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do we excpet Bloom's list of western canon?

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do we excpet Bloom's list of western canon?
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lol *accept
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Evidently not.
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>>9947399
There are women, blacks. jews, gays, and liberals in it, so no.
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>>9947399

Bloom himself doesn't even accept it.
>Vice: I was hoping to talk first about The Western Canon.

>Harold Bloom: Do you mean the whole category, or what I wrote about it?

>I mean your book.

>But can we make an agreement? Let’s forget that damned list.

>Ha. Do you mean the appendix in the back of the book that lists all the canonical works?

>The list was not my idea. It was the idea of the publisher, the editor, and my agents. I fought it. I finally gave up. I hated it. I did it off the top of my head. I left out a lot of things that should be there and I probably put in a couple of things that I now would like to kick out. I kept it out of the Italian and the Swedish translations, but it’s in all the other translationsabout 15 or 18 of them. I’m sick of the whole thing. All over the world, including here, people reviewed and attacked the list and didn’t read the book. So let’s agree right now, my dear. We will not mention the list.

>It’s a deal.

>I wish I had nothing to do with it. I literally did it off the top of my head, since I have a pretty considerable memory, in about three hours one afternoon.
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>>9947455
>t. brainlet
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>>9947399
What is the list? Do you have an infographic?
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>>9947399
Harry, I've reached the top!
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>>9947622
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html
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>>9947622
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Canon:_The_Books_and_School_of_the_Ages

The Harvard Classics and Modern Library are fine too, but honestly, if youve been reading seriously for 20 or 30 years as an honest, self critical academic, your own canon is valid enough. The real value is Bloom's knowledge base in introducing Ibsen or Neruda
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>>9947654
Nothing but fish going: "Aah! Fuck!"
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>>9947654
*to some US undergrad
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>>9947458
>Swedish books are seen with high regard by literature elders
Feels good desu
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>>9947653
>James Fenimore Cooper - The Deerslayers
lmfao if the bizarre globalisation of the western canon wasn't bad enough there's always the JFC test to distinguish the true pseud.
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>>9947746
it's a classic. worth noting he included multiple things he dislikes because they're influential
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Who will we have to protect the canon once he dies?
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>>9947399
Carpeaux work on the canon is better and more complete, sadly isn't translated in english so Americans will never read the opinions of a true patrician
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>>9947458
holy shit i just read that article. Is that Bloom being legit? I can finally deliver my rightful vengeance on the shitlords I know who disregard his opinion just because of the list.
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>>9947683
Re-read the quote.
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>>9947683
Brush up on your English, that's not at all what he's saying.
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It's not the worst. I mean, coulda included Buzzati, didn't need Grillet's Voyeur, what the fuck are Marlowe's complete works doing there, coulda had less poetry in general, but it's still not the worst. As it progresses it gets worse.
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>>9949034
Impossible. Backtracking accusation will always hold. He shot himself in the foot with it, and he's well aware of the fact.
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The list really doesn't matter guys, and the only valid criticisms I've seen of it anyway are that it lacks troubadour poetry and some major pre-20th c. lit from non-EFIGS countries
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>>9947746
Many early American writers were pretty good: Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper are all wonderful proponents of Romanticism.
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Everything he lists is good, though there are some weird omissions, like including Le Guin - acknowledging genre stuff - but not Tolkien. >>9947458 explains stuff like that pretty well though.
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>>9948708
who dat
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>>9951140
He specifically dislikes Tolkien actually, Lord of the Rings in particular (he thinks The Hobbit is a good book for children, though)
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>>9951210
The Brazilian Harold Bloom
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>>9951253
Ahhh. How strange.
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>>9951262
Here are his opinions on the book
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>>9951296
Pretty accurate I'd say, and laudably concise. The connection with the Book of Mormon is an appropriate if unkind parallel to draw. Tolkien admitted what he was doing, Joseph Smith and James McPherson didn't.

He is also right to agree with Sale because its blindly obvious he is correct, and its notable that this something that Peter Jackson removed from the book (class issues). Frodo, Merry and Pippin are all officer class, Sam is Frodo's batman. Its very much a WW1 novel.

No, not that kind of batman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(military)
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>>9951296
Elder JRR is gonna come a-knockin'
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>>9947399
How is the book outside of "the list"?
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>>9948580
>>9950981
I'm 99% sure Bloom has never read a Cooper book. But like a good pseud he put it on his list anyway.
Y'know I wonder how many of these he actually has read.
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>>9948600
Guess ill have have to step up to the task
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>>9952298
He's read every book on the list at least twice.
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i find that the best list of western canon is http://greaterbooks.com/
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>>9952298
Literally everyone had read Last of the Mohicans, fucking idiot.
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>>9952319
This might be fine if it were in chronological order, but alphabetical is just stupid
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>>9952327
you're looking at the "master list" page.
i'm talking about the home page

(which is sorted by numbers of mentions in other important lists)
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>>9952311
Yeah and he reads 1000 pages an hour. Is there anything you won't believe?

>>9952320
I'm talking about the actual book here not the abridged version.
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>>9952334
In that case it's too short. The master list has a lot of fluff on it though, especially the recent stuff most of which is just popular garbage that'll be forgotten 50 years from now
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>>9952334
IMO a better list that does the same thing is Charles Murray's from his book Human Accomplishment, though he goes by author rather than work meaning works with anonymous authors are excluded. The list also includes great philosophers, artists, composers, and scientists. Here's a spreadsheet of the 4000 people included:

https://osf.io/h3867/
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>>9952354
This list is better btw because its sources are more credible and it balances them between a variety of different languages (rather than having 99% of them be English like yours)
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>>9951210
He was an immigrant from Austria that lived in Brazil and wrote in portuguese a gigantic study/compedium on the western literature, from to greeks hntil the first half of the second century, also:
> major in physics, mathematic and chemistry
>PhD in letters and philosophy
>could speak and read in virtualy all european languages, also latim and ancient greek, so he read everything in the original
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>>9951140
Le Guin is very overrated by literary types who use her as their token genre-fiction author
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>>9952455
Who would you prefer?
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>>9952493
Alfred Bester
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>>9952493
As "genre-fiction"? Well obviously Tolkien stands above them all, and Bloom's myopia towards that is just another of the myriad ways his critical faculties fail him. Tolkien's work is hugely important both culturally and in a literary sense, an architect of the highest order, and critics various attempts to downplay him will come of as ridiculous in the future as critics complete dismissal of Melville did in the day. As far as Le Guin goes I think her "Earthsea" series is accomplished children's literature (though can also be enjoyed by adults) but anyone who has read "The Dispossesed" or "The Left-hand of Darkness" can tell even on a prose scale Tolkien far surpasses Le Guin, not to mention his work is far more nuanced and intricate thematically. Bloom's accusation of "moralism" completely misses the mark and shows he doesn't understand the sophistication of Tolkien' s undebased delineation of good and evil, but I'm willing to give him some leeway as Bloom is known not to be a deep reader regarding things outside of his scope of interest and very obvious biases, you should really only read Bloom on Shakespeare and Romantic poetry and so on. Anyway, I think Tolkien is one of the major writers of our epoch and would take him any day over Le Guin but I think the "genre-fiction" distinction is silly and tendentious in the first place. Imagine if Homer's "Odyssey" was published now, would it be classified as genre-fiction?
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>>9952493
Gene Wolfe
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>>9947399
isn't it just scaruffi in book form?
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>>9952770
hell, anyone who has an opinion on a thing is basically scaruffi
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>>9947399
Found that book in the library where I work the other day. It was in the closed archives in the basement. It'll properly be thrown out sometime during the next decade.
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>>9952493
Mervyn Peake. Tolkienfags who think that lotr is good (not that lotr is bad, but it isn't a masterpiece) because of LeProse® have no idea what good prose is.
>>9952670
Comparing Moby Dick and Lotr is just silly.
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>>9952849
>brainlet can't understand LOTR and doesn't realize Tolkien is the Homer of our era and his opinion will be in the dustbin of history
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>>9952871
>Tolkien
>the Homer of our era
Almost made me laugh, have a (you).
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>>9952435
Neat, I hope that gets translated
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>>9952820
>>9952770
he's the christgau of books.
i could draw similarities but its late
Thread posts: 58
Thread images: 3


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