Aeneid, whether he survived to finish it is immaterial. Camoes is imitating Virgil by trying to write a heroic epic glorifying the Portuguese people.

Just look at how each introduction is reminiscent of the earlier poems.

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men-carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Iliad Fitzgerald translation

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all —
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.
Odyssey Fitzgerald translation

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
Aeneid Dryden translation

My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me-or I hope so-with a poem
That runs from the world's beginning to our own days.
Metamorphoses Humphries translation

Wars worse than civil on Emathian plains,
And crime let loose we sing; how Rome's high race
Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword;
Armies akin embattled, with the force
Of all the shaken earth bent on the fray;
And burst asunder, to the common guilt,
A kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met,
Standard to standard, spear opposed to spear.

Whence, citizens, this rage, this boundless lust
To sate barbarians with the blood of Rome?
Did not the shade of Crassus, wandering still,
Cry for his vengeance? Could ye not have spoiled,
To deck your trophies, haughty Babylon?
Why wage campaigns that send no laurels home?
What lands, what oceans might have been the prize
Of all the blood thus shed in civil strife!
...
First of such deeds I purpose to unfold
The causes -- task immense -- what drove to arms
A maddened nation, and from all the world
Struck peace away.
Pharsalia by Lucan tr. Ridley

I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds- all from the time when the Moors crossed the sea from Africa and wrought havoc in France. I shall tell of the anger, the fiery rage of young Agramant their king, whos boast it was that he would avenge himself on Charles, Emperor of Rome, for King Trojan's death. I shall tell of Orlando, too, setting down what has never before been recounted in prose or rhyme: of Orlando driven raving mad by love- and he a man who had been always esteemed for his great prudence-
Orlando Furioso Waldman translation

I sing the reverent armies, and that Chief
who set the great tomb of our Savior free;
much he performed with might and judgement, much
he suffered in the glorious victory;
in vain hell rose athwart his path, in vain
two continents combined in mutiny.
Heaven graced him with it's favor and restored
his straying men to the banner of the Lord.

O Muse, who do not string a garland of
the fading laurel fronds of Helicon,
but far in heaven among the blessed choirs
wreathe deathless stars into a golden crown,
breathe into my heart the fire of heavenly love,
illuminate my song, and if I have sewn
embroideries of the truth in any place,
I ask forgiveness for their lesser grace.
Jerusalem Delivered Tasso tr. Esolen

ARMS and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing, on soaring pinions borne,
And all my country’s wars the song adorn;
The Lusiad by Camoes tr. Mickle

Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broade emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.

Helpe then, O holy Virgin chiefe of nine,
Thy weaker Novice to performe thy will;
Lay forth out of thine everlasting scryne
The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still,
Of Faerie knights and fairest Tanaquill,
Whom that most noble Briton Prince so long
Sought through the world, and suffered so much ill,
That I must rue his undeserved wrong:
O helpe thou my weake wit, and sharpen my dull tong.
The Faerie Queene Spenser

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos. Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th' Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view
Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause
Mov'd our Grand Parents in that happy State,
Favour'd of Heav'n so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his Will
For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?
Who first seduc'd them to that fowl revolt?
Paradise Lost Milton

WHAT dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing -- This Verse to C---, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view:
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my Lays.
Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel
A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?
Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor'd,
Cou'd make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
And dwells such Rage in softest Bosoms then?
And lodge such daring Souls in Little Men?
The Rape of the Lock Pope

How much of that is Virgil, and how much copying Homer through Virgil? Either way, the books themselves are very different, or at least the ones that matter. The same way Milton himself early on in his career began and abandoned a book dominated by Spenser's Faerie Queene. But the "conventions of the epic" if you will do not in themselves justify copying - the beginning of Ariosto follows the same pattern, as does Tasso, but are we going to even begin to call them Virgilian? Even something detached like Beowulf contains similar elements.

If you want to look at imitation, Petrarch would be the imitated poet, that is real imitation. English renaissance verse is until probably Spenser imitating Petrarch (more often than not, quite well, and in beautiful verse). The conceits, the ideas, all imitated in the same medium - an epic though, can only be paralleled and parodied, and only convention can really be "imitated".

[mal4mac]

One of failures of Bloom is not just western, is how he split it only from Shakespeare. This is a way to not deal with the millenar Homer, Esquilo, Sophocles, Ovid, Virgil... They have survived on top for almost 2000 years, while Shakespeare didnt got even clsoe of that. It would be bad for Bloom's arguments.


It's not just about time, otherwise a few scratchings on cave walls would beat Homer... To quote Bloom:

"Shakespeare and Dante are the center of the Canon because they excel all other Western writers in cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention."

So, to prove your thesis, you need to show that Homer et. al. beat Shakespeare and Dante for "cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention."

More on "Shakespeare as the centre of the canon":

http://people.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ENG_102/Bloom_excerpts.htm

[mal4mac]

If you want, you can see where he mentions it at the tail end of the interview he gave when The Western Canon came out. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/7132 Skip to about 19:35 in the video... Bloom says something about it being important in light of modern tensions in Chechnya. I don't own a copy of The Western Canon and it's been years since I read anything out of it; so I can't quote you anything he says there.

Just listened... he doesn't say it is his "best book".

A good point about "The Western Canon" is that it doesn't often dwell on obvious books, like W&P, so it's a good guide to reading further into the canon, once you have read the obvious...The stress on HM's current importance, given the situation in Chechnya, is a good one. If that appeals, then "The Cossacks" is also very good on this aspect.

[mortalterror]

cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention.

Not only are those pretty vague categories, but there are only 3 of them. That's no basis for a critical analysis.


So, to prove your thesis, you need to show that Homer et. al. beat Shakespeare and Dante for "cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention."

I don't think the onus is on me. I have 3,000 years of critical theory on my side from Aristarchus to Nagy. Every generation has struggled under his influence, down to the modern day. Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Tennyson's Ulysses, Joyce's Ulysses, Cavafy's Ithaka, Pound's Canto 1, Kazantzakis' Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Auden's The Shield of Achilles, Walcott's Omeros, The Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou. He's ubiquitous. To paraphrase Alfred Whitehead, the history of western literature largely consists of footnotes to Homer. It's up to you to prove that your new comers should displace Homer's centrality.

[Alexander III]

Not only are those pretty vague categories, but there are only 3 of them. That's no basis for a critical analysis.



I don't think the onus is on me. I have 3,000 years of critical theory on my side from Aristarchus to Nagy. Every generation has struggled under his influence, down to the modern day. Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Tennyson's Ulysses, Joyce's Ulysses, Pound's Canto 1, Kazantzakis' Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, The Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou. He's ubiquitous. To paraphrase Alfred Whitehead, the history of western literature largely consists of footnotes to Homer. It's up to you to prove that your new comers should displace Homer's centrality.

While I agree with you as to Homer

The phrase was actually " The history of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato"

In regards to Bloom, I enjoy his opinions, however I have to agree with others here that his overestimation of Shakespeare is almost as dismissible as Tolstoy's underestimation of Shakespeare.

In one of his interviews he say's that Freud is the father of psychology because he translated what Shakespeare was saying. I utterly disagree with this, Freud owes most of his theories to Kierkegaard not Shakespeare.

[mortalterror]

While I agree with you as to Homer

The phrase was actually " The history of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato"

I'm aware of the saying, which is why I said I was only paraphrasing not quoting. It seems to me that the central texts of Western Literature have to be Homer and The Bible much more than Shakespeare or Dante. Does Shakespeare have the same pride of place in German and Russian lands as in English? They might make their case for Goethe or Tolstoy, and with good reason.

[JBI]

I'm aware of the saying, which is why I said I was only paraphrasing not quoting. It seems to me that the central texts of Western Literature have to be Homer and The Bible much more than Shakespeare or Dante. Does Shakespeare have the same pride of place in German and Russian lands as in English? They might make their case for Goethe or Tolstoy, and with good reason.

Hmmm, yes, I see your point, but Homer and the Bible aren't Western literature, per say. They are the foundation of the tradition, but do not give it its western quality, that is an isolation onto itself. The Bible, we must remember, had as profound an influence on the lands beyond the so called "West," as did Greek thought (especially with the conquests of Alexander). If you are looking for the centre of the Western Canon, you must determine what we want to call a canon. Surely Indo-European as an idea informs both Latin and Germanic languages, but we call French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, amongst others, romance languages not Indo-European languages when we discuss them in a practical setting (that is, in an educational setting). Indo-European as a discussion is way to removed.

That being said, I will not disagree that Homer and the Bible are at the top, I just do not think they constitute a Western Tradition -where is it that the idea of a West comes from - one can point to the conflicts between Persia and Greece, but that does not create the divide any more than the conflicts between Rome and northern barbarians did. Can we say there is a particular Western tradition until the divide of the Roman empire? if so, what does that imply in terms of the pillars (given the emergence of the Bible and Virgil as supreme, and later Ovid and others, and Greek work all but gone from the conversation except as footnote).

Likewise, within the Western notions itself, there are internal hegemonies.

My question though is, who do we count as the founder of the Western tradition, not as the tradition that was appropriated by Western writers.

[mal4mac]

... It seems to me that the central texts of Western Literature have to be Homer and The Bible much more than Shakespeare or Dante. Does Shakespeare have the same pride of place in German and Russian lands as in English? They might make their case for Goethe or Tolstoy, and with good reason.

Goethe admitted Shakespeare's superiority. There are more performances of Shakespeare in Germany each year than in the UK. The oldest Shakespeare society is German. So he perhaps has more pride of place in Germany than the UK!

http://german.about.com/od/literature/a/Shakespeare.htm

"A Russian critic once observed that Russians treat Shakespeare as their own ... any given month one can find a dozen Shakespearean productions in St. Petersburg and at least twice as many in Moscow. This number is greater than all Chekhov productions (including all short-story adaptations) combined, with Ostrovskiy coming in a distant third. Back when the population of the Soviet Union was approximately equal to that of the English-speaking world, Soviet cultural propaganda was fond of citing a statistic according to which more copies of Shakespeare were bought by Soviet readers than by their capitalist counterparts. A more palpable achievement in the process of making Shakespeare Russian is the impressive array of film adaptations: at least three-quarters of the plays have been turned into films, which are still shown with some regularity on state television."

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/shakespeare_bulletin/v025/25.1eyber.html

As a quick Google search will show - Homer sells far fewer books than Shakespeare, and he certainly doesn't fill the playhouses!

For myself, I found reading a full translation of Homer's works far less enjoyable and straightforward than reading any of Shakespeare's 30 or so masterpieces. Given the relative paucity of sales, and Homer not being a set text in schools, I think this is a common experience...

[JCamilo]

I do not see the Canon as a center. It is a big of Pascal's sphere. I see more as a chain of reactions, with continual reactions. You do not need to study the canon as object, but rather canonical writers. If we study Dante, we must talk about Ovid, Agostine, Virgil, Cicero, etc. Just like we ended doing. And eventually about what came after him, because it is Bocaccio who made the comedy divine after all.

I can understand Bloom methodology, I would rather "nitpick" on his application. He fails on his critery, someone trying to imply a long line of continuity, cann't pretend Shakespeare came and said "there be light", after all, Hamlet must survive as Oedipus King did, yet. Did he wanted to reduce the size of the book? Nice, so do not bring me Beckett in the end. In the end, everytime we, for a reason or another, build a canon, we will fail from one or another perspective, so, I think it is rather pointless to determine Homer or not Homer.

Mal4mac


It's not just about time, otherwise a few scratchings on cave walls would beat Homer... To quote Bloom:

"Shakespeare and Dante are the center of the Canon because they excel all other Western writers in cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention."

So, to prove your thesis, you need to show that Homer et. al. beat Shakespeare and Dante for "cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention."

More on "Shakespeare as the centre of the canon":

http://people.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ENG_102/Bloom_excerpts.htm

Like Mortal pointed, those cathegories are meaningless. What bloom is doing is replacing the religious jewish approach for Yaweh for Shakespeare. He tries to erase the past, create a center and end falling on marxism (I wonder how much Bloom will be blind that Freud conflict of generations between Father and brother is similar to Marx materialism and both born from the darwinism, but that would give his conservative self shivers). Claims towards the genius of Freud are exagerated (I think Freud is a genius, but his scientific discoveries are questionable, his contribution no different from Lamark contribution to evolution) and it is so exagerated that he has a tendency to underestimate all authors who may endanger Freud or Shakespeare.

He more than once claimed the essay were not about authors who are the best, but those he saw as more influential or unique, and when you see it, we see a considerable bias on his method. He do reckonize the vallue of Dostoievisky, Poe, Voltaire, Flaubert, Blake, Eliot... but heck, it is almost as if someone is eating an aubergine. Poe is the very essence of democratic writter, not Whitman, not Dickinson, as Poe is the one who define ,thinks and works in a format for the everyday reader and, amazing as this would please Bloom, having aesthetic pleasure in mind. But Poe didnt needed Freud and it is very hard to find traces of Shakespeare to build his psychological approach on short stories. The Russians either, Dostoievisky and Tchekhov were first hand writers of Freud's sources and it is of course, more interesting to see Tolstoy reaction to Shakespeare as a matter of "Oedipus conflicts" than deal with Dostoievisky construction of characters, that could rival (in the sense it gave identidy apart from Drama) Shakespeare construction. Just like he ignores Melville's obvious genius, since Melville in one whale, bring all that Shakespeare has of best, without needing Freud or jewish tradition (as the bible was apart by then). Kafka (which can be read from his jewish roots and style) and Borges (one of the worst chapters in the book, but unavoidable, as Borges intellectualism is the kind of personagem Bloom wanted to be), clear antagonists of Freud are reduced to a freudian interpretation.

The funny thing is Bloom knows Freud is not a great reader and misread Shakespeare, but he dismiss this, admiring Freud's ego as avatar of Yaweh ego.

In the end, the thing I can say is that of all champions of aesthetic merits, he is the worst writer. He cann't deal with his own agnst towards Eliot (who was more keen, as erudite, better writer) and didn't gave a single reason why guys like Derrida werent doing something right. If I need someone to explain to me classics have a perssuasive dialogue with present writers, who try to bring originality from their reading of great writers, and imitative technique, I do not need anything more than Borges explaning his relation with Kafka. We create our own precussors.

[JCamilo]

Goethe admitted Shakespeare's superiority. There are more performances of Shakespeare in Germany each year than in the UK. The oldest Shakespeare society is German. So he perhaps has more pride of place in Germany than the UK!

http://german.about.com/od/literature/a/Shakespeare.htm

"A Russian critic once observed that Russians treat Shakespeare as their own ... any given month one can find a dozen Shakespearean productions in St. Petersburg and at least twice as many in Moscow. This number is greater than all Chekhov productions (including all short-story adaptations) combined, with Ostrovskiy coming in a distant third. Back when the population of the Soviet Union was approximately equal to that of the English-speaking world, Soviet cultural propaganda was fond of citing a statistic according to which more copies of Shakespeare were bought by Soviet readers than by their capitalist counterparts. A more palpable achievement in the process of making Shakespeare Russian is the impressive array of film adaptations: at least three-quarters of the plays have been turned into films, which are still shown with some regularity on state television."

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/shakespeare_bulletin/v025/25.1eyber.html

His point is not that they thread Shakespeare as a genius or not, but if he is the "top notch", he is not. Goethe is certainly the GUY in germany. In Russia, all XIX writers kind off suffer with the communist period persecution a little, they are almost from another universe and Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoievisky, Tolstoy and Tchekhov split the universe so the sittuation is another. If you go to Italy, Dante will be the guy. In Portugal will be Camoes, in Spain Cervantes. Shakespeare is certainly universal, but in some houses he is a guest.

[Drkshadow03]

Not only are those pretty vague categories, but there are only 3 of them. That's no basis for a critical analysis.



Bah, that's just the type of easy dismissal I would expect from someone with adroit perspicacity and dexterous verbosity.



As a quick Google search will show - Homer sells far fewer books than Shakespeare, and he certainly doesn't fill the playhouses!

I should hope not given that Homer didn't write plays.


For myself, I found reading a full translation of Homer's works far less enjoyable and straightforward than reading any of Shakespeare's 30 or so masterpieces. Given the relative paucity of sales, and Homer not being a set text in schools, I think this is a common experience...


Where did you get the information that Homer doesn't sell as well as Shakespeare? Or even more dubious information like there is a paucity of sales for Homer? I'd be interested in knowing what you googled exactly.

The Amazon bestseller rank of Fagles' translation of The Iliad is #9,845. The closest in selling rank of Complete works of Shakespeare in print was the Oxford Shakespeare which had a rank of # 35,519. The various other complete editions were even further back. On Kindle's free book rankings the Odyssey were #84 and #100 respectively. Now I don't honestly know if Shakespeare sells better than Homer or vice-versa (since Amazon doesn't account for all sales and Shakespeare complete plays on Kindle that you need to pay for do much better in sales). However, looking quickly at just these numbers I am pretty sure your paucity claim is just you making stuff up.

Homer is in fact a required and taught text in many schools. In the state I live in the US, the Odyssey is a required text for the English Literature 10th grade curriculum. Of course, so is Romeo and Juliet.

[mal4mac]

Where did you get the information that Homer doesn't sell as well as Shakespeare?


It's more of a general observation + drawing obvious conclusions - my school didn't have a copy of Homer, and we never read him, but every child got to read several of his plays. Bookshops & libraries have bookcases full of Shakespeare plays, with only odd copies of Homer here and there. But if you want figures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors

Homer doesn't make the list, but reading more closely, he may have been left off by accident... So fans might like to dig deeper to get him on the list... But I very much doubt he'll get anywhere near Shakespeare, who tops the list with 4 billion copies -a copy for every family on Earth!

The next "serious" author is Tolstoy, with a tenth of the sales.

Penguin are always boasting that Rieu's Odyssey, the first 'penguin classic', sold 3 million copies. But for every copy of that sold, Shakespeare has sold a thousand!

[ralfyman]

Bloom is notable because he has read a lot, or at least a lot more compared to some of his critics or readers in general. That makes his assessment of literary works very relevant.

In general, professional critics who are also well-informed should always be heeded, as most readers will not always have sufficient time to assess works themselves. This makes the idea of a canon very helpful.

[Alexander III]

It's more of a general observation + drawing obvious conclusions - my school didn't have a copy of Homer, and we never read him, but every child got to read several of his plays. Bookshops & libraries have bookcases full of Shakespeare plays, with only odd copies of Homer here and there. But if you want figures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors

Homer doesn't make the list, but reading more closely, he may have been left off by accident... So fans might like to dig deeper to get him on the list... But I very much doubt he'll get anywhere near Shakespeare, who tops the list with 4 billion copies -a copy for every family on Earth!

The next "serious" author is Tolstoy, with a tenth of the sales.

Penguin are always boasting that Rieu's Odyssey, the first 'penguin classic', sold 3 million copies. But for every copy of that sold, Shakespeare has sold a thousand!

When I was growing up, me and my parents went to Phuket for most x-mass vacations. And most of my friends at school and their parents went their too or other parts of Thailand. So quite clearly Thailand is the most popular vacation destination in the world.

As for your list, it cannot be used when judging homer for several reasons.

Firstly it uses Numbers rather than percentages, this is a problem as lets say that if 20,000 of london's literate population read Homer in the year 1600 and 20,000 of London's literate population read homer now - according to your numbers measurement both values would be equal. But they are not 20,000 people in 1600 london is roughly 100% of it's literate population, 20,000 london people now is less than 1% of it's literate population. Thus all statistics which use numbers rather than percentages have an incredibly heavy bias as they are largely determined by the people of the last 100 years as there was a huge population boom last century.

Also we have no way of calculation how many people heard/read Homer in classical times, which was when he was at the peak of his popularity, as until Virgil came no other poet was deemed greater than Homer.

Lastly Wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information.

[JBI]

When I was growing up, me and my parents went to Phuket for most x-mass vacations. And most of my friends at school and their parents went their too or other parts of Thailand. So quite clearly Thailand is the most popular vacation destination in the world.

As for your list, it cannot be used when judging homer for several reasons.

Firstly it uses Numbers rather than percentages, this is a problem as lets say that if 20,000 of london's literate population read Homer in the year 1600 and 20,000 of London's literate population read homer now - according to your numbers measurement both values would be equal. But they are not 20,000 people in 1600 london is roughly 100% of it's literate population, 20,000 london people now is less than 1% of it's literate population. Thus all statistics which use numbers rather than percentages have an incredibly heavy bias as they are largely determined by the people of the last 100 years as there was a huge population boom last century.

Also we have no way of calculation how many people heard/read Homer in classical times, which was when he was at the peak of his popularity, as until Virgil came no other poet was deemed greater than Homer.

Lastly Wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information.

Well, the great poet in esteem up until recently was Virgil - literature was Virgil and Ovid, and then Cicero in prose. Petrarch for 100 years was regarded as a great Latin prose stylist and not the vernacular poet who would recreate Western verse in his image. The actual attitude of Western literature was more in line with Mortalterror's general aesthetic than with Bloom's up until, well, Bloom's time (1950s or so). Homer was revered, respected, and unread until a Greek resurgence, and even then it was Plato who was turned to first turned to (especially Erasmus).

As for when it did come, well, the language people were writing was already from Virgil - the invention of Blank verse itself was in a translation of Virgil - Hamlet is haunted by Virgil, not Homer. Homer until even after the Renaissance, and in terms of quality of verse, Virgil was still, and arguably is still, seen as the supreme artist, over Homer.

[fb0252]

just now reading Bloom's Genius written in 2001 at age 71. More brilliant stuff from Bloom. Is there anyone writing today that will wind up in the Western Cannon? am thinking we may be overlooking the obvious as possibly this would be Bloom himself. Has there ever in history been one who read everything, retained more, and wrote as brilliantly with as much insight as those he reviews?

[JCamilo]

Yes, easily... Borges and Eliot walk over Bloom as if he was not there. With the disavantage of being dead.

Of course, Virgil is the "canon" more than anyone. The idea of Classic was a bit the idea of Virgil. He is representative, amazingly representative. But this popularity of Shakespeare and Homer? I do not see the point (popularity does not measure anything, we all know it. But even wikipedia ranking stabilishes the difficultty to provide numbers for old authors, even Cervantes I think) of such thing. If Homer wasn't popular enough, he would not survive the change of oral to written society. He was.

[lawpark]

Chinese poetry essentially absorbed Persian influences in the 9th through 13th centuries despite being far more distant (at that point China didn't even extent into Sichuan)

This is an interesting aside ... is this true? I doubt at least some of the facts:
1) If Shanameh is a true beginning in New Persian literature, the dating would start only from 11th century onwards. (But, maybe Persian influence was something older, like the Hu-style music in Tang? But the timing would most be 7-8th century in that case)

2) 12th - 13th century ... 12th century is Northern Jin and Southing Song, can't, upsurge of Persian influence? 13th century more likely with Mongol empire encompassing both. Maybe the effects are on the yuan qu? I am particularly ignorant about those ...

3) China didn't extend into Sichuan? That can't be right, if I recall correctly, Mongke (THE emperor in history that owns the largest land-based empire EVER in history) died during a siege of a Southern Song city in Sichuan! (Maybe you are talking about Shu during the Five Dynasties, but to say Chinese have not yet extended to Sichuan would still be very misleading ... even before China gets united, Qin got Sichuan and in fact was one of the reason why it gets to own the resources to unify the whole realm, according to some modern interpretations).

[Arrowni]

Yes, easily... Borges and Eliot walk over Bloom as if he was not there. With the disavantage of being dead.


Borges is a monster. You just stirred me about reading Eliot.

[JCamilo]

But do not expect the same style of text, just similar ideas about the influence of classics, the aesthetic reading pleasure, etc. It was a thrend on Twitter back on first half of XX century. Bloom just represents it, with a freudian twist (ignored, for me wisely, by Borges) and a late one.

And then, he just write worst than both and cann't deal well with Eliot shadow over all american criticism that he was born.

[Verdaguer]

I find those canons great, even when I always criticize them all. The first thing I always do, though, is looking at the source. If it's made by an English reader, I know that there are going to be more English-language authors than there should be, but it is still interesting to see those writers he has considered better and what authors he's included from other cultures. Same thing when the source is not English. In the end, it is better to know what authors each culture considers canonical and then judge by oneself if they're worth figuring in an 'international list'.

Translations and publicity play a big role in the decisions. The latter being also a political tool. For instance, my vibrant Catalan literature is ignored by most good readers usually because of simple ignorance of its existence given the lack of political statehood. To a point that masterpieces like Tirant lo Blanch, regarded by those who read it and studied it as the best fifteenth-century novel, and which should figure in most canons of the big European novels, is usually ignored or forgotten, left out even by Bloom. The same could likely be said about a few masterpieces from some other middle-sized languages/literatures.

In honour to Bloom's canon, though, I congratulate him for having included six modern Catalan authors, even if four of them were poets. But I can't help resting surprised by the total absence of Catalan or Occitan authors for the Middle Ages.

[JBI]

This is an interesting aside ... is this true? I doubt at least some of the facts:
1) If Shanameh is a true beginning in New Persian literature, the dating would start only from 11th century onwards. (But, maybe Persian influence was something older, like the Hu-style music in Tang? But the timing would most be 7-8th century in that case)

2) 12th - 13th century ... 12th century is Northern Jin and Southing Song, can't, upsurge of Persian influence? 13th century more likely with Mongol empire encompassing both. Maybe the effects are on the yuan qu? I am particularly ignorant about those ...

3) China didn't extend into Sichuan? That can't be right, if I recall correctly, Mongke (THE emperor in history that owns the largest land-based empire EVER in history) died during a siege of a Southern Song city in Sichuan! (Maybe you are talking about Shu during the Five Dynasties, but to say Chinese have not yet extended to Sichuan would still be very misleading ... even before China gets united, Qin got Sichuan and in fact was one of the reason why it gets to own the resources to unify the whole realm, according to some modern interpretations).

Sorry missed this post until now.

As for the Persian influences, the original Song lyrics are driven by Persian musical styles. What that basically marked was the decline of court-style verse and the emergence of both popular and private song lyrics as you would know. But the actual genre is highly Persian.


As for Chinese control. The country or authority was cOnstantly changing throughout history. Contemporary china is extensively regional with tons of minorities. But up until 150 years ago or so all these groups were far more autonomous. Even literary traditions were regional, as seen by the divergence of rhyme tables regionally. As for political control, it was always weak and oblique in most places of china. I can write a longer follow up post if you want when I get on a computer if you are still interested in discussing this.

Sichuan has always been a strange one as it always is in and out of political control. The vast majority of it however has been part of Tibet for the longest time. The south was basically owned by yi slave factions, with sub-Tibetan groups moving around the south. Chongqing controlled by remoter groups and the locals, now mostly extinct through violent genocidal wars and famine were an enigmatic minority. The Chinese political control was just a cover of the pendi basin area which is a tiny fraction of the geography. And even then. Until 200 years ago it was still remote and out of capital control.

[Kjetil]

just now reading Bloom's Genius written in 2001 at age 71. More brilliant stuff from Bloom. Is there anyone writing today that will wind up in the Western Cannon? am thinking we may be overlooking the obvious as possibly this would be Bloom himself. Has there ever in history been one who read everything, retained more, and wrote as brilliantly with as much insight as those he reviews?

Writing today and good enough for the canon? Javier Marias. Thomas Transtrømer. John Banville.

[JBI]

Who???

[JCamilo]

Snob :D

[Raven Falcon.]

Dante is the only real canonical western writer.

[JBI]

Snob :D

welcome back. :)

[RetsixArp]

...Also, of course Bloom rejects Poe! The only people ever not to reject Poe were the French! Have you read Poe? He's the most appalling-jingly-jangly-unintentially hilarious poet in history.I've not read the Western Canon, & it's not been revised for some years, has it? Bloom's standard Canon reading list (the list I like) of 1994 doesn't include Delillo's Underworld (1997), which Bloom thinks is one of the premier novels ever.

There's an interview on YouTube where Bloom says that altho Poe had an astounding imagination, he wrote horribly sentence by sentence. I do have trouble getting thru a lot of Poe (The Gold Bug, Into the Maelstrom); even The Tell-Tale Heart, for its great ending, is senseless really: the narrator "loved the old man" but obsessed over killing him for weeks (rather than just flee the scene the escape the eye).

[RetsixArp]

>>>he say's that Freud is the father of psychology because he translated what Shakespeare was saying. <<<

I understand that Bloom's fascination w/ Shakespeare & Freud is their originality in recounting what people actually to: doubt, change their views, question their motives. There's an interview somewhere on the 'Net, from 1991 or so w/ the Paris Review where he insists that there was none of this presentation of human complexity in the Bible (except for the occasions when Moses or David question God, the Bible characters, including God & Jesus, are pretty much stock characters) & very little in Chaucer: it was Shakespeare & much later Freud that made the agony of being human integral to the characters & stories.

[JCamilo]

This a little unfair. Bloom does not ignore Poe. His works are in the list at the end of the book and If I recall well he mentions Poe once or while. The chapters are not his favorite authors, but those he consider more relevant on historical basis. Poe could be there (Only americans have the tendency to think he is minor, despite his massing contribution to every little commercial genre americans love), but really, Bloom does not vallue short stories as much (and true to be told, they are way behind novels or poetry on influence) to the point the only short story master is Borges.

Anyways, Poe psychological stories do not suit the Freud thing. Poe did first.

[Summer M]

just now reading Bloom's Genius written in 2001 at age 71. More brilliant stuff from Bloom. Is there anyone writing today that will wind up in the Western Cannon? am thinking we may be overlooking the obvious as possibly this would be Bloom himself. Has there ever in history been one who read everything, retained more, and wrote as brilliantly with as much insight as those he reviews?

Bloom's greatest achievement is that he was able to convince so many people that his personal prejudices are some sort of scientific, empirical facts.

[kiki1982]

:lol:

That's what I gathered from the Wikipedia entry on him alone. Too much reading on my part, eh (they say people's knowledge in readers is greater).
His obsession with aesthetics is worrying for an academic, because you can't write scientifically about them.

He did one good thing and that was put the spotlight again on the Romantics, which had up till then (in the academic world at least) been a nasty little brother they didn't know what to do with because they were allegedly nothing but nice words (whatever gave them that idea, I wonder).

All the rest is frankly, a bit tosh. Just say you like to read what you like. He could have saved many a page and many a tree with that.

[JBI]

He didn't put spotlight on the romantics. Abrams and Frye did.

[lawpark]

I find those canons great, even when I always criticize them all. The first thing I always do, though, is looking at the source. If it's made by an English reader, I know that there are going to be more English-language authors than there should be, but it is still interesting to see those writers he has considered better and what authors he's included from other cultures. Same thing when the source is not English. In the end, it is better to know what authors each culture considers canonical and then judge by oneself if they're worth figuring in an 'international list'.

Translations and publicity play a big role in the decisions. The latter being also a political tool. For instance, my vibrant Catalan literature is ignored by most good readers usually because of simple ignorance of its existence given the lack of political statehood. To a point that masterpieces like Tirant lo Blanch, regarded by those who read it and studied it as the best fifteenth-century novel, and which should figure in most canons of the big European novels, is usually ignored or forgotten, left out even by Bloom. The same could likely be said about a few masterpieces from some other middle-sized languages/literatures.

In honour to Bloom's canon, though, I congratulate him for having included six modern Catalan authors, even if four of them were poets. But I can't help resting surprised by the total absence of Catalan or Occitan authors for the Middle Ages.

I have recently read Oxford's Very Short Introduction of Spanish Literature. It gives some coverage of both Catalan and Basque literature. In fact a very good series -- if you are the type that enjoy Bloom's Western Canon. I have read through the booklets on French Literature, Spanish Literature, English Literature and Italian Literature. Now reading the one on Colonial Latin American Literature.

[byquist]

I find reading Harold Bloom to be a delight; he is so unique. You can also learn alot about books that you never would have time on your hands to read. Also, Bloom can make some authors, like Becket and his "Godot" which can put you to sleep, very exciting and meaningful.

[kiki1982]

He didn't put spotlight on the romantics. Abrams and Frye did.

Oh, maybe he recycled their ideas then.
The little I read about Harold Bloom was that in general he got them out of oblivion. That may be wrong though.

[JBI]

Oh, maybe he recycled their ideas then.
The little I read about Harold Bloom was that in general he got them out of oblivion. That may be wrong though.

It is wrong. Abrams and Frye were older and until Frye died he was the paramount English critic. Even Bloom would agree. Frye's fearful symmetry came out well before Bloom's Blake's apocalypse.
As for earlier precedents, Lovejoy and Symons come to mind as well as others. It's more that English wasn't a discipline until the 20th century. Bloom was not Eliot basically rediscovering playwrights and poets.

As for Stevens, he was a relatively early supporter. That credit is due

[kiki1982]

Yep, that was definitely wrong.

Thanks for the info. :)