The Western Canon: The Books and School of the AgesPenguin Publishing Group, 1995 M09 1 - 560 pages 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
An Elegy for the Canon | 15 |
THE ARISTOCRATIC AGE | 41 |
Ulysses and Beatrice | 72 |
Copyright | |
27 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alceste ambivalence American anxiety Austen Beatrice Beckett become Borges CALIFORNIA/SANTA CRUZ called Cervantes character Chaucer Christian Collected Poems Comedy consciousness critics CRUZ The University Dante Dante's dead death Dickens Dickinson Don Quixote dramatic Emerson Endgame Essays Falstaff father Faust Feminist Freud Freudian George Eliot Gnostic Godot Goethe Goethe's Hadji Murad Hamlet Hamm Hedda hero Homer human Iago Ibsen imagination immortality invented irony jealousy Jewish John Johnson Joyce Joyce's Kafka King Lear literary literature live Macbeth metaphor Milton Molière Montaigne moral nature Neruda never Nietzsche novel novelist Orlando Peer Gynt perhaps Persuasion play poet poetic poetry Poldy precursor prose Proust reader seems Selected Poems sense sexual Shake Shakespeare social Song soul speare story sublime T. S. Eliot tion Tolstoy Tolstoy's tragedy translated trollish trolls Ulysses UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/SANTA vision Waiting for Godot Wake Walt Whitman Western Canon William Woolf Wordsworth writer