Book details
  • The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages See large image

    The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (Hardback) By (author) Harold Bloom

    Free worldwide delivery

    $18.02 - Save $1.98 (9%) - RRP $20.00 Free delivery worldwide (to United States and
    all these other countries)     Usually dispatched within 48 hours     Add to basket | Add to wishlist |

    Short Description for The Western CanonMore than a required reading list, The Western Canon is a major work of vision by the foremost literary critic in America. In defining the essential masterworks of world literature--the Western Canon--Bloom enlightens and inspires all readers to return to the special joys of reading that our literary tradition offers. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
    Full description

Other books

Other people who viewed this bought | Other books in this category
Showing items 1 to 10 of 10

 

Full description | Reviews | Bibliographic data

Full description for The Western Canon

  • 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.