The western canon: the books and school of the ages

Abstract

Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on works of twenty-six authors central to Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and New Historicism. Insisting instead upon the autonomy of aesthetic, Bloom places Shakespeare at center of Western Canon. Shakespeare has become touchstone for all writers who come before and after him, whether playwrights poets or storytellers. In 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, 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 Canon.