The Western Canon

It's a nobel effort but ultimately, and willi always be, incomplete.

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>>8967808
Add Hawthrone to USA.

Also Henry James, Walt Whitman and Jack London.

Add Blood Meridian and the Meme Trilogy to 20th century too.

Thanks.

>no Notes from Underground or War and Peace despite having two spots open under Russia

Are you even trying?

not an interesting personal taste, but also not an accurate representation of the canon

It's a decent start OP. To be sure, those books are some of the best ever written.

Also check out Harold Bloom's list of the Western Canon:

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/literature/bloom/complete.html
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html
http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/harold-bloom-creates-a-massive-list-of-works-in-the-western-canon.html

>>8967808
The bare bones of the canon, you'll get quite a lot with all this, but feel free to branch out into other canonical texts as you please

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I'm certainly using other charts and recommendations to build up my backlog but y'all's input is appreciated

>>8967903
You are very welcome. Bye now!

>>8967808
does anyone have this image's equivalent for eastern literature? i remember seeing it somewhere

This is actually the best canon chart I've seen on /lit/ yet. It's not perfect, I'd replace Dead Souls with Gogol's short stories, there's zero lyric poetry and some texts of historical importance could be added (for example Schiller and Goethe's Werther, which properly started romanticism, Joyce's Ulysses should be read after Dubliners and Portrait), but all in all, very good, particularly if you go chronologically.

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Where the fuck is War and Peace?

And lmao @ Americans. How can they even compete?

>>8968872
It has Anna Karenina already, you can see that the anon who made this limited himself to only 1 book/author

>>8967808
>Garcia Márquez
>no Bolaño
shit chart

>>8968872
>Beckett
>French

>Ayn Rand

>>8969416
>I can't read

>>8967808
In all honesty, if you read this whole chart you'll be more well read than the vast majority of this board (and 99.99% of the general population).

>>8969595
>as long as i measure myself against retards I can feel good about my meager accomplishments

>>8967808
It's pretty good anon

I would replace germinale with assomoir.

>>8968872
Considering America as an established nation hasn't even existed for 300 years I would say that's very respectable.

>>8968872
>Pynchon, Wallace, Vollman, McElroy.

Americans are just getting started as the rest of the world withers.

>>8967808
Just be yourself.

>>8967808
If you're basing this on Bloom then you should include 1993's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Bloom considers it a canonical text

Are there any clips or interviews where Bloom talks about japanese works?
I know he's a big fan of The Tale of Genji, I'd like to hear what asian lit he thinks is canon.

It's a good start.

Here are a few possible changes:
>The Qur'an is arguably better than the Arabian Nights.
>You seem to have forgotten Chaucer.
>You should probably grant a line to Italian, Spanish, and German languages.

Also, being French myself:
>Chrétien de Troyes almost invented the novel.
>The French poets - Ronsard, Baudelaire, Rimbaud,... - are the arrowhead of French literature.
>Rousseau is much more relevant than Voltaire. Not only that, he also writes better and basically invented autobiography.

>>8970856
anyone?

>Invisible Man

>>8971035
You've clearly never read the Quran and know nothing about Islam.

It's pretty good all in all. Only things I'd change:
>no chaucer
>needs more than one book per author
>no poetry
>could probably do with german and spanish language sections

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>tfw your country's great work will never be considered part of the western canon

Do you only want to read fiction?

>>8967808
Gilgamesh is not at all essential.

It was unknown to all the other authors except the most recent ones, and even then, there's no sign that it had an effect on them. It's just a historical curiosity since it's so incredibly old, but Mesopotamia's effect on the Greeks was much, much less than the Greeks' effect on the rest of Western literature. Also Gilg is very fragmentary.

>>8971501
what is it?

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>>8970658
>Wallace

>>8967808
>no german lit
C'mon nigger, at least put some Goethe and Kafka up there

>>8972159
Goethe is up there. Most of the pre-20th Century Germans good enough for the list were philosophers, not fiction writers. Spain and Italy should get their own categories before Germany.

>>8968872
Why the fuck is Beckett under French?

Do I really need to start with the Greeks? Homer makes no sense desu

>>8972173
Because he lived in France and wrote in French. Irish-French would be the best term I think, like how Nabokov is considered Russian-American.

Paradise Lost equally important as the Bible, Iliad/Odyssey and Hamlet?

Why?

>>8972282
>Hamlet

I-i meant Shakespeare

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What is the best e-reader

>>8972296
Kindle Paperwhite 32 G Japanese cartoons edition

>>8971525
>It's just a historical curiosity
It is absolutely more than that, have you ever read it? It's fucking beautiful. And narratively sophisticated enough to be in good company with the other epics

>>8967808
>No Plato's Republic
>Salinger
>No Delillo or Pynchon.

>>8972159
Both Goethe and Kafka are on there.

>>8967861
Notes from Underground certainly doesn't deserve a spot among the rest

what is "the canon" exactly?

>>8972475
It's not a thing but an idea

This Divine comedy should be up a tier

Poe might be arguable but it's a pretty good list, I like that you actually went for Tolstoy's masterpiece instead of the meme bookstopper.

>>8972580
doorstopper I mean

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>>8967808
>no Chaucer
>no Villon
>no troubadours
>no Minnesangers
>no Sappho
>no Theocritus
>no Bion
>no Heine
>no Gautier
GET OFF MY BOARD NORMIE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I appreciate the effort but this is lacking coherence, to the point I doubt the creator read all the books he listed.

>>8972636
Thank god you did not create OP canon list

>>8967808
>Russia
>Gilgamesh
>Arabian Nights
>"Western"

>Dante secondary to Paradise Lost
>Tristram Shitty
>Memedide by Tips-taire


>Those shit Anglo-sphere'd French selections

>1 black and 1 latino but only 2 germans

I N T O

T H E

B
I
N

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Hey OP-- British lit needs Orwell. I think 1984 is more important than Animal Farm. It's a work often read in high school but it's read around the world and words, phrases, allusions, and analogies are made from and to this book every day in common conversation. It's a major work. I'm sure some memelords will disagree.

>>8967861
You have to spend too much time on /lit/ to think Notes is a major-key work. It's amazing, and Dostoevsky at his best, and probably should be read, but if you want to compile the most important into a single chart it's negligible.

>>8967965
>eastern "literature"

>>8968986
Bolaño helps you understand Western literature? He's been published for around 20 years..? Garcia Marquez at the moment is more influential.

>>8970658
Wallace, Vollman, and McElroy are not torchbearers of American literature or influence. Pynchon 40 years ago, yes.

>>8971405 >>8972159
Good call on Chaucer and Goethe. You could bump of Mann, Grass, and Bulgakov.

>>8973031
Candide is one of the worst, least funny, and *tips* book I've ever read but it does have quite a bit of influence in the canon.

>>8973146
>>eastern "literature"

Yeah I'm sure the few thousand year old Chinese and Indian culture never produced anything of value.

>>8967808
that chart, when looked at from afar, looks like one of those abstract memes of the greedy merchant.

>>8973167
fuck off /pol/, stop ruining my fucking board

>>8971360
This

>>8973031
>Russia
Yes it was before Communism and therefore before the west/east divide of Europe
>Arabian Nights
It had a big influence on European literature, more so than it had on Middle Eastern literature since they never even liked it
>Gilgamesh
Agreed

>>8967808
>paradise lost over divine comedy and the aeneid
>rabelais not on second tier
>pilgrim's progress in essential tier
>the epic of gilgamesh that essential
>no lyric poetry, so no fleurs du mal, no mallarmé, no rimbaud in french texts, no keats odes, lyrical ballads for english, etc.
>united states tier doesn't have leaves of grass. should also have henry james.
>20th century doesn't have ts eliot, rilke, celan, pessoa, instead just has books for american high schoolers.
>no dedicated german section
>no dedicated italian section

>>8973031
who's the latino?

>>8973153
Well in all fairness African culture is even older and has produced absolutely nothing of value.

>>8973262
Marquez

>>8973215
Russia is a culture unto its own, only crude European geographers consider it Western. Its own people, from Slavophiles to Communists, consider it non-western

>>8967808
Get Atlas Meme'd out and it's...acceptable

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>>8973527
Ok, now you can leave

>>8973527
it says "Just kidding" underneath it

>>8967808
Decent, but there are lots of out-of-left-field books on there (e.g. Pilgrim's Progress, Tristram Shandy, The Red and The Black, A hero of Our Time, The Magic Moutain, etc.) That could be left off and replaced with more Important books (Canterbury Tales, Heart of Darkness, 1984, etc.)

>>8967808
Fuck you. Just fuck you. How do you fucking put Ulysses anywhere but essential texts? You're a fucking asshole

>>8973222
The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most enduring texts ever written. It was a popular tale for over 1,500 years and allusions to it would have been understood by a everyone in the ancient Near East.

>>8967808
>no key spanish texts
faggots think that the spanish canon is only cervantes, borges and garcia marquez when actually it's the most influential culture in literature and the spanish academia is the most renowned literary entity in the world.

fucking anglocentric website baka

>>8975126
You declare it's "the most renowned literary entity in the world", but then declare that everyone "think that the spanish canon is only cervantes, brogres, and marquez".

Well anon, which is it? Are there lots of other good spanish works that are well known throughout the world, or aren't there?

>>8973167
Wow it actually does.
>>8973173
>fuck off for sharing an observation

>>8975126
> actually it's the most influential culture in literature and the spanish academia is the most renowned literary entity in the world
well that's just blatantly false

>>8973222
>paradise lost over divine comedy and the aeneid
This, how is Paradise Lost a more central text than The Divine Comedy?

>>8967808
>no Infinite Jest

faggot

>>8971501
WHAT IS IT YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT

>>8967808
>literally the shittiest translation of the Bible
>considering Gilgamesh to be western
>no German lit
>no Roman lit
>no Icelandic sagas
>no War and Peace

wtf anon

>>8976945
Is this bait or are you really this retarded?