Western canon
The
Western canon is a
canon of
books,
music and
art (and specifically one with very loose boundaries) that is thought by many to have been highly
influential in shaping
Western culture. It is a list of
greatest works with significant
literary and
artistic merit. The selection of a canon is important to the theory of
educational perennialism and the development of
high culture.
Examples of canonical lists include:
* The
Harvard Classics*
Great Books*
Great Books of the Western World*
Harold Bloom's canonUniversity reading lists are also good indicators of what is considered to be in the Western canon:
*
St. John's College reading list*
Columbia College Core CurriculumThe process of listmaking—defining the boundaries of the canon—is endless. One of the notable attempts in the
English-speaking world was the
Great Books of the Western World program. This program, developed in the middle third of the
20th century, grew out of the curriculum at the
University of Chicago. University president
Robert Hutchins and his collaborator
Mortimer Adler developed a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading clubs to the general public.
An earlier attempt, the
Harvard Classics (
1909) was promulgated by Harvard University president
Charles W. Eliot, whose thesis was the same as Carlyle's:
... The greatest university of all is a collection of books. -
Thomas CarlyleThere has been an ongoing, intensely political debate over the nature and status of the canon since at least the
1960s. In the
USA, in particular, it has been attacked as a compendium of books written mainly by "
dead white European males", that thus do not represent the viewpoints of many others in contemporary societies around the world. Others, notably
Allan Bloom in his
1987 book
The Closing of the American Mind, have disagreed strongly. Authors such as
Yale Professor of Humanities
Harold Bloom (no relation) have also spoken strongly in favor of the canon, and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in most institutions, though its implications continue to be debated heavily.
Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that the measure of quality represented by the works of the canon is of an aesthetic rather than political nature. Thus, any political objections aimed at the canon are ultimately irrelevant.
One of the main objections to a canon of literature is the question of
authority—who should have the power to determine what works are worth reading and teaching?
Works which are commonly included in the canon include works of
fiction such as
epic poems,
poetry,
music,
drama,
novels, and other assorted forms of
literature from the many diverse Western (and more recently non-Western)
cultures. Many non-fiction works are also listed, primarily from the areas of
religion,
science,
philosophy,
economics,
politics, and
history.
Works which directly address the canon (both
for and
against):
The History of Western Literature by Otto Maria CarpeauxShakespeare by Harold Bloom
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
The Dead Father by
Donald Barthelme*
Canons of Elizabethan poetry*
Great Conversation*
history*
literature*
university*
seminal work*
relativism*
Stringfellow Barr *
Scott Buchanan*
"Harold Bloom's canon"*
All That You Know Not to Be Is Utterly Real, Part I by Curtis White*
"Great Ideas" Website*
A "Great Books" Website*
Western Canon Great Books University*
Columbia College Core Curriculum
