The western canon : the books and school of the ages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “Heroically brave, formidably learned... The Western Canon is a passionate demonstration of why some writers have triumphantly escaped the oblivion in which time buries almost all human effort. It inspires hope... that what humanity has long cherished, posterity will also.” – The New York Times Book Review Literary critic Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list -- it is a vision. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works of the western literary tradition and essential writers of the ages: the "Western Canon." Harold Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly , offers a dazzling display of erudition mixed with passion. For years to come it will serve as an inspiration to return to the joys of reading our literary tradition offers us. Contents Acknowledgments Preface and Prelude I. On the Canon 1. An Elegy for the Canon II. The Aristocratic Age 2. Shakespeare, Center of the Canon 3. The Strangeness of Dante; Ulysses and Beatrice 4. Chaucer: The Wife of Bath, The Pardoner, and Shakespearean Character 5. Cervantes: The Play of the World 6. Montaigne and Molière: The Canonical 7. Milton's Satan and Shakespeare 8. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the Canonical Critic 9. Goethe's Faust, Part Two: The Countercanonical Poem III. The Democractic Age 10. Canonical Memory in Early Wordsworth and Jane Austen's Persuasion 11. Walt Whitman as Center of the American Canon 12. Emily Dickinson: Blanks, Transports, the Dark 13. The Canonical Novel: Dicken's Bleak House, George Eliot's Middlemarch 14. Tolstoy and Heroism 15. Ibsen: Trolls and Peer Gynt IV. The Chaotic Age 16. Freud: A Shakespearean Reading 17. Proust: The True Persuasion of Sexual Jealousy 18. Joyce's Agon with Shakespeare 19. Woolf's Orlando: Feminism as the Love of Reading 20. Kafka: Canonical Patience and "Indestructibility" 21. Borges, Neruda, and Pessoa: Hispanic-Portuguese Whitman 22. Beckett... Joyce... Proust... Shakespeare V. Cataloging the Canon 23. Elegiac Conclusion Appendixes A B C D Index

Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of the aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon. Shakespeare has become the touchstone for all writers who come before and after him, whether playwrights poets or storytellers. In the creation of character, Bloom maintains, Shakespeare has no true precursor and has left no one after him untouched. Milton, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Ibsen, Joyce, and Beckett were all indebted to him; Tolstoy and Freud rebelled against him; and Dante, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Whitman, Dickinson, Proust, the modern Hispanic and Portuguese writers Borges, Neruda, and Pessoa are exquisite examples of how canonical writing is born of an originality fused with tradition. Bloom concludes this provocative, trenchant work with a complete list of essential writers and books - his vision of the Canon.

This book argues against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works and essential writers of the ages, the "Western Canon." The book studies 26 writers and seeks to isolate the qualities that made these authors canonical, that is, authoritative in Western culture. Noting that although originally the "Canon" meant the choice of books in teaching institutions, the title here is meant not only for the student but for any reader "who follows the art and passion of reading well and deeply." The book is divided into five sections: (1) On the Canon; (2) THe Aristocratic Age (including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Moliere, and Goethe) (3) The Democratic Age (including Emily Dickinson, Tolstoy, and Ibsen); (4) The Chaotic Age (including Proust, Joyce, Kafka, and Walt Whitman); and (5) Cataloging the Canon. Appendixes contain additional material on each age. (NKA) Forfatteren giver sit syn på Vestens litterære kanon og dens 26 mest uundgåelige forfattere: William Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, Cervantes Saavedra, Michel de Montaigne, Jean Baptiste Molière, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoj, Henrik Ibsen, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa og Samuel Beckett Literary critic Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading listit is a vision. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works ofthe western literary traditionand essential writers of the ages. The Western Canon was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A study of twenty-six canonical writers details the qualities that make them literary essentials, and includes Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Beckett, Tolstoy, Freud, Moliere, and others.