Harold Bloom's Master List

[Red Terror]

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


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

[desiresjab]

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

[mortalterror]

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

[Poetaster]

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

[Jackson Richardson]

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

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

[ajvenigalla]

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

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

But, interestingly, Harold Bloom has renounced the list.

[Red Terror]

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


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

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

But, interestingly, Harold Bloom has renounced the list.

[JCamilo]

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

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



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

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

[Danik 2016]

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

[Jackson Richardson]

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

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

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

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

Bit of WASP elitism going on here, I suspect.

[ennison]

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

[Marcus1]

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

[Jackson Richardson]

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

ONE

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

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

TWO

I’ll leave for tomorrow.

[stlukesguild]

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

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

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

http://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/81/120/799/0811207994_b.jpg

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

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

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

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

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

[mortalterror]

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

[Jackson Richardson]

It is meant to be a Western Canon, not an English speaking Canon. If it was an English speaking canon, fine, include the King James. However Luther’s German translation and Jerome’s Latin one (the Vulgate) have been just as influential in the West.

The attitude to the Bible here presumes that being protestant and English speaking are normative.

Bloom may well be Jewish, but any scholar from a Christian background writing seriously about Jewish culture would demonstrate more awareness of the issues.

The New Testament is in the same era as Plutarch and in the same language.

[mortalterror]

It is meant to be a Western Canon, not an English speaking Canon. If it was an English speaking canon, fine, include the King James. However Luther’s German translation and Jerome’s Latin one (the Vulgate) have been just as influential in the West.

The attitude to the Bible here presumes that being protestant and English speaking are normative.

Bloom may well be Jewish, but any scholar from a Christian background writing seriously about Jewish culture would demonstrate more awareness of the issues.

The New Testament is in the same era as Plutarch and in the same language.

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

Bloom is writing in English, therefore it is assumed that he is writing for an English speaking/reading audience, who will be reading non-English books in translation. Picking the King James over the NIV, NRSV, or ESV is a judgement call. Also, being Protestant and speaking English is normative in the Anglosphere.

[HalInc]

For those who find Bloom's, or Adler's et al, list anglocentric, you should check out Alexander Arguelles. His list is much more inclusive of books written in languages besides English.

http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/great_books.html

[mortalterror]

This site is pretty comprehensive and includes most of the big canonical lists. http://sonic.net/~rteeter/greatbks.html

[Pompey Bum]

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

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

Hellenic and Hellenistic mean different things. In literary terms, Hellenistic refers to the period between Alexander's forced marriage of Hellenic and Middle Eastern/Asian cultures (and the consequent development of a simplified Greek called Koine) to the revival of Classical Greek in an even more complex form under the Antonine emperors (though Koine persisted until Byzantine times in places). So Bloom's reference to Hellenistic literature need not refer to "Hellenic" as a genous (type or "race") or as a geographic category. Koine was used from Egypt to India.

The Christian Bible is a prime example of Koine Greek. If Bloom does not include it as Hellenistic literature, then he is making an awkward error. But it is also a Middle Eastern work (though no less Hellenistic for being so), so perhaps he is just trying to split the difference. Plutarch, happens to have been a Hellenic aristocrat by genous and to have lived in Boetia, which was geographically part of Greece, though it had become Romanized by his time. He wrote in a rather educated form of Koine (smartened up by his rhetoric). So Plutarch was a Hellenistic author--but not because he was a Greek!

As you know I have no use for canons. Whatever sort of "centrism" they may or may not betray, their purpose is always to exclude. But I was delighted to see that an interesting conversation had somehow broken out on yet another dismal list thread. Keep up the good work! :)

[Jackson Richardson]

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


Also, being Protestant ... is normative in the Anglosphere.

Not in Ireland! And not chez moi. And not prior to 1530 anywhere. And the Bible was put together pre 1533.

[Jackson Richardson]

PS. Thanks for the comments on Hellenistic, Pompey. I have been rather grumpy here. It is a useful list to start browzing. But I get the impression it was put together pretty sloppily and inconsistently. It includes Works by Samuel Johnson, but on the other hand Five Novels by Roland Firbank, without specifying which. I know there is an anthology called "Five Novels" but that won't remain in print. Why not just novels.

I get the impression it is the Western Canon for Barnes and Noble customers.

Firbank is interesting, but hardly major. He's pretty well the campest author I know. He makes Oscar Wilde look butch.

[JCamilo]

You may forgive anyone for clear mistakes (or mistakes impossible to be fixed as the bible belonging to two sections), but the problem is when the mistakes are done clearly by Bloom bias and lack of knowledge. Look when he leaves his beach with the "age of chaos", his war against the so called school of ressentment (which is not academic at all) make him exclude (unless I am mistaken) Barthes and Derrida (I would add Foucault, but at least Barthes and Derrida texts are good enough and it is not like he missed past philosophers). Also, he starts with the "complete works" "poems and plays" ,etc. Really? It is clear he lacks confidance to name a particular work and starts to generalize. It is more like, he has no idea and we can only blame him for attempting a task he could not deliver. It is funny to see him naming a single work of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and it is not even that relevant work... and Borges? Labyrinths and A Personal Anthology are colleciton of previous short stories and poems, many of those you can find in Ficciones and Aleph... talk about redundance. I think he does not speak or read spanish, so he just added the two works because they were the "breaking through" works for Borges then two anthologies made for american market. To be that vague, why not just listing the names of the authors. Even those countless hebrew authors he listed just to please his old age nationalism.

[Ecurb]

For the last several of centuries, Western cannons have clearly been superior to non-Western cannons (if we consider Russia "Western"). This has not always helped the West win its wars, though.

I consider Big Bertha to be the most canonical Western cannon (although I'm willing to accept other nominations).

[Pompey Bum]

I get the impression it is the Western Canon for Barnes and Noble customers.

Firbank is interesting, but hardly major. He's pretty well the campest author I know. He makes Oscar Wilde look butch.

:lol: Those are both gems and surely destined for The Quotable JR. "Rather grumpy" is being modest. Clearly you are approaching curmudgeon ninja-hood. Well done!

P.S.


Not in Ireland!

And not for the 69.5 million Catholics in the United States. There is also Canada (although many Catholics there are Francophones).

[Pompey Bum]

For the last several of centuries, Western cannons have clearly been superior to non-Western cannons

Ironic, though, since the Chinese invented gunpowder. (Guess you made it back from the wastelands okay).

[stlukesguild]

This site is pretty comprehensive and includes most of the big canonical lists.

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

I had intended to post that site, but somehow deleted it from my bookmarks.

[stlukesguild]

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

Oh please! You can't be that dense. The book is written in English and an English-speaking literature professor. Most people would get the idea that a list of "essential" literature made under such circumstances would be biased toward English-language literature. The English-speaking world of here and now has the advantages of an incredible wealth of very good translations of non-English literature. Even so, a vast amount of literature of almost any other language remains untranslated... or poorly translated. A list of essential Western literature created by a Frenchman or a Spaniard or a German would be no less biased toward the language and tradition from which they are reading.

Also, being Protestant ... is normative in the Anglosphere.

Not in Ireland! And not chez moi. And not prior to 1530 anywhere. And the Bible was put together pre 1533.

The fact that the King James Bible was a protestant translation is irrelevant to its aesthetic merit... and certainly irrelevant to its importance in the English-speaking audience for whom Bloom was writing. It is doubtful that many of them are fluent in Latin or 16th century German. And how does the number of Protestants prior to 1530 have any relevance whatsoever? Bloom was writing for an English-speaking audience here and now... not in the 16th century in central Europe.

Firbank is interesting, but hardly major.

Thus your opinion differs from Bloom's. I wonder whose holds the most weight?

[Ecurb]

Ironic, though, since the Chinese invented gunpowder. (Guess you made it back from the wastelands okay).

I leave tomorrow.

[Pompey Bum]

I leave tomorrow.

Even better! :)

Just kidding. As I said before, have a safe trek.


Thus your opinion differs from Bloom's. I wonder whose holds the most weight?

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

[stlukesguild]

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

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

[Jackson Richardson]

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

Oh please! You can't be that dense.

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

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

Happy hiking, ecurb!

[JCamilo]

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

[Pompey Bum]

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

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

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

[Jackson Richardson]

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

[Poetaster]

There's some bad blood in this thread?

[Red Terror]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ieF7LVbyI&index=16&list=PL1IIRVPwL5-UjixJf7ikpu-5dkka0zi3P

[Pompey Bum]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ieF7LVbyI&index=16&list=PL1IIRVPwL5-UjixJf7ikpu-5dkka0zi3P

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

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

[heartwing]

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

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

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

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

[ennison]

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

[Jackson Richardson]

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

[Pompey Bum]

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

[heartwing]

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

[JBI]

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

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

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

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

[ajvenigalla]

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

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

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

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

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

[Jackson Richardson]

Thank you for the clarification, JBI. I didn't know the background - I just enjoy reading. In a sense I do believe in a canon - not all writing is equally significant. But the contents of the canon will change over time and in language groups.

[Poetaster]

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

What do you mean 'theory is over'? I'm curious. I hope you are right! During my MA last year it was all theory though - Baktin and New Historicism and all that. I didn't like it, thought it was ridiculous to read texts with an ideological lens, but it seemed all-pervasive.

[JBI]

Basically the traditional methods of scholarship are two fold; historical understanding (biography, context, historical trends), and textual (concerned with interpreting passages based on definition of difficult/problematic words, alternative versions, possible interpretation, rhetorical usage, and corruption). By the 20th century there emerged a third type; literary theory, which seeks to question the nature of the text in a theoretical sense, the way metaphysics discuss existence.

In general, for modern literature, where the interpretive textual issues are less pronounced (than lets say the Bible, and its linguistic difficulties), there emerged a sort of necessity to create more material; more interpretive range and debate if you will. Certainly the academy needed a justification for why it keeps reading, one that sees tenure awarded to people discussing make believe characters. Rhetoric is more or less objective, and generally there was still a strong historical contextualization process; but by the 80s historical inquiry and context yielded in the face of purely theoretical things; authors being discussed who seem not to fit into the historical development of literature, and seem not to be part of the traditional discourse became central.

So instead of suggesting the work in an historical context, we suggest the text has specific characateristics that can be discerned; gay writing contains gay codes that can be theorized and plotted; colonial works contain marks of a colonial infrastructure, and various theoretical diagrams were drawn to show this. As of 2010 I would say the trend has been to abandon this almost entirely.

We can see literary studies as two main branches in general; history and theory, with theory more common the closer you get to the current time. Right now, it would appear history is making a very, very strong come back, so much so that theory seems all but pushed out, in favor of more traditional methods of reading. In gleneral the only objective form of literary scholarship is textual (for instance, organizing better editions of Shakespeare), so it is only natural that a field which creates theoretical diagrams about imaginary characters went out of fashion.

[Poetaster]

Great stuff. To be honest, I'm so pleased you said that.

I hated theory during my MA. Found it far too opaque and ideological to be objective and serious, and sometimes it seemed to be a little better than a lot of fancy words describing fairly simple observations, really.

[Jack of Hearts]

The problem with these sad lists is-- how would you know?

Book lists are little better than advertising, or regurgitation. At least we might assume from Professor Bloom's list that he actually read the works. Whether or not we agree with the socialization that almost certainly led to his inclusions-- how else would you know?

How would you know? Or, to say another way... How do you find a book?

Is searching for a book as random as pulling off the library stack? JoH has done this. But who could exclusively find a book this way?

So we sort of want a recommendation, or a 'book list.' That they all suck and are wrong is besides the point. Even a recommendation a friend might make probably has more to do with a social aspect than actual literary value or aesthetic appeal. Your friend Douglas really liked reading "Love's Labour's Lost." She thinks you would enjoy reading it, too. But how does she know the name 'Shakespeare' in the first place?












J

[Jacek Pudlo]

Since I'm no literary expert I have learned a lot from Bloom's book the Western Canon and from his list at the end of the book on the greatest works from ancient times to when the book was written in 1994.

I have a great deal of respect for Bloom, but I do disagree with his list on a few points. I don't see Sinclair Lewis as a canonical novelist, not by a long stretch. The inclusion of Cynthia Ozick is another mystery. I didn't find The Messiah of Stockholm remarkable.

[desiresjab]

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

Don't apologize, HW, that was a fine post. Now I will not have to mention abouty twenty good points. Some very scholarly words and salient points, as well, by JBL.

To me the value of a list like this from the canon is not precisely what is on it, for there is room only for 20 where 200 would easily qualify. If people besides literature students would read any 20 out of these 200 classics, Bloom would be thrilled, as you and I would be with our citizenry, regardless of our country. The value of a list is in the implicit statement that literature is still important enough to make such a list, and the implicit hope that people will read some books recognized as great by a loose consensus of experts.

[Drkshadow03]

Take such lists for what they are . . . reading recommendations based on an expert's opinion and experience reading some of the great works of literature. As long as a person doesn't mistake it for THE Western Canon, the immutable word on the subject with every possible work that any critic might suggest, then it's a very good and extensive list of works a person might wish to read.

[prendrelemick]

I find the Amazon Lowest price first list very helpful.