Western Canon
Michael Carley
>Michael Carley (mjca...@maths.tcd.ie) wrote:
>: The idea of a "Western Canon" is repugnant and ludicrous. If
>: you examine what someone means by it, you generally find that
>: they exclude Marx, for example, in spite of his influence and
>: importance. Take a look at Robert Hughes' "Culture of
>: Complaint".
>: --
> 1. The idea of a Western canon is no more repugnant and ludicrous
>than the idea or any other cultural canon.
Exactly. The idea of a canon is ridiculous and offends any
sense of culture. In particular, a literary canon goes against
the whole point of books and literacy which is that you read
what you like and if you want to read Shakespeare, you read
him and if you want to read Kalil Gibran, you read him. I do
not see any literary point to setting up a list of books which
you should read. It destroys the whole richness and beauty of
`our' culture. The point of a Western Canon is xenophobia. It
is just a prop for the idea that `Western Culture' (whatever
that is) is the peak of human achievement.
--
Survivors Describe A320 Flight As `Normal' (Aviation Week)
m.ca...@leoleo.mme.tcd.ie +353 1 6081134
Michael Carley, Mechanical Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin
<A HREF="http://www.mme.tcd.ie/~m.carley/Welcome.html">Home page</A>
Fiona Webster
> I do not see any literary point to setting up a list of books which
> you should read.
The key word in this statement is "should." There is no necessity
for "should." Who's saying it? How are they enforcing it? "Should"
is in the eye of the beholder. When I approach the canon, I prefer to
behold the word "might."
I think of a list of recommended books -- any list of recommended
books -- in the much the same way I think of a book review. If I
respect the author of the list/review, I may follow up on the
recommendation(s) and read the book(s).
A list of recommended books is also like a sightseeing guide for a
city you're visiting. Someone else has gone to the trouble of visiting
these places and writing down their impressions of them. On the way
to, or on the way back from, the recommended museum, you can wander
off from the guidebook tour and take in other sights by chance.
There's no pressure to follow the guidebook. There's nothing to
get hot under the collar about. And the more often you visit that
city, the less and less you will need the guidebook. Eventually, you
leave it behind. But it was useful in the beginning -- if only to
motivate you to leave your hotel in the morning.
--in favor of the calm that allow pleasant reading,
Fiona
Michael Carley
>Michael Carley writes:
>> I do not see any literary point to setting up a list of books which
>> you should read.
>The key word in this statement is "should." There is no necessity
>for "should." Who's saying it? How are they enforcing it? "Should"
>is in the eye of the beholder. When I approach the canon, I prefer to
>behold the word "might."
>I think of a list of recommended books -- any list of recommended
>books -- in the much the same way I think of a book review. If I
>respect the author of the list/review, I may follow up on the
>recommendation(s) and read the book(s).
This is the problem. Bloom and others are not just saying "These
are good books, you should take a look at them sometime", they are
saying that `Western Culture' is under attack and that to defend
that culture, you should read certain books. The idea of a canon
is a xenophobic reaction to the (comparatively) recent development
of a greater awareness of cultures other than the main European/
American one. I'm sure that I would like to read the books on
Bloom's list, but I will not read them because I want to defend
`Western Culture' nor because I feel that I should.
>A list of recommended books is also like a sightseeing guide for a
>city you're visiting. Someone else has gone to the trouble of visiting
>these places and writing down their impressions of them. On the way
The trouble is that Bloom is not going to the trouble of
telling you about some good books. He is recommending
certain books because he wants you to think a certain way.
This is an affront to literature and it is an affront to
the idea of culture. It ignores the fact that there is no
such thing as a pure culture and that the interesting things
in cultures happen at the edges, where people and ideas
mix and new ideas develop. There are few societies that have
been as interesting as Moorish Spain where two cultures
enriched each other and developed something unique.
It is one thing to recommend certain books. It is another
to do so to the exclusion of others. Read Dante by all means,
but read Mahfouz and Basho as well.
>to, or on the way back from, the recommended museum, you can wander
>off from the guidebook tour and take in other sights by chance.
>There's no pressure to follow the guidebook. There's nothing to
>get hot under the collar about. And the more often you visit that
>city, the less and less you will need the guidebook. Eventually, you
>leave it behind. But it was useful in the beginning -- if only to
>motivate you to leave your hotel in the morning.
The only motivation you need to read is a full bookshelf.
Anyone who needs to be told what to read is wasting their
time.
Fiona Webster
>The trouble is that Bloom is not going to the trouble of
>telling you about some good books. He is recommending
>certain books because he wants you to think a certain way.
In your earlier message, you said that the mere list itself
had no point. I contend that the list *can* be useful. There's
no requirement to buy the political message, in order to find
the list valuable. The two can be easily separated.
>It is one thing to recommend certain books. It is another
>to do so to the exclusion of others.
All finite lists omit many items. Who out there is saying
that a given list is the only list? Who's this mysterious
authority you're railing against? The only way that a list
could limit what people read, is if it were used to ban every book
not on the list. I haven't heard that Bloom, or any other
canon promoter, wants to do that.
>Anyone who needs to be told what to read is wasting their
>time.
Again, your view that the list "tells" you what to read is
entirely in your own mind. I prefer to view that the list
"suggests" some things to read.
What it gets down to, is a matter of emotionality. I'm saying,
why be so upset by a mere list of books? If it bothers you, ignore
it! Go find another list you like better. Life is too short to
get all in a bother over someone else's suggeste reading list.
--Fiona W.
Donald Phillipson
>
>>: The idea of a "Western Canon" is repugnant and ludicrous. If
>>: you examine what someone means by it, you generally find that
>>: they exclude Marx, for example, in spite of his influence and
>>: importance. Take a look at Robert Hughes' "Culture of
>>: Complaint".
Spectacular misreading here: Marx is in fact in the (socio-political)
canon because he is important; Hughes discusses Marx because Hughes
concludes (a) Marx is important and (b) Marxists are wrong. This cannot
be adduced as evidence that a canon "excludes" Marx.
> Exactly. The idea of a canon is ridiculous and offends any
> . . .
> you should read. It destroys the whole richness and beauty of
> `our' culture. The point of a Western Canon is xenophobia. It
> is just a prop for the idea that `Western Culture' (whatever
> that is) is the peak of human achievement.
>
> m.ca...@leoleo.mme.tcd.ie +353 1 6081134
> Michael Carley, Mechanical Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin
Possible misreading here, that "the [not "a"] point of a Western Canon is
xenophobia" viz. fear of foreigners. The canon came out of teaching
curricula: in a real sense, the Canon is the classical literary
curriculum, no more and no less.
In the sciences, core curricula i.e. canons have been essential for more
than 75 years because they select what are judged to be "the essential
knowledge" which also organize all the other knowledge, that there is not
time to introduce in a four-year course. I'm not claiming the literary
canon ought to be mattered on scientific ones or vice versa, because the
knowledge and the experience are different in important ways. But both
rely (or until recently relied) on canons for very practical (and
heuristic) reasons. Canons may have more recently become political
weapons or manifestations of rivalry and fear, but it is genuinely
surprising to see someone with scientific credentials unaware of their
practical teaching origins. One of the essential differences between
disciplines is that you cannot even nowadays qualify in any science
without being tested on your knowledge of its canon, which is not nearly
so true of the humanities. The average scientist probably knows more
about the organization of knowledge (and sacrifices entailed) than all but
the rare and superior humanist.
--
| Donald Phillipson, 4180 Boundary Rd., Carlsbad |
| Springs, Ont., Canada K0A 1K0; tel: (613) 822-0734 |
| "What I've always liked about science is its independence from |
| authority"--Ontario Science Centre (name on file) 10 July 1981 |
John Camp
>
>Michael Carley writes:
>> I do not see any literary point to setting up a list of books which
>> you should read.
>
>The key word in this statement is "should." There is no necessity
>for "should." Who's saying it? How are they enforcing it? "Should"
>is in the eye of the beholder. When I approach the canon, I prefer to
>behold the word "might."
>
>I think of a list of recommended books -- any list of recommended
>books -- in the much the same way I think of a book review. If I
>respect the author of the list/review, I may follow up on the
>recommendation(s) and read the book(s).
On reason for setting up a list of books -- say, the "Western Canon" --
is because we live in the West. If you look outside, you'll notice
that we live in a representative democracy (no taxation without
representation, etc.) and we also have made a point of developing a
certain way of thinking about physical things, called western science
because it was mostly developed in the west, and western medicine,
because we have made a point of thinking about medicine in certain ways,
and western philosophy because it (political philosophy for example)
affects us at a very basic level. For instance, we have way down in the
almost subconscious roots of our beings, the idea of "progress." That
same idea does not exist in at all the same way in India, as fine and
noble a civilization is India represents. The very concept of cause and
effect (in human matters) is quite different in Persian society than
in our own; the Chinese and Japanese have quite different concepts of
democracy, although, at the base levels, in some ways, they are often
more free than, say, Americans, because ther essential concepts of their
culture are different.
So: if you want to start to figure out the whys and where-fors of your
own Western culture, the Canon is not a bad place to start. The Canon,
of course, is not a set list -- books go in and out of it all the time,
and I suspect, once the current feminist revolution is complete, some
people who decry the canon of Old Dead White Men will find themselves in
it. (They'll be Old Dead White Women, for the most part, with a few women
of color. Very few. The feminist revolution seems to come not from
the proletariat, but from Smith, which is the reason we hear all the
screaming about the glass ceiling, which affects a few women, mostly
from Smith, while thousands and maybe millions suffer and are abused
n the New England pink collar factories a few miles from Smith. Into the
streets, the revol...nevermind.)
In any case, the Canon is not so much a tool of repression as it is a
suggested list of reading, should you care to know why the things around
you are the way they are. If you don't care, don't read them. If you
are a Westerner and are insterested in the East, then by all means
read the Japanese Canon, or the Indian Canon, or the Chinese Canon. They
have them, you know.
JC
Jordi Sod
>Michael Carley writes:
>> I do not see any literary point to setting up a list of books which
>> you should read.
>
>The key word in this statement is "should." There is no necessity
>for "should." Who's saying it? How are they enforcing it? "Should"
>is in the eye of the beholder. When I approach the canon, I prefer to
>behold the word "might."
>
>I think of a list of recommended books -- any list of recommended
>books -- in the much the same way I think of a book review. If I
>respect the author of the list/review, I may follow up on the
>recommendation(s) and read the book(s).
>
>city you're visiting. Someone else has gone to the trouble of visiting
>these places and writing down their impressions of them. On the way
>off from the guidebook tour and take in other sights by chance.
>There's no pressure to follow the guidebook. There's nothing to
>get hot under the collar about. And the more often you visit that
>city, the less and less you will need the guidebook. Eventually, you
>leave it behind. But it was useful in the beginning -- if only to
>motivate you to leave your hotel in the morning.
>
Well said, Fiona! People forget that the Western Canon is just a list of
RECOMMENDED books. OK, think then of an East Asian Canon. Doesn't it
make sense to start with Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tsu, the Tale of Genji,
etc., before jumping into less-known stuff?
Now, to the calm of some pleasant reading, and pleasant dreaming, I leave
you. (The Difference Engine, not part of the Western Canon, but of the
Web Canon.)
Jordi
Michael Carley
>Michael Carley (mjca...@maths.tcd.ie) writes:
>>
>>>: The idea of a "Western Canon" is repugnant and ludicrous. If
>>>: you examine what someone means by it, you generally find that
>>>: they exclude Marx, for example, in spite of his influence and
>>>: importance. Take a look at Robert Hughes' "Culture of
>>>: Complaint".
>Spectacular misreading here: Marx is in fact in the (socio-political)
>canon because he is important; Hughes discusses Marx because Hughes
>concludes (a) Marx is important and (b) Marxists are wrong. This cannot
>be adduced as evidence that a canon "excludes" Marx.
The point of the canon is that it sets up a particular view
of the world and of `Civilisation' and that view is a very
specific one which is about excluding certain ideas and
setting up others as the basis of `Western Civilisation'.
>Possible misreading here, that "the [not "a"] point of a Western Canon is
>xenophobia" viz. fear of foreigners. The canon came out of teaching
>curricula: in a real sense, the Canon is the classical literary
>curriculum, no more and no less.
>In the sciences, core curricula i.e. canons have been essential for more
>than 75 years because they select what are judged to be "the essential
It is nice that you mentioned `more than 75 years'. The idea
of the canon (as you'll know from reading Hughes) comes from
Western Civ classes which were started during the First World
War to turn out `thinking bayonets' to be sent to officer the
trenches. The idea was to indoctrinate young men in the idea
that `Western Culture' (as defined by the canon) was the
highest peak of human development and that they had to defend
it (by killing Germans).
>knowledge" which also organize all the other knowledge, that there is not
>time to introduce in a four-year course. I'm not claiming the literary
>canon ought to be mattered on scientific ones or vice versa, because the
>knowledge and the experience are different in important ways. But both
>rely (or until recently relied) on canons for very practical (and
>heuristic) reasons. Canons may have more recently become political
>weapons or manifestations of rivalry and fear, but it is genuinely
>surprising to see someone with scientific credentials unaware of their
>practical teaching origins. One of the essential differences between
They did not have `practical teaching origins'. That's the point.
They were, and are, politically motivated.
>disciplines is that you cannot even nowadays qualify in any science
>without being tested on your knowledge of its canon, which is not nearly
>so true of the humanities. The average scientist probably knows more
>about the organization of knowledge (and sacrifices entailed) than all but
>the rare and superior humanist.
Why should the general reader be tested on any canon? More to the
point, why should anyone? The practice of science is an area for
specialists (to one degree or another). Literature requires nothing
more than the ability to read and a willingness to think about what
you read.
--
Survivors Describe A320 Flight As `Normal' (Aviation Week)
m.ca...@leoleo.mme.tcd.ie +353 1 6081134
Michael Carley, Mechanical Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin
Michael Carley
>Michael Carley wrote:
>>It is one thing to recommend certain books. It is another
>>to do so to the exclusion of others.
>All finite lists omit many items. Who out there is saying
>that a given list is the only list? Who's this mysterious
>authority you're railing against? The only way that a list
Bloom, for example.
>could limit what people read, is if it were used to ban every book
>not on the list. I haven't heard that Bloom, or any other
>canon promoter, wants to do that.
But he does want to make sure that these are the books
that will be taught in universities. From one review I
heard, he attacks Alice Walker quite strongly. Are you
saying that Alice Walker can reasonably be excluded
from any list of twentieth century literature?
>>Anyone who needs to be told what to read is wasting their
>>time.
>Again, your view that the list "tells" you what to read is
>entirely in your own mind. I prefer to view that the list
>"suggests" some things to read.
>What it gets down to, is a matter of emotionality. I'm saying,
>why be so upset by a mere list of books? If it bothers you, ignore
>it! Go find another list you like better. Life is too short to
I am ignoring it. And I've never felt the need of a reading
list. One of the pleasures of literacy is the freedom to
read what I like. The problem is that when you start
producing lists which have as their point the exclusion
of large parts of the world's literature you reduce the
possibilities for other people who do take lists seriously.
It is only quite recently (twenty or thirty years ago)
that black women writers (for example) have been taken
seriously. Bloom and other canoneers want to reverse this
advance. We can't afford to let that happen.
Michael Carley
>On reason for setting up a list of books -- say, the "Western Canon" --
>is because we live in the West. If you look outside, you'll notice
In case you hadn't noticed, `we' have also spread ourselves
out a bit. The vast majority of interesting writing in English
at the moment is being produced by writers from former colonies
(Rushdie, Walcott, more Irish writers than I can think of). Are
they to be excluded for not living in the `West'? Why does Bloom
(according to one review I've heard) attack Alice Walker? Doesn't
she come from the `West'? Isn't she a great writer? Even if you
don't think she's a great writer, can you deny her importance?
>certain way of thinking about physical things, called western science
>because it was mostly developed in the west, and western medicine,
If you ignore the contribution of Islamic science.
>because we have made a point of thinking about medicine in certain ways,
If you ignore the contribution of Islamic medicine.
>and western philosophy because it (political philosophy for example)
>affects us at a very basic level. For instance, we have way down in the
>almost subconscious roots of our beings, the idea of "progress." That
I'm sure you can justify this statement.
>same idea does not exist in at all the same way in India, as fine and
I'm absolutely certain you can justify this one.
>So: if you want to start to figure out the whys and where-fors of your
>own Western culture, the Canon is not a bad place to start. The Canon,
What do you mean by `Western Culture' though? Anyone I've
come across who mentions the idea seems to think of it in
a particular way, as the product of a certain group of
people. The canon, as a rule, excludes those who are female,
who are not white and, as a rule, those who are not wealthy.
It's the same as the way that Shelley's poetry has been
stripped of all its radicalism by critics who have decided
what they are going to see and then see it.
>of course, is not a set list -- books go in and out of it all the time,
>and I suspect, once the current feminist revolution is complete, some
>people who decry the canon of Old Dead White Men will find themselves in
>it. (They'll be Old Dead White Women, for the most part, with a few women
If they do find themselves in it, it won't be because of
a change of Bloom's heart.
>of color. Very few. The feminist revolution seems to come not from
>the proletariat, but from Smith, which is the reason we hear all the
>screaming about the glass ceiling, which affects a few women, mostly
>from Smith, while thousands and maybe millions suffer and are abused
>n the New England pink collar factories a few miles from Smith. Into the
>streets, the revol...nevermind.)
This is the point, the canon contains a particular set of
ideas and it excludes people, not for a literary reason,
but because of their ideas. That's why Alice Walker doesn't
feature.
>In any case, the Canon is not so much a tool of repression as it is a
>suggested list of reading, should you care to know why the things around
>you are the way they are. If you don't care, don't read them. If you
>are a Westerner and are insterested in the East, then by all means
>read the Japanese Canon, or the Indian Canon, or the Chinese Canon. They
>have them, you know.
Maybe I can just go my local bookshop and do what any sane,
literate person does. Buy a book out of interest, take it
home and read it.
John Camp
>
>jc...@mr.net (John Camp) writes:
>
>>On reason for setting up a list of books -- say, the "Western Canon" --
>>is because we live in the West. If you look outside, you'll notice
>
>In case you hadn't noticed, `we' have also spread ourselves
>out a bit. The vast majority of interesting writing in English
>at the moment is being produced by writers from former colonies
>(Rushdie, Walcott, more Irish writers than I can think of). Are
>they to be excluded for not living in the `West'? Why does Bloom
>(according to one review I've heard) attack Alice Walker? Doesn't
>she come from the `West'? Isn't she a great writer? Even if you
>don't think she's a great writer, can you deny her importance?
Excuse me, but I certainly wasn't defending Bloom, or Bloom's ideas. And
I would put Alice Walker in the Canon, myself, or at least make her a
candidate for it; and writing in English doesn't either qualify you or
disqualify for for the Canon. Most of the Canon wasn't written in
English.
>>certain way of thinking about physical things, called western science
>>because it was mostly developed in the west, and western medicine,
>
>If you ignore the contribution of Islamic science.
>
>>because we have made a point of thinking about medicine in certain ways,
>
>If you ignore the contribution of Islamic medicine.
Excuse me again, but I would largely include much of Islam within the
general stream of Western culture. Wouldn't you? I mean,t he religion is
generally a development of Judeo-Christianity, and both teh Jewish and
Christian prophets, including Jesus, figure in it; The Iliad took place
in Turkey; Cleopatra was a descendant of the Greeks; Spain shows heavy
Moorish influences. Religion is no more a qualifier for the Canon than
English is.
>
>>and western philosophy because it (political philosophy for example)
>>affects us at a very basic level. For instance, we have way down in the
>>almost subconscious roots of our beings, the idea of "progress." That
I'm sure you can justify this statement.
Well, yeah, I could but not in fifteen seconds on the net. I didn't think
there was really much question of it. The Western view of progress has
certainly been discussed enough.
>same idea does not exist in at all the same way in India, as fine and
>
>I'm absolutely certain you can justify this one.
Yes...Again, the ideas of progress in India and the West have certainly
been talked around enough...it's not like the differences are a big
secret.
>
>>So: if you want to start to figure out the whys and where-fors of your
>>own Western culture, the Canon is not a bad place to start. The Canon,
>What do you mean by `Western Culture' though? Anyone I've
>come across who mentions the idea seems to think of it in
>a particular way, as the product of a certain group of
>people. The canon, as a rule, excludes those who are female,
>who are not white and, as a rule, those who are not wealthy.
>It's the same as the way that Shelley's poetry has been
>stripped of all its radicalism by critics who have decided
>what they are going to see and then see it.
>
Excuse me for the third time, but this is basically cant and horseshit.
You'd have a hard time proving that most of the people in the canon were
wealthy -- hell, some were slaves, and one that I'm reading now was
essentially a yes-man.
>>of course, is not a set list -- books go in and out of it all the time,
>>and I suspect, once the current feminist revolution is complete, some
>>people who decry the canon of Old Dead White Men will find themselves in
>>it. (They'll be Old Dead White Women, for the most part, with a few women
>
>If they do find themselves in it, it won't be because of
>a change of Bloom's heart.
Screw Bloom. I don't care about Bloom. Bloom found a way to make money.
>
>>of color. Very few. The feminist revolution seems to come not from
>>the proletariat, but from Smith, which is the reason we hear all the
>>screaming about the glass ceiling, which affects a few women, mostly
>>from Smith, while thousands and maybe millions suffer and are abused
>>n the New England pink collar factories a few miles from Smith. Into the
>>streets, the revol...nevermind.)
>
>This is the point, the canon contains a particular set of
>ideas and it excludes people, not for a literary reason,
>but because of their ideas. That's why Alice Walker doesn't
>feature.
Let me try to say this again, so that it's very clear.
There is no one canon.
There is a group of works generally referred to as the canon, but you
probably couldn't find two people who would agree on an exact list.
Alice Walker isn't in it because she just got here: and I suspect
that she will be in it, sooner or later. She certainly would be a
candidate.
There aren't a lot of women or people of color in the Canon because
women may have been discouraged from being writers/story tellers/
philosophers, or weren't taken seriously (not counting some quite
canonic women like Sappho). There aren't a lot of People of Color in
the Western Canon for the same reason there aren't a lot of whites in
the Japanese Canon -- there weren't a lot of whites in Japan, just like
there weren't a lot of blacks or Asians in Greece, Rome, Germany,
England, France and Spain.
>Maybe I can just go my local bookshop and do what any sane,
>literate person does. Buy a book out of interest, take it
>home and read it.
Excellent idea. But even you anti-canonicals must have some curiosity
about what you fellows consider to be interesting, significant books.
Otherwise, god help you, you could start at the end of the book store
stocked with nurse-romances, and never get out of them.
> Michael Carley, Mechanical Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin
JC
Joseph M Green
Bloom condemns Alice Walker for her "rhetoric of exclusion" and reprts that
I have compelled myself to read twice, but the second reading was one of my
most remarkable literary experinces. It produced an epiphany in which I saw
clear and wonderfully conducive to social change: it must not and cannot be
reread, because its contribution to societal progress is its generosity in
offering itself up for rapid ingestion and discarding. rom Pindar through
Holderlin to Yeats, the self-canonizing greater ode has procalimed its agonistic
immortality. The socially acceptable ode of the future will doubtless spare us
such pretensions and instead address itself to the proper humility of shared
sisterhood, the new sublimity of quilt making that is now the preferred
trope of Feminist criticism."
There you go.
Michael Carley
>In article <41ru4n$2...@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>, mjca...@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Carley) says:
>>In case you hadn't noticed, `we' have also spread ourselves
>>out a bit. The vast majority of interesting writing in English
>>at the moment is being produced by writers from former colonies
>>(Rushdie, Walcott, more Irish writers than I can think of). Are
>>they to be excluded for not living in the `West'? Why does Bloom
>>(according to one review I've heard) attack Alice Walker? Doesn't
>>she come from the `West'? Isn't she a great writer? Even if you
>>don't think she's a great writer, can you deny her importance?
>Excuse me, but I certainly wasn't defending Bloom, or Bloom's ideas. And
>I would put Alice Walker in the Canon, myself, or at least make her a
>candidate for it; and writing in English doesn't either qualify you or
>disqualify for for the Canon. Most of the Canon wasn't written in
>English.
The point about `interesting writing in English' wasn't to
do with inclusion in the canon. It was point out that there
is a lot more to `Western' literature than the literature
produced by the usual suspects.
>>If you ignore the contribution of Islamic science.
>>
>>>because we have made a point of thinking about medicine in certain ways,
>>
>>If you ignore the contribution of Islamic medicine.
>Excuse me again, but I would largely include much of Islam within the
>general stream of Western culture. Wouldn't you? I mean,t he religion is
Well, if you want to work that way, you could include
almost anything in Western culture, couldn't you? I
don't know of anyone who includes Islam when they
speak of `Western culture'. I know that Bloom and others
certainly don't.
>generally a development of Judeo-Christianity, and both teh Jewish and
>Christian prophets, including Jesus, figure in it; The Iliad took place
>in Turkey; Cleopatra was a descendant of the Greeks; Spain shows heavy
>Moorish influences. Religion is no more a qualifier for the Canon than
>English is.
I wasn't referring to Islam as a religion, I was referring
to Islamic culture.
>>What do you mean by `Western Culture' though? Anyone I've
>>come across who mentions the idea seems to think of it in
>>a particular way, as the product of a certain group of
>>people. The canon, as a rule, excludes those who are female,
>>who are not white and, as a rule, those who are not wealthy.
>>It's the same as the way that Shelley's poetry has been
>>stripped of all its radicalism by critics who have decided
>>what they are going to see and then see it.
>Excuse me for the third time, but this is basically cant and horseshit.
>You'd have a hard time proving that most of the people in the canon were
>wealthy -- hell, some were slaves, and one that I'm reading now was
>essentially a yes-man.
You refuse to justify two statements, on the grounds that
they have already been discussed enough and you say I'm
talking horseshit?
Since, I am sure, you can also justify this statement,
could you enlighten us with a rough breakdown of the
canonical writers by status (wealth, sex, political
views, whatever) and thereby prove that I'm talking
horseshit?
>There is no one canon.
There are quite a few people who are trying to say that
there should be.
>There is a group of works generally referred to as the canon, but you
>probably couldn't find two people who would agree on an exact list.
>Alice Walker isn't in it because she just got here: and I suspect
>that she will be in it, sooner or later. She certainly would be a
>candidate.
If two people don't agree on an exact list, how can you
say that Alice Walker isn't in it?
>There aren't a lot of women or people of color in the Canon because
>women may have been discouraged from being writers/story tellers/
>philosophers, or weren't taken seriously (not counting some quite
Precisely. They weren't taken seriously and still aren't.
Now are you beginning to see the point of the canon and
why I object to it?
>canonic women like Sappho). There aren't a lot of People of Color in
>the Western Canon for the same reason there aren't a lot of whites in
>the Japanese Canon -- there weren't a lot of whites in Japan, just like
>there weren't a lot of blacks or Asians in Greece, Rome, Germany,
>England, France and Spain.
Are you trying to be funny? There may not have been many
blacks in Europe (although that has changed) but there
have been many in the Americas for quite some time. And
they still don't feature very prominently in any canon
I've seen.
>Excellent idea. But even you anti-canonicals must have some curiosity
>about what you fellows consider to be interesting, significant books.
I read other books. It's a rare book that doesn't have a
reference to others.
>Otherwise, god help you, you could start at the end of the book store
>stocked with nurse-romances, and never get out of them.
I have done this. Start in fiction (left hand side as I go
in, Irish fiction on the right) and wander about. When I find
something I like the look of, I buy it and read it. Simple.
--
Survivors Describe A320 Flight As `Normal' (Aviation Week)
m.ca...@leoleo.mme.tcd.ie +353 1 6081134
Michael Carley, Mechanical Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin
Christopher Schweda
(Michael Carley) wrote:
> f...@access.digex.net (Fiona Webster) writes:
>
> >Michael Carley wrote:
>
> >>It is one thing to recommend certain books. It is another
> >>to do so to the exclusion of others.
>
> >All finite lists omit many items. Who out there is saying
> >that a given list is the only list? Who's this mysterious
> >authority you're railing against? The only way that a list
>
> Bloom, for example.
>
> >could limit what people read, is if it were used to ban every book
> >not on the list. I haven't heard that Bloom, or any other
> >canon promoter, wants to do that.
>
> But he does want to make sure that these are the books
> that will be taught in universities.
No. No. No.
From one review I
> heard, he attacks Alice Walker quite strongly. Are you
> saying that Alice Walker can reasonably be excluded
> from any list of twentieth century literature?
>
I suggest you read Bloom's book before criticizing it.
He attacks Alice Walker, but no more than any ordinary critic would
"attack" any piece of text:
"I am not prepared to dispute admirers of Alice Walker's _Meridian_, a
novel I have compelled myself to read twice, but the second reading was
one of my most remarkable literary experiences. It produced an epiphany in
which I saw quite clearly the new principle inherit in the slogans of
those who proclaim opening up of the Canon. The correct test for the new
canonicity principle is simple, clear, and wonderfully conducive to social
change: it must not and cannot be reread, because its contribution to
societal progress is its generosity in offering itself up for rapid
ingestion and discarding . . . The socially acceptable ode of the future
will doubtless spare us such pretensions and instead address itself tp the
proper humility of shared sisterhood, the new sublimity of quilt making
that is now the prepared trope of Feminist Criticism."
(Bloom 29)
Francis Muir
The canon, as it always has been, will be formed by intelligent
critics, teachers, and readers, not one guy with a big ego. And
if you think the canon just started during World War I, think again.
The notion that all things can and should be listed and force-ranked seems
to be Yankee and probably post Civil War. If anyone thinks otherwise they
should post their evidence. The notion that some things can and should
be listed and ranked is older of course; the Napoleonic Code springs to mind.
A good example here is provided by the wines of Bordeaux with their elaborate
Grand Cru classification. Another would be the railway passenger classification
which began in France and migrated to England where, tho', there was never
a Second Class.
Fido
Albert Evans
'mjca...@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Carley)' wrote:
>Maybe I can just go my local bookshop and do what any sane,
>literate person does. Buy a book out of interest, take it
>home and read it.
Michael,
Since your several postings on Bloom's book amount, at this point, to a
small review, you might wish (out of "interest") to buy it, take it home,
and read it.
Just a suggestion.
--
AE
Glass House
NYC
Michael Carley
>canon, as it always has been, will be formed by intelligent critics,
>teachers, and readers, not one guy with a big ego. And if you think
>the canon just started during World War I, think again.
Someone else claimed that the big deal with canons started
about 75 years ago. I just pointed out why.
Robert Teeter
: Robert Teeter writes:
: The canon, as it always has been, will be formed by intelligent
: critics, teachers, and readers, not one guy with a big ego. And
: if you think the canon just started during World War I, think again.
: The notion that all things can and should be listed and force-ranked seems
: to be Yankee and probably post Civil War. If anyone thinks otherwise they
: should post their evidence.
The canon, as I understand it, is a list of books for several, related
but not identical purposes -- for example, understanding Western culture,
being "educated" or "well-read," etc. (Note: I agree with the first, but not
necessarily the second. I think one can be well-read without necessarily
having read the entire canon, and I think some works outside it are necessary
for a good education.)
The point is that there does not have to be a 1 to 100 (or 1,000)
ranking for the entire list. Something is either in the canon or it's
not. Of course, there is some dispute at the margin, which does not mean
it's impossible to say if anybody is in. Shakespeare is definitely in,
Alice Walker might be in (too soon to tell), Tom Clancy will never be in.
The original canon -- and the source of the term -- was that decided
by the editors of the Bible. Their purpose, of course, was to decide which
books were divinely inspired. Those so inclined may take it that way.
Others may take it as Ancient Judean Literature That's Still Worth Reading,
the Hebrew Canon.
The ancient Greeks had a canon of sorts, in that Homer was the
source of much of their education, religion, and later literature.
The Middle Ages had the seven liberal arts.
The 18th and 19th century had the Greek and Roman classics. English
literature was not considered worth studying in the university until c.1900,
because it was assumend students would have read it on their own.
--
Robert Teeter
rte...@netcom.com
Roderick Frey
: Since, I am sure, you can also justify this statement,
: could you enlighten us with a rough breakdown of the
: canonical writers by status (wealth, sex, political
: views, whatever) and thereby prove that I'm talking
: horseshit?
Haven't you ever heard of the burden of proof? You're the one
who is making a claim (that the canonical writers are almost all
wealthy). It's up to YOU to back up your claim.
Kelly Jane Torrance
Christopher Schweda
Teeter) wrote:
> Michael Carley (mjca...@maths.tcd.ie) wrote:
> : jc...@mr.net (John Camp) writes:
>
> : >On reason for setting up a list of books -- say, the "Western Canon" --
> : >is because we live in the West. If you look outside, you'll notice
>
> : In case you hadn't noticed, `we' have also spread ourselves
> : out a bit. The vast majority of interesting writing in English
> : at the moment is being produced by writers from former colonies
> : (Rushdie, Walcott, more Irish writers than I can think of). Are
> : they to be excluded for not living in the `West'?
>
> Actually, they do live in the West and write in Western languages.
> Bloom doesn't actually say *any* 20th century author is definitely
> in the canon, because it's too soon to tell. But he does think Walcott
> and many Irish writers have a good chance.
>
> : Why does Bloom
> : (according to one review I've heard) attack Alice Walker? Doesn't
> : she come from the `West'? Isn't she a great writer? Even if you
> : don't think she's a great writer, can you deny her importance?
>
> Alice Walker may well make it into the canon. It's really too
> soon to tell. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what Bloom thinks. The
> canon, as it always has been, will be formed by intelligent critics,
> teachers, and readers, not one guy with a big ego. And if you think
> the canon just started during World War I, think again.
>
I'm amazed at the Bloom bashing here.
First of all, name one "intelligent critic" who *doesn't* have a so-called
big ego. Derrida? Foucault? Said? H. Bloom? A. Bloom? Eagleton? Christ,
they all got big egos. That's why they're critics.
But you use the words "big ego," and I find this quite curious. You seem
bothered by this, frightened almost -- as if someone with a "big ego" and
a loud yawp presents a danger. (As if, in fact, there is a *danger* to be
presented in the first place.)
Bloom seems to have resigned himself to sit on the sidelines and watch the
critics fight among themselves. Bloom's _Western Canon_ -- and most all of
Bloom's books for that matter -- are highly personal texts. Bloom's tone
in _Canon_ is elegaic. He's sad, and, IMHO, rightly so.
I find the most striking point in Bloom's _Canon_ to be the very point
which no one seems to mention: that the point of reading is a personal
experience conducted in solitude. And the real question is not what sort
of "moral" ground one can gain by reading some Alice Walker text and
ignoring, say, Cormac MCarthy. The *real* question is how to make good use
one's solitude properly. And for this, Bloom suggests reading.
Do Bloom's lists really present a danger? Of course not. I could come up
with a comparable list, as could you, and everyone else. Lists aren't
dangerous. Listmakers have big egos maybe. But so what? Teachers got big
egos. Readers got big egos. Authors got big egos. What's with this fear of
"big egos?"
Who cares if Bloom attacks Walker? He's one voice in the wilderness. I
think Cormac McCarthy is, hands down, the best writer writing in America.
Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, whoever else -- no one comes close to
McCarthy. But that's my opinion -- and it's an opinion that's not shared
by very many people.
But so what?
Chris
Fiona Webster
>Do Bloom's lists really present a danger? Of course not. I could come up
>with a comparable list, as could you, and everyone else. Lists aren't
>dangerous. Listmakers have big egos maybe. But so what? Teachers got big
>egos. Readers got big egos. Authors got big egos. What's with this fear
>of"big egos?"
This is an excellent statement of what my problem has been, with Michael
Carley's (and the other canon-bashers') postings in this thread. They
haven't succeeded in proving that Bloom, or any other listmaker, poses
a threat to anyone or anything. So much emotion, over just a list or
two! As I said before, if they don't have the power to *ban* books,
they're not really causing any harm. So what if they influence a reading
program or a college course or two? From what I hear in the news about
high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
lists.
I'll give an example of something I think is much more influential, on
everyday people's reading habits, than Bloom's list: My local Super Crown
bookstore has all the fiction written by African-Americans separated out
from the rest of the fiction. (I live in a county with a majority
African-American population.) I wonder a lot about what this separation
is doing to people's choices: maybe some people are reading *more* black
writers because of it, but maybe some people are skipping that section
and thus reading *less* black writers because of it. Are white people
more likely to skip that section? Is this an insidious "separate but
equal" kind of thing? I don't claim to know the answers, but I would bet
that if several dozen Super Crowns have set up this distinction (there
are prefabricated signs for the sections, and everything), that it's
affecting more people than Bloom ever did.
>Who cares if Bloom attacks Walker? He's one voice in the wilderness. I
>think Cormac McCarthy is, hands down, the best writer writing in
>America. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, whoever else -- no one comes close
>to McCarthy. But that's my opinion -- and it's an opinion that's not
>shared by very many people.
For what it's worth (not much), I share it. :-) He is the best living
American writer, in my opinion -- even if _All_the_Pretty_Horses_ and
_The_Crossing_ aren't quite up to the high standards set by _Suttree_ and
_Blood_Meridian_.
>But so what?
Exactly. SO WHAT.
--Fiona W.
Robert Teeter
: >On reason for setting up a list of books -- say, the "Western Canon" --
: >is because we live in the West. If you look outside, you'll notice
: In case you hadn't noticed, `we' have also spread ourselves
: out a bit. The vast majority of interesting writing in English
: at the moment is being produced by writers from former colonies
: (Rushdie, Walcott, more Irish writers than I can think of). Are
: they to be excluded for not living in the `West'?
Actually, they do live in the West and write in Western languages.
Bloom doesn't actually say *any* 20th century author is definitely
in the canon, because it's too soon to tell. But he does think Walcott
and many Irish writers have a good chance.
: Why does Bloom
: (according to one review I've heard) attack Alice Walker? Doesn't
: she come from the `West'? Isn't she a great writer? Even if you
: don't think she's a great writer, can you deny her importance?
Alice Walker may well make it into the canon. It's really too
soon to tell. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what Bloom thinks. The
canon, as it always has been, will be formed by intelligent critics,
teachers, and readers, not one guy with a big ego. And if you think
the canon just started during World War I, think again.
--
Robert Teeter
rte...@netcom.com
Melynda Huskey
>Francis Muir (fra...@pangea.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>: Robert Teeter writes:
>
>: The canon, as it always has been, will be formed by intelligent
>: critics, teachers, and readers, not one guy with a big ego. And
>: if you think the canon just started during World War I, think again.
>
Yes, the original canon is the books included in the Bible. What gets us in trouble is those
"Last Honest Man Dying on the Ramparts of Western Civilization" types who want the Harvard
Classics (or the St. John's curriculum, or whatever list they've assembled) to be not only the Really
Important Books Which Constitute True Education, but also the divinely-inspired list of light
reading when you need a break from the Bible, not to be questioned, added to
(except maybe a few early Modernists) or subtracted from. These books don't need readers, they
need a priesthood who can hand down the sacred truth of the LIST.
Most people can come up with a list of books they think are important reading for a civilized human
being. Maybe a large number of people who learned that one particular list is THE LIST still believe it,
because that's what they were told, and everything they learned supported the idea that those books
were the best books, because that's why they were on the list (not unlike those explanations of why we
know that the Bible was divinely inspired (because it says so)). Pick a different set of rules, get a wholly
different set of books. It's not the end of the world, I promise. It's just a different list.
Melynda Huskey
mely...@uidaho.edu
Melynda Huskey
(so-called) is a consequence of not reading certain books in certain ways. Naturally enough, those
of us for whom the "splendid tradition" of civilization in these books has consisted primarily of slavery,
oppression, or at best invisibility, don't like to let that assumption pass unchallenged. (Not to mention the
bad taste of suggesting that Philip Roth is an artist of incredible merit and that Adrienne Rich is a bad poet
because she writes about being a lesbian. Portnoy's little liver episode teaches us something important
about human nature, but "Diving into the Wreck" is self-indulgent nonsense?)
Saying that you have a favorite author and think other people ought to read her work isn't really the same
as saying the books I studied and taught are the only works of true value in the universe and the only
ones which pass on civilization, and so everyone must study them and them alone and let the "goddamn
lesbean"* and black and Asian and Native American and Hispanic writers go to the hell they so richly deserve
for inventing rock and roll instead of listening to Mozart (sorry, other Bloom).
As for the African-American writers question, if I get the drift of your comments, it would be better to put all
the books together without regard for the ethnicity of their writers because maybe some white folks would
then read the books by black writers by mistake? Maybe the books are grouped that way because lots
of people over time have asked for books by black writers (possibly because black people find that books by
black writers address concerns relevant to their lives, or write about black people even, just as I read lots
of lesbian fiction because that's where lesbian characters seem to live).
*Jesse Helms
Melynda Huskey
mely...@uidaho.edu
Rafael A. Acuna
>Who cares if Bloom attacks Walker? He's one voice in the wilderness. I
>think Cormac McCarthy is, hands down, the best writer writing in America.
>Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, whoever else -- no one comes close to
>McCarthy. But that's my opinion -- and it's an opinion that's not shared
>by very many people.
>But so what?
It has something to do with the educational system. It seems that in
the United States required lit courses are studied carefully, given
the growing number of students from different lands and cultures.
Given a limited number of texts to read for class and given limited
reading time for the student, some teachers receive complaints from
students if certain representative texts are not assigned. The best
option, of course, is to mix First and Third World literatures, and
offer choices for papers or reports outside those assigned.
Outside school, there is a possibility that certain texts can affect
what people believe in. Said, for example, comments on how Conrad's
Heart of Darkness and other texts may have affected the way his fellow
citizens viewed Africa. This, of course, is different from preference
of texts due to formal qualities.
Jim Hartley
>I wrote:
>> From what I hear in the news about
>> high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
>> the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
>> lists.
>
>> It has done nothing of the kind.
>
>I'll be interested to hear from others about this matter. I thought,
>what with Dinesh D'Souza's hysteria and all the multiculturalism
>talk and all the students yelling "Western civ has got to go!" that
>a real shift was taking place on the campuses of this country.
>Could someone in academe give us some info?
Before seeing Michael C's comment, I had never seen anything that would
suggest that Fiona is not right about the current state of education.
I too would be interested in knowing from whence comes Michael's
assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the Western
Canon.
--
Jim Hartley
jhar...@mtholyoke.edu
Aaron Gross
> Why does Bloom
> (according to one review I've heard) attack Alice Walker? Doesn't
> she come from the `West'?
Yes.
> Isn't she a great writer?
No. At least not based on the one book I read by her, "The Color
Purple". It wasn't bad, but there's no way I could imagine describing
it as "great". This is obviously just a matter of opinion though.
> Even if you
> don't think she's a great writer, can you deny her importance?
Yes. While she enjoys some fame right now, mainly because she happens
to be a non-white female writer who writes about the experience of
non-whites and women in America, it's hard for me to imagine someone
reading "The Color Purple" a couple centuries from now and getting
much out of it, at least not much compared with what one can get out
of many of the "classics" of Western literature, including some
twentieth century literature.
[...]
> What do you mean by `Western Culture' though? Anyone I've
> come across who mentions the idea seems to think of it in
> a particular way, as the product of a certain group of
> people. The canon, as a rule, excludes those who are female,
> who are not white and, as a rule, those who are not wealthy.
Most of the great Western literature was written by white, reasonably
wealthy men, as was (I would assume) most of the not-so-great Western
literature. On the other hand, I'm sure there were lots of books that
were unjustly overlooked, and I'm sure some of them were written by
women, non-whites, and/or poor people.
[...]
> This is the point, the canon contains a particular set of
> ideas and it excludes people, not for a literary reason,
> but because of their ideas. That's why Alice Walker doesn't
> feature.
Again, I think that Alice Walker *should* be excluded from any canon,
just because she's not that great a writer. But you make a pretty
extreme claim: You claim to know the *reason* that Walker isn't
included. Is this just a feeling you have, or is there evidence for
the claim (e.g., interviews with literary types)?
[...]
> Maybe I can just go my local bookshop and do what any sane,
> literate person does. Buy a book out of interest, take it
> home and read it.
Sounds good.
> --
> Survivors Describe A320 Flight As `Normal' (Aviation Week)
> m.ca...@leoleo.mme.tcd.ie +353 1 6081134
> Michael Carley, Mechanical Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin
> <A HREF="http://www.mme.tcd.ie/~m.carley/Welcome.html">Home page</A>
Aaron
--
aa...@ieadler.technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~ieaaron
"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know."
- Oscar Wilde
Fiona Webster
>I wonder how many in this thread have even read Bloom? Fiona -- what is
>Bloom's reprehensible political position?
You caught me out, Joe. I was agreeing with Carley for the sake of
argument, and was basing my assessment of Bloom's position entirely
on Carley's portrayal of that position. Anyway...I guess I blew it.
<wince>
--Fiona
Fiona Webster
> It's not a question of them being a threat by themselves. It's
> their hysterical denunciation of the modern world that's the
> problem.
I'm certainly willing to agree with you, and with Melynda, that
the political position Bloom takes is reprehensible. But how does
that position pose a threat? Are publishers influenced by it not
to publish certain books? Are schools influenced to ban books?
Are large numbers of people modeling their reading habits after
Bloom?
I wrote:
> From what I hear in the news about
> high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
> the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
> lists.
Michael C. replied:
> It has done nothing of the kind.
I'll be interested to hear from others about this matter. I thought,
what with Dinesh D'Souza's hysteria and all the multiculturalism
talk and all the students yelling "Western civ has got to go!" that
a real shift was taking place on the campuses of this country.
Could someone in academe give us some info?
--interesting discussion,
Fiona
Michael Carley
>He attacks Alice Walker, but no more than any ordinary critic would
>"attack" any piece of text:
>"I am not prepared to dispute admirers of Alice Walker's _Meridian_, a
>novel I have compelled myself to read twice, but the second reading was
>one of my most remarkable literary experiences. It produced an epiphany in
>which I saw quite clearly the new principle inherit in the slogans of
>those who proclaim opening up of the Canon. The correct test for the new
>canonicity principle is simple, clear, and wonderfully conducive to social
>change: it must not and cannot be reread, because its contribution to
>societal progress is its generosity in offering itself up for rapid
>ingestion and discarding . . . The socially acceptable ode of the future
>will doubtless spare us such pretensions and instead address itself tp the
>proper humility of shared sisterhood, the new sublimity of quilt making
>that is now the prepared trope of Feminist Criticism."
>(Bloom 29)
If this is exactly what Bloom wrote, he is illiterate as well.
How can one `dispute admirers' of something? Is he disputing
their existence? I will assume that `inherit' in the fourth
line and `prepared' in the last are typos. I will further
assume that he meant `demand' or something similar rather than
`proclaim' in the fifth line. Are we to assume that it is the
`new canonicity principle' that `must not and cannot be reread'.
He doesn't seem to know what `ode' means.
If I as prepared to make certain assumptions, I can see something
of what I think he meant in this passage. And he wants to recommend
books to other people? Joyce is easier to read.
Francis Muir
Well, I graduated in 1993 with a B.A. in English. ... I would have
settled for Chekhov (whom I read in high school) or Brecht (also
high school), but unfortunately, our curriculum was set up by a
Victorian Poets specialist and modified my a Shakespearian, so I
was just pleased to get my course in American Naturalism and run.
I think I'd have been in shock to read anything by, say, Mishima or
any other non-European even if we did expand the course selections.
Did it occur to you that a course in English leading to a degree in English
would quite properly exclude works in other languages?
I've surveyed English majors at other schools, and while they were
not in the same British rut mine was, they all agreed that their
knowledge of non-Western literature left a lot to be desired.
Of course; they are English majors!
Fido
Michael Carley
> Haven't you ever heard of the burden of proof? You're the one
>who is making a claim (that the canonical writers are almost all
>wealthy). It's up to YOU to back up your claim.
Shall we start a list then?
Doug Turnbull
> In article <42202t$g...@mudraker.mtholyoke.edu>,
> Jim Hartley <jhar...@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
> >I too would be interested in knowing from whence comes Michael's
> >assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the Western
> >Canon.
> >
>
> Well, I graduated in 1993 with a B.A. in English. I was hard pressed to
> get a course in American lit let alone anything else outside of English
> lit 1500-1900.
In the interests of science, I stopped by the local bookstore here at
Illinois to see what books were being assigned for english classes. I wrote
down the book lists from section for Eng 103, which is Intro to Fiction.
Each section reads 4-6 books. They were books by:
Sec #1- Bronte, Dickens, Woolf
Sec#2- Chinua Anchebe, Marquez, Toni Morrison, Anzia Yezierska
#3- Faulkner, Z.N. Hurston, Morrison, Wharton
#4- Doctorow, Marquez, Morrison, Wharton, Woolf
#5- Anchebe, Morrison, Jean Rhys
#6- Hyrston, Ishiguro, Remarque
#7- Morrison, Wharton, Hawthorne, Delillo
#8- Conrad, H. James, Luise Erdich
#9- T. Morrison, Johnson (not Samuel), Maxina Kingston
#10- Morrison, M. Shelley
#11- Bronte, Faulkner, Stephen King (!), A. Walker
#12- Bronte, A. Walker, Delillo, N. Baker
#13- Bronte, Brown, Faulkner, Leguin, Johnson (same guy as above- some book
called _Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_)
There was more, but I was getting hungry and the list was getting
repetative.
This is hardly dominated by the Western Canon. The small fraction of
canonical writers are equally divided between men and women. If anything,
the list is dominated by contemporary female writers. The university also
has a department of comparitive literature that has a lot of non-western
stuff.
Last year, I was interested in taking a literature seminar and was
looking for canonical stuff. I had to wait a term because all the seminars
in the fall were things like "Gender Themes in Non-western Slave
Narratives" or some such. So, I would say that the Canon is hardly dominant
in universities today.
Doug Turnbull
Doug Turnbull
mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu (Melynda Huskey) wrote:
> Most people can come up with a list of books they think are important reading for a civilized human
> being. Maybe a large number of people who learned that one particular list is THE LIST still believe it,
> because that's what they were told, and everything they learned supported the idea that those books
> were the best books, because that's why they were on the list (not unlike those explanations of why we
> know that the Bible was divinely inspired (because it says so)).
Or maybe, just maybe, a lot of people have the same list because that's
what they were told, and then when they read the books, they agreed that
these were the best books ever written. Brainwashing, while it might be a
comfortable hypothesis for you, isn't true for most people I've met who
support the classics.
Doug Turnbull
Doug Turnbull
mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu (Melynda Huskey) wrote:
> Saying that you have a favorite author and think other people ought to read her work isn't really the same
> as saying the books I studied and taught are the only works of true value in the universe and the only
> ones which pass on civilization, and so everyone must study them and them alone and let the "goddamn
> lesbean"* and black and Asian and Native American and Hispanic writers go to the hell they so richly deserve
> for inventing rock and roll instead of listening to Mozart (sorry, other Bloom).
>
> *Jesse Helms
>
Well, I'm glad to know that by defending the canon I become equivalent
to Jesse Helms. I'll keep that in mind.
FWIW, have you ever thought that it's possible to not like a book for
reasons other than the author's sex/sexual orientation/race? Not everyone
approaches their reading as a way to make a political statement.
Doug Turnbull
Michael Carley
>This is an excellent statement of what my problem has been, with Michael
>Carley's (and the other canon-bashers') postings in this thread. They
>haven't succeeded in proving that Bloom, or any other listmaker, poses
>a threat to anyone or anything. So much emotion, over just a list or
It's not a question of them being a threat by themselves. It's
their hysterical denunciation of the modern world that's the
problem. They see `Western Culture' (which they define) as
being under threat from feminists, gays, blacks and other
minority groups who have finally begun to win some respect
from a society that traditionally gave them none. The idea
behind the canon is to put forward a particular view of
literature and culture and it is an idea which should be
opposed.
>two! As I said before, if they don't have the power to *ban* books,
>they're not really causing any harm. So what if they influence a reading
>program or a college course or two? From what I hear in the news about
>high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
>the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
>lists.
It has done nothing of the kind.
>I'll give an example of something I think is much more influential, on
>everyday people's reading habits, than Bloom's list: My local Super Crown
>bookstore has all the fiction written by African-Americans separated out
>from the rest of the fiction. (I live in a county with a majority
>African-American population.) I wonder a lot about what this separation
>is doing to people's choices: maybe some people are reading *more* black
>writers because of it, but maybe some people are skipping that section
>and thus reading *less* black writers because of it. Are white people
>more likely to skip that section? Is this an insidious "separate but
>equal" kind of thing? I don't claim to know the answers, but I would bet
>that if several dozen Super Crowns have set up this distinction (there
>are prefabricated signs for the sections, and everything), that it's
>affecting more people than Bloom ever did.
I'm sure it is. Personally I can see why it's being done. I
don't like it but I can see the point. In an ideal world
people would just read books without worrying about the
author's status. Because we do not live in an ideal world
(and probably never will) it makes sense to point out to
coloured or gay people that there is literature available
which addresses their own experience.
JB
> f...@access.digex.net (Fiona Webster) writes:
>
>>This is an excellent statement of what my problem has been, with Michael
>>Carley's (and the other canon-bashers') postings in this thread. They
>>haven't succeeded in proving that Bloom, or any other listmaker, poses
>>a threat to anyone or anything. So much emotion, over just a list or
>
> It's not a question of them being a threat by themselves. It's
> their hysterical denunciation of the modern world that's the
> problem. They see `Western Culture' (which they define) as
> being under threat from feminists, gays, blacks and other
> minority groups who have finally begun to win some respect
> from a society that traditionally gave them none. The idea
> behind the canon is to put forward a particular view of
> literature and culture and it is an idea which should be
> opposed.
>
This is simply paranoia with an agenda. Literary canons aren't political weapons
of the right, they are popularity contests, pure and simple. They were largely
white and male because academia was largely white and male. In the last couple
of decades academia has remained largely white but has become considerably less
male, so now the canon is largely white but becoming more balanced gender-wise.
Works end up on canons because a large group of teachers and scholars think they
have value, not because there is some vast academic conspiracy. You give the
fascists entirely too much credit, my friend. And it's changing, as ever. Even
here in a conservative backwater in a conservative state, we've a fully funded
and staffed Multicultural and Gender program. And if you really want to see
where the canon's going, just take one quick look at the program for last year's
Modern Language Association convention.
JB
Joseph M Green
I wonder how many in this thread have even read Bloom? Fiona -- what is
persons from his little list becasue of race or gender? You are wrong if
you do. He simply selects works that he thinks artistically important --
and, if anything, favors subversion -- he hardly fosters the sort of
conservatism embraced by the other Bloom. Many are enraged because he tells
the truth about the artistic worthiness of current favorites -- however he
excludes these persons because they are just not very good. The only thing
really reprehensible about his politics to many is that he insists on
certain standards -- aesthetic standards -- and these standards are not
narrow and, unlike the standards of those who foster various versions of
a new canon, are not based in resentment. Bloom is much more generous
than his detractors... It should also be noted that he denies that "canons"
are formed in anything like the ways persons who reprehend the "canon" claim
they are formed -- and he provides a convincing case for this.
If insisting on artistic excellence is reprehensible than Bloom's politics
are reprehensible -- otherwise not. Of course, one could always claim
that these aesthetic standards are political and tyrannical -- the
consequence of this, of course, is that mediocrity is fostered -- a
consequence desired by the mediocre.
And, of course, insisting that the canon is constructed to foster this
and that ideology is very wrong -- obviously wrong. The truth is much
more complex -- as always -- and, as always, the mediocre don't want
to understand this.
Melynda Huskey
my own temper-tantrum (although I'm not yielding one whit on my argument). If I'd only
had colleagues like you two, I might still be a professor today, instead of an administrative
moray on the lurching body of higher education. I apologize unequivocally for getting
nasty with anybody about canonicity, and refer all future questions on the subject to Anne.
Read any good books lately?
Melynda Huskey
mely...@uidaho.edu
Francis Muir
I too would be interested in knowing from whence comes Michael's
assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the
Western Canon.
Mikey's one point of light seems to emanate from Trinity College, Dublin;
you know, the one where the Circle of Friends discovered sex. One cannot
but applaud his taking up the banner in behalf of women and blacks, but
I have the feeling that they'd rather do it themselves than leave it in
the hands of where it has too often resided, namely, the self-flagelating
guilt-ridden libs.
Fido
Li
>>> high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
>>> the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
>>> lists.
>>
>>> It has done nothing of the kind.
>>
>>what with Dinesh D'Souza's hysteria and all the multiculturalism
>>talk and all the students yelling "Western civ has got to go!" that
>>a real shift was taking place on the campuses of this country.
>>Could someone in academe give us some info?
>
>suggest that Fiona is not right about the current state of education.
>
>assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the Western
>Canon.
>
>Jim Hartley
>jhar...@mtholyoke.edu
Well, I graduated in 1993 with a B.A. in English. I was hard pressed to
get a course in American lit let alone anything else outside of English
lit 1500-1900. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both courses in
Shakespeare, I enjoyed the course in Renaissance drama, the Victorian's
prose has served me well in educational papers ever since, and a
wonderful professor even convinced me that the 18th century writers were
worth reading over and over again. Milton I could still have lived
without. Unfortunately, despite reading the same poems by Browning and
Tennyson in three different courses (in the same quarter no less), I
never was able to get a course that offered a greater exposure to the
rest of the world. I would have settled for Chekhov (whom I read in high
school) or Brecht (also high school), but unfortunately, our curriculum
was set up by a Victorian Poets specialist and modified my a
Shakespearian, so I was just pleased to get my course in American
Naturalism and run. I think I'd have been in shock to read anything by,
say, Mishima or any other non-European even if we did expand the course
selections.
I've surveyed English majors at other schools, and while
they were not in the same British rut mine was, they all agreed that
their knowledge of non-Western literature left a lot to be desired.
Here's hoping that the horizons expand in the future.
Li
Anne Furlong
two on canons...
One thing everyone seems agreed on is the notion of a "literate" person.
That is, a literate person is quite capable of making up her own mind
about what to read, how to evaluate what she's read, whether to recommend
it or not, and so on.
What may not have been addressed (I came in here when the bunfight was
well in progress) was how a person gets literate in the first place
(though I think the remark about the nurse-romance section of the
bookstore indicates some assumptions about that). And that's where the
canon comes in.
And of course, that's where the hackles rise, too.
So it seems to me we could consider a canon in terms not of what it is,
but of what it does.
One way is to see the "canon" as consisting of those books which a
literate person ought to have read. If we see it that way, no wonder
everyone gets knotted up about it (after all, who are YOU to tell me I'm
not literate, just because I haven't read through all the books on your
list?). That's a circular and exhausting and ultimately unresolvable
way, I think, to address the question. And yes, it IS political if you
look at it from that point. That's why the anger against Bloom is almost
automatic: I think many of us recognise what it is he's trying to pull,
and like most people we don't like feeling pushed around.
But there's another way of thinking about this, which while it is at the
service of political views of the world, is perhaps itself less
politicised. We can think of the canon as being those books which are
needed in order to arrive at optimal interpretations of other books.
Now, this implies a couple of things: a chronology, and a cultural
process. Those works which are important for a whole lot of people in a
culture over the years tend to end up in the canon. Not because they're
wonderful on their own (though they may be), or because they help preserve
the purity of the culture (though perhaps they might do that too, though I
doubt it), but because any writer addressing people in that culture knows
that these works are part of the mental equipment her readers will likely
bring to the job of reading. So the Bible, because it has been widely
disseminated (even if orally - that's not particulary relevant) is in a
sense part of the canon. So are Greek myths and Roman history (think of
how important the whole period of republic-to-empire was for the framers
of the US Constitution). So is Shakespeare. Until about 150 years ago,
these were passed as common currency among a significant part of the
reading (and illiterate) populations, in some form. And let's not forget
that in the English-speaking world, a man was not really considered
cultured (and it was pretty well men only) without an acquaintance with
Latin and Greek (modern languages were for also-rans).
Then we get the rise of mass communications, and mass literacy, and - this
is where the politics comes in - the collapse of class systems everywhere
(not total, but they're not what they used to be). Suddenly we all have
access to a lot more books, and a lot more people are writing, and they
are bringing in new views of the world, depending less on the "standards"
because a lot of them never read the standards, maybe, or didn't get much
out of them, or depended on books and works that never made it to polite
society.
So the canon still has its function - that is, it allows the reader to
"get" what the writer had in mind - but what the writer had in mind isn't
the same anymore. And so the canon continues to change, because it is to
a degree directive (if you don't read such-and-such, you won't "get"
so-and-so, because the writer assumed you were familiar at least with
such-and-such when she wrote so-and-so), and to a degree descriptive
(this is a list of things most writers think you know).
At the moment, a lot of writers think we have a pretty good knowledge of
popular culture as transmitted through mass media (American Psycho is a
good example of that). A lot of teachers would like us to have a pretty
good knowledge of what got us to our present popular culture in the first
place, so they want us to have read a lot of other things, too.
Depending on the goal of the teacher, or the tutorless reader, the list
of "gee, I'm really glad I read..." or "gosh, I really wish I'd read..."
will differ. What doesn't differ is what that list does.
This is why "ownership" of the list is both fruitless and inviting. The
list follows culture - it doesn't lead it. But a lot of teachers are
used to being followed, and they'd like to get hold of the canon so
people will follow their vision of the good society.
I don't know how you get a literate person. But most literate people I
know have read surprisingly similar sorts of things. Maybe we could take
a descriptive approach, and find out what people have read, and its
relationship to what they do read: the necessary, the relevant, and the
complete waste of time.
Excuse my hasty exit, but I think I see a fin breaking the surface...
Anne Furlong
----------------------------
<afur...@ganymede.cs.mun.ca> St John's Newfoundland Canada
Joseph M Green
>Fiona Webster writes:
> Joseph Green writes:
> I wonder how many in this thread have even read Bloom?
> Fiona -- what is Bloom's reprehensible political position?
> You caught me out, Joe. I was agreeing with Carley for the sake of
> argument, and was basing my assessment of Bloom's position entirely
> on Carley's portrayal of that position. Anyway...I guess I blew it.
> <wince>
>And I should bloomin' well think so too. Giuseppi Wordy's post was so
>excellent and so distant from his usual style one wonders if he's using
>a ghost - and if so, for which of the two voices? BTB, who else here can
>align themselves with Bloom and claim to have read THE COLOR PURPLE twice?
>On another tack there has been some argument that the Great Universities
>go for Great People whose (class) teaching is probably quite poor. Of
>course it is! No one doubts that the 4-yr State colleges here in California
>do a much better job, on the whole, of classroom teching than do the
>full Universities. But that is all that a 4-yr college does. Kids don't
>just elect to go to Harvard for the promise of future reward (although this
>plays a part), but also because it is a university in Newman's sense,
>where only a fraction of the knowledge is found in the classroom.
> Fido
I simply sometimes believe -- as did Sam Johnson and the antient Romans
myriad mindeness if you wish -- or another good context is Shakespeare's
later plays. Fiona is my Marina -- thalassa etc. and I Pericles --
or you might simply realize that there are persons I consider
members of a special class. You, Fido, are, in fact, my Barbara
Frietzsche (if this is the Barbara I mean (ah, the old familiar) and
whoever touches a hair on your grey head dies like a dog (he said).
Of course I mean all this in Newman's sense.
that it is better to save a citizen than kill an enemy. Think of it as myriad m
Francis Muir
John Camp
>
>
>I wonder how many in this thread have even read Bloom? Fiona -- what is
>persons from his little list becasue of race or gender? You are wrong if
>you do. He simply selects works that he thinks artistically important --
>and, if anything, favors subversion -- he hardly fosters the sort of
>conservatism embraced by the other Bloom.
<Big snip>
Excellent post.
I am not a big defender of Bloom, but I wonder how many people have
even bothered to look at the *back* of "The Western Canon" to see what
he includes? There are literally dozens of authors and hundreds of
texts...
In his section on "The Chaotic Age, A Canonical Prophecy," he includes
writers from Italy, Spain, Catalonia, Portugal, France, Great Britain and
Ireland, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, Serbo-Croatia, Poland, Hungary,
modern Greece, Hebrew and Arabic writers, Latin America, The West Indies,
Africa, Canada, Ausralia and New Zealand, and the U.S. (Toni Morrison
is on the list).
About the Koran he says, "I would think that...once the reader is
conversant with the Bible, Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists and
Virgil, the crucial work is the Koran. Whether for its aesthetic and
spiritual power or the influence it will have on all of our futures,
ignorance of the Koran is foolish and increasingly dangerous...
In his end-of-book listing, there are a lot of dead white men, but
every page includes a few dead (and some living) white women as
well, and substantial numbers of what I would assume are
people of color.
And it's not just an empty gesture. About Emily Dickinson (who I
personally think is the best poet that America has yet produced) he
says, in small part: "Except for Shakespeare, Dickinson manifests more
cognitive originality than any other western poet since Dante..."
And he goes on with some other arguments which will soon have me
re-reading Blake.
As I've said, I'm not a big fan of Bloom's, but his is not a list
intended to chastise the outsider. I think it's more intended to chastise
the ignorant and the simple-minded fashion dogs.
JC
Joseph M Green
>Melynda Huskey wrote:
>>If I'd only had colleagues like you two, I might still be a professor
>>today, instead of an administrative moray on the lurching body of higher
>>education.
>Uh, I think you mean a remora. Or else I don't understand your
>analogy.
(Fiona said that)
Thank you, Melynda -- tho it is true that I have not prevented more than
a few collegues from becoming acquatic animals (they seem to prefer
to morph into starfish) I would have done my damndest.
joe
John Camp
>
> In the interests of science, I stopped by the local bookstore here at
>Illinois to see what books were being assigned for english classes. I wrote
>down the book lists from section for Eng 103, which is Intro to Fiction.
>Each section reads 4-6 books. They were books by:
>
>Sec #1- Bronte, Dickens, Woolf
>Sec#2- Chinua Anchebe, Marquez, Toni Morrison, Anzia Yezierska
<Snip>
Here's something that can really piss you off. Some wise guy went out and
got a fact. 8-)
JC
Melynda Huskey
>
. . . Many are enraged because he tells
>the truth about the artistic worthiness of current favorites -- however he
>excludes these persons because they are just not very good. The only thing
>really reprehensible about his politics to many is that he insists on
>certain standards -- aesthetic standards -- and these standards are not
>narrow and, unlike the standards of those who foster various versions of
>a new canon, are not based in resentment.
>
>are reprehensible -- otherwise not. Of course, one could always claim
>that these aesthetic standards are political and tyrannical -- the
>consequence of this, of course, is that mediocrity is fostered -- a
>consequence desired by the mediocre.
>
>And, of course, insisting that the canon is constructed to foster this
>and that ideology is very wrong -- obviously wrong. The truth is much
>more complex -- as always -- and, as always, the mediocre don't want
>to understand this.
>
And I don't want to understand the complex truth that Bloom, whose work I
have read extensively, and not just this most recent bright spark, knows:
that there are immutable standards--aesthetic standards--which determine
the relative value of every work of art with regard to every other (putative)
work of art. Those standards have nothing to do with politics, with culture,
with history, but are everywhere and always the same, which is why Bloom
so strongly favors the work of Philip Roth, whose novels tell us so very much about
universal experiences in language which inspires pity and terror in readers, and
which teaches while delighting us all, as opposed to say, *I, Rigoberta Menchu,*
which is narrow, parochial, politically suspect, unartful, and merely fashionable.
"Insisting on artistic excellence" is an intensely personal, intensely
political, and intensely cultural act. If Bloom were only making lists of books he liked,
fine. That's a harmless hobby for a man whose useful life in the academy is complete.
But he's not, as William so aptly demonstrates. His list, like all such lists, wants to
separate the sheep from the goats, and move those goats along to the abbattoir.
This listmaking business is simply the highbrow version of Rush Limbaugh's namecalling:
I know what's good and if you disagree with my list, or my premises, or the idea of
having a list, you're mediocre (I may be, but not because I don't like canons), or
resentful (you bet your boots, but not as resentful as the folks who feel their stranglehold
on civilization slipping away), or ignorant (actually, those of us who have been slaves
know that we must know more than the masters).
Melynda Huskey
mely...@uidaho.edu
Joseph M Green
>sch...@umich.edu (Christopher Schweda) writes:
Oh, one doesn't always have to dispute "with" and you could always have
glanced at my version of the paragraph -- not as many typos --
before you embarrassed yourself by accusing Bloom of illiteracy --
or you could even read the paragraph yourself. "Proclaim" the mot juste
by the by -- implies inefficacy. And, even with the typos in this fellow's
version it is obvious that the new canonicity principle is that the
works in the new canon must not and cannot be reread. And, alas, if anyone
knows what "ode" means it is Harold Bloom.
Cyndi Froning
>
>
>But he [Harold Bloom] does want to make sure that these are the books
>that will be taught in universities. From one review I
>heard, he attacks Alice Walker quite strongly. Are you
>saying that Alice Walker can reasonably be excluded
>from any list of twentieth century literature?
>
I don't understand why he can't attack Alice Walker, if his grounds are
simply that he doesn't admire her work. Even William Shakespeare,
beloved of millions, has been attacked by George Bernard Shaw, and other
notables I can't remember off the top of my head.
>It is only quite recently (twenty or thirty years ago)
>that black women writers (for example) have been taken
>seriously. Bloom and other canoneers want to reverse this
>advance. We can't afford to let that happen.
Since Bloom includes Toni Morrison in his list in the appendix of The
Western Canon, it seems he is according black women writers the
same serious attention he gives writers in general: specifically,
by reserving the right to like or dislike each based on his personal
standards, which he outlines at length. Indeed, it is precisely the
suggestion that writers from underrepresented groups should be exempt
from criticism on the basis that it is 'reversing their advance' that
led Bloom to trumpet a traditional canon in the first place.
Why he shouldn't be allowed to present his opinion on what is worthy of
study is beyond me.
Cyndi Froning
Cyndi Froning
>The danger IMHO is that Bloom (among others) are charging that the dissolution
>of Western culture so-called) is a consequence of not reading certain books
>in certain ways.
That sounds more like Alan than Harold. Harold only seems to bemoan the
death of traditional literary criticism.
>Naturally enough, those of us for whom the "splendid
>tradition" of civilization in these books has consisted primarily of slavery,
>oppression, or at best invisibility, don't like to let that assumption pass
>unchallenged.
And to my mind, the danger is that when the entire breadth of Western culture
is airily dismissed as a catalog of repression, it becomes too easy to divide
the world into the evil "them" and the good "us", rather than recognizing
a world that exists in greyscale. I judge a good writer by his or her
ability to question what it means to be _human_, and I can't believe
Shakespeare, Whitman and Dickens have nothing to say because they share
the same cultural background as Jesse Helms.
Cyndi Froning
Fiona Webster
>If I'd only had colleagues like you two, I might still be a professor
>today, instead of an administrative moray on the lurching body of higher
>education.
Uh, I think you mean a remora. Or else I don't understand your
analogy.
--Fiona W.
Michael Carley
>I'm certainly willing to agree with you, and with Melynda, that
>the political position Bloom takes is reprehensible. But how does
>that position pose a threat? Are publishers influenced by it not
>to publish certain books? Are schools influenced to ban books?
Well, yes actually. How many books by black or women authors
were readily available, say thirty years ago? (How many are
readily available today?)
>Are large numbers of people modeling their reading habits after
>Bloom?
I thought that was the point of writing out canons.
>I wrote:
>> From what I hear in the news about
>> high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
>> the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
>> lists.
>Michael C. replied:
>> It has done nothing of the kind.
>I'll be interested to hear from others about this matter. I thought,
>what with Dinesh D'Souza's hysteria and all the multiculturalism
>talk and all the students yelling "Western civ has got to go!" that
>a real shift was taking place on the campuses of this country.
>Could someone in academe give us some info?
This is the other side of the problem. There is this trend
towards a pseudo-multiculturalism which consists of isolating
<your favorite oppressed group> and telling them lots of lies.
So that what happens is that you end up with no real
multiculturalism (an appreciation of, and delight in, other
cultures) but instead a distaste for anything `impure' and
not your own.
Francis Muir
Melynda Huskey wrote:
Now that we are all, thanks to Joe Green and others, are familiar with
Soenser, then we also know, and I'm sure Melynda does, that nice little line:
There clove unto her keele A little fish, that men call Remora,
Which stopt her course
But still, Ransome lovers like myself will also know all about "eeling"
and the Moray is a truly noble species of that genus. Words left on the
page are never wrong.
Fido
Ron Hardin <9289-11216> 0112110
>that black women writers (for example) have been taken
>seriously. Bloom and other canoneers want to reverse this
>advance. We can't afford to let that happen.
Look at what Bloom says about Thylias Moss in _The American Religion_
Shabari Kumar
as someone who is still in school, let me answer fiona webster's question
about what is taught these days, from my experience of way too many years
at prep school/barnard/columbia.
what i have found in literature courses is this: the canon is still
there as ever. the additions to the canon are alice walker and toni
morrison and zora neale hurston. besides sappho, jane austen and lady
murasaki, one would be hard-pressed to find any non-contemporary women
anywhere. one of the unfortunate aspects of the canon-reformers (whom i
admittedly support whole-heartedly) is that they have focused their attentions
on contemporary writers. and the other is that they so rarely make
their claims on literary grounds. which means that alice walker (and i
did enjoy reading the color purple, tho i prefer her earlier short
stories) gets read hither and thither, but if not for marilyn hacker, i
would never have heard of gwendolyn brooks.
in one of my survey of western lit courses--you know, traveling from
beowulf onwards--there were exactly zero women. (of course we stopped
before the 19th century).
in a course on literature and revolution, the anti-colonialist
revolutions of the twentieth century were represented by...nadine
gordimer! (we did read some kollontai and goldman, and one chinese guy
whose name escapes me).
this kind of bias is not unique to the western world of course. the
indian canon--created by the nationalist movement--is grossly biased
towards sanskrit, and towards philosophical/religious writings. even the
sources of indian tradition book that ainslee embree edited have
pitifully few dravidian works, and i got him to apologize to me about it!
Francis Muir
Before the equable good sense of Anne and the charm of Francis,
I stand abashed at my own temper-tantrum (although I'm not
yielding one whit on my argument). If I'd only had colleagues
like you two, I might still be a professor today, instead of an
administrative moray on the lurching body of higher education.
I apologize unequivocally for getting nasty with anybody about
canonicity, and refer all future questions on the subject to Anne.
Read any good books lately?
There are two pieces of advice I always give to young ladies: always wear
clean underthings when you cross the road in case you are involved in an
accident, and make sure you have no more than 80 characters/line when you
post.
Fido
Michael Carley
>I too would be interested in knowing from whence comes Michael's
>assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the Western
>Canon.
From every American student (bar one) that I have ever spoken
to. The exception was someone who would read quite a bit
anyway and didn't feel the need to confine herself to whatever
was on the list.
Michael Carley
>If insisting on artistic excellence is reprehensible than Bloom's politics
>are reprehensible -- otherwise not. Of course, one could always claim
>that these aesthetic standards are political and tyrannical -- the
>consequence of this, of course, is that mediocrity is fostered -- a
>consequence desired by the mediocre.
Couldn't it be that there are those of us who want excellence
to be fostered, no matter where it comes from?
>And, of course, insisting that the canon is constructed to foster this
>and that ideology is very wrong -- obviously wrong. The truth is much
What is obvious about it?
>more complex -- as always -- and, as always, the mediocre don't want
>to understand this.
--
Michael Carley
>Jim Hartley writes:
> I too would be interested in knowing from whence comes Michael's
> assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the
> Western Canon.
>Mikey's one point of light seems to emanate from Trinity College, Dublin;
>you know, the one where the Circle of Friends discovered sex. One cannot
I suppose you'd have Maeve Binchy in the canon, would you?
>but applaud his taking up the banner in behalf of women and blacks, but
>I have the feeling that they'd rather do it themselves than leave it in
They have done it themselves. Trouble is that you don't often
see the results in your bookshop.
>the hands of where it has too often resided, namely, the self-flagelating
>guilt-ridden libs.
Ho, ho.
Michael Carley
>Li writes:
> Well, I graduated in 1993 with a B.A. in English. ... I would have
> settled for Chekhov (whom I read in high school) or Brecht (also
> high school), but unfortunately, our curriculum was set up by a
> Victorian Poets specialist and modified my a Shakespearian, so I
> was just pleased to get my course in American Naturalism and run.
> I think I'd have been in shock to read anything by, say, Mishima or
> any other non-European even if we did expand the course selections.
>Did it occur to you that a course in English leading to a degree in English
>would quite properly exclude works in other languages?
Did it occur to you to leave this in the section you quoted?
I was hard pressed to get a course in American lit let alone
anything else outside of English lit 1500-1900.
Michael Carley
>standards, which he outlines at length. Indeed, it is precisely the
>suggestion that writers from underrepresented groups should be exempt
>from criticism on the basis that it is 'reversing their advance' that
>led Bloom to trumpet a traditional canon in the first place.
I thought he was presenting a `traditional canon' because he
thought that all those horrible lefties were making sure that
no one read proper books anymore.
>Why he shouldn't be allowed to present his opinion on what is worthy of
>study is beyond me.
Of course he can present his opinion. The trouble is that
that opinion is not immune from criticism and we are
perfectly entitled to question his motives.
Li
>Li writes:
>
> Well, I graduated in 1993 with a B.A. in English. ... I would have
> settled for Chekhov (whom I read in high school) or Brecht (also
> high school), but unfortunately, our curriculum was set up by a
> Victorian Poets specialist and modified my a Shakespearian, so I
> was just pleased to get my course in American Naturalism and run.
> I think I'd have been in shock to read anything by, say, Mishima or
> any other non-European even if we did expand the course selections.
>
>Did it occur to you that a course in English leading to a degree in English
>would quite properly exclude works in other languages?
Actually, to a point, yes. In fact, I realised that I had muddled my own
point and shouldn't have posted when I did as I wasn't thinking clearly.
I have been expecting and waiting for the type of response I deservedly
received from you.
What I should have done is reserved my comments to the two "Survey of
World Literature" courses, "World Drama" and "The Novel" sorts of courses.
These courses, do not, as you indicate English courses should, limit
themselves to works originally written in English. In fact, I've never
known an English department that claimed it would (I can't imagine a
department not teaching the Greek plays for instance.). If the course
were "The Novel Written in English" sure. But it's not. All novels are
supposed to be eligible for consideration of inclusion. "World Drama"
seems to indicate that it would offer tidbits from the whole world, not
just the English speaking world, or the European world. When courses
such as those do not offer at least a smattering of literature from the
"third world," or whatever phrase you'd like to use, they leave a gap in
the education of the course taker and they misrepresent themselves with
their course titles.
>
> I've surveyed English majors at other schools, and while they were
> not in the same British rut mine was, they all agreed that their
> knowledge of non-Western literature left a lot to be desired.
>
>Of course; they are English majors!
>
If the degree were in Englsih Language, or even English Language and
Literature (available at some schools) I would agree with you. Most
English departments will tell you that they are not restricted to only
English written works. If you wanted a degree in "Literature" (whether it
was written in English or not) that's where you would probably be sent,
unless you wanted to study, say, German lit intensely, in which case you
belong in a German department. In any case, for a survey you would be
sent to the English department.
I hope that I have cleared up at least some of my muddling, but if not
I'm certain you will not hesitate to tell me.
Li
Doug Turnbull
<Pine.SUN.3.91.950831...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu>,
Shabari Kumar <sm...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> in one of my survey of western lit courses--you know, traveling from
> beowulf onwards--there were exactly zero women. (of course we stopped
> before the 19th century).
>
The thing is, before the 19th century there were almost no women
writers. Women really were being oppressed, and this prevented them from
writing books. There was also strong social pressure against being
intelligent (or at least showing it) if you were a woman. Heck, a lot of
people *today* don't deal very well with intelligent women (see Hillary
Clinton, for example). Even Montaigne, who was very open minded in most
ways, was quite sexist.
Were there specific early female writers you wanted to read that
weren't in the syllabus? If so, who?
Doug Turnbull
Noel Smith
mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu says...
>
>gree...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Joseph M Green) wrote:
>>
>> . . . Many are enraged because he tells
>>the truth about the artistic worthiness of current favorites -- however he
>>excludes these persons because they are just not very good. The only thing
>>really reprehensible about his politics to many is that he insists on
>>certain standards -- aesthetic standards -- and these standards are not
>>narrow and, unlike the standards of those who foster various versions of
>>a new canon, are not based in resentment.
>>
>>are reprehensible -- otherwise not. Of course, one could always claim
>>that these aesthetic standards are political and tyrannical -- the
>>consequence of this, of course, is that mediocrity is fostered -- a
>>consequence desired by the mediocre.
>>
>>and that ideology is very wrong -- obviously wrong. The truth is much
>>to understand this.
>>
>And I don't want to understand the complex truth that Bloom, whose work I
>have read extensively, and not just this most recent bright spark, knows:
>that there are immutable standards--aesthetic standards--which determine
>the relative value of every work of art with regard to every other (putative)
>work of art. Those standards have nothing to do with politics, with culture,
>with history, but are everywhere and always the same, which is why Bloom
>so strongly favors the work of Philip Roth, whose novels tell us so very much
>about universal experiences in language which inspires pity and terror in
>readers, and which teaches while delighting us all, as opposed to say, *I,
>ful, and merely fashionable.
>
>"Insisting on artistic excellence" is an intensely personal, intensely
>political, and intensely cultural act. If Bloom were only making lists of
>books he liked, fine. That's a harmless hobby for a man whose useful life
>in the academy is complete. But he's not, as William so aptly demonstrates.
>His list, like all such lists, wants to separate the sheep from the goats,
>and move those goats along to the abbattoir. This listmaking business is
>simply the highbrow version of Rush Limbaugh's namecalling:
>I know what's good and if you disagree with my list, or my premises, or
>the idea of having a list, you're mediocre (I may be, but not because I
>don't like canons), or resentful (you bet your boots, but not as resentful
>as the folks who feel their stranglehold on civilization slipping away),
>or ignorant (actually, those of us who have been slaves know that we must
>know more than the masters).
Socrates asked, What is the good, and how shall we discover it? He, with
Plato and Aristotle, felt that the truth is arrived at by passionate dis-
cussion among people who disagree.
When Bloom proposes a canon, he enters such a discussion (in which we in
rab are participating). When Bloom says why he finds quality in this
work, and mediocrity in that, he is engaging in the great and fertile
debate, unlike Limbaugh, who advances no compelling reasons and lis-
tens poorly to criticism.
MH is voicing a contemporary theme, which is that evaluation and ana-
lysis constitutes disrespect, and that such disrespect is an attempt
to gain political power. But the alternative is to have no debate at
all, and to stagnate in mute acceptance of an unchanging received wis-
dom for all time. Her position has no essential difference from Lim-
baugh's, which is that the truth is beyond discussion. Their posi-
tion is to silence criticism by declaring that all attempts to discern
the good from the not-good are political in character: there is no ob-
jective search for truth.
- Noel
[Not to mention] the infant anti-intellectualism of our freshmen,
who regard all discourse as a profanation of selfhood.
--Frederick Crews, "Do Literary Studies Have an Ideology?"
(published circa 1970)
Noel Smith
mjca...@maths.tcd.ie says...
>
>f...@access.digex.net (Fiona Webster) writes:
[deletion]
>
>>Michael C. replied:
>>> It has done nothing of the kind.
>
>>I'll be interested to hear from others about this matter. I
thought,
>>what with Dinesh D'Souza's hysteria and all the multiculturalism
>>talk and all the students yelling "Western civ has got to go!"
that
>>a real shift was taking place on the campuses of this country.
>>Could someone in academe give us some info?
>
>This is the other side of the problem. There is this trend
>towards a pseudo-multiculturalism which consists of isolating
><your favorite oppressed group> and telling them lots of lies.
>So that what happens is that you end up with no real
>multiculturalism (an appreciation of, and delight in, other
>cultures) but instead a distaste for anything `impure' and
>not your own.
That's a good point. Multiculturalism is promoted in the name of
tolerance and equality, but often multicultural practice is to
separate the public into clamoring factions. It emphasizes
differences (cultures) rather than common interests. The original
political idea of this country was that we all would simply be
identified as citizens. The citizen was held to be a universal man
or woman, living by universal principles such as political
freedom, democracy, equality and tolerance.
Multiculturalism seems to hold that the national political
philosophy, which it calls the "dominant culture," is intolerant
and oppressive, although that philosophy produced the women's
liberation and civil rights movements.
The Founders believed they had set in motion a liberal democracy,
committed to the belief that all are created equal. To give an
example of how that system works, some time back the Rainier Beach
branch of the Seattle Public Library authorized a local chapter of
the Nation of Islam to use a meeting room. Several Jews wished to
attend, but the meeting organizers told them that no Jews were
allowed. The Library, when asked, informed both parties that
public facilities must be open to all members of the public.
Most complaints about the underlying American political system
fail to recognize the power of its inherent universalism.
- Noel
Professor Allan Bloom writes
in his best-selling book "The Closing of the American Mind":
"It was always known that there were many and conflicting
opinions of the good. Herodotus was at least aware as we are of
the rich diversity of cultures. But he took that observation
to be an invitation to investigate all of them to see what
was good and bad about each and find out what he could learn
about good and bad from them. Modern relativists take that
same observation as proof that such investigation is impossible
and that we must be respectful of them all."
"To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to sup-
press true openness."
Roderick Frey
: What I should have done is reserved my comments to the two "Survey of
: World Literature" courses, "World Drama" and "The Novel" sorts of courses.
: These courses, do not, as you indicate English courses should, limit
: themselves to works originally written in English. In fact, I've never
: known an English department that claimed it would (I can't imagine a
: department not teaching the Greek plays for instance.).
At my university, Greek plays are not taught in the English
department, they are taught in the Classics department. From what I can
tell from the English department listings, all works taught are those
originally written in English.
: If the degree were in Englsih Language, or even English Language and
: Literature (available at some schools) I would agree with you. Most
: English departments will tell you that they are not restricted to only
: English written works. If you wanted a degree in "Literature" (whether it
: was written in English or not) that's where you would probably be sent,
: unless you wanted to study, say, German lit intensely, in which case you
: belong in a German department. In any case, for a survey you would be
: sent to the English department.
As I said earlier, from what I can tell, the English department
at my university teaches courses on works written in English. This makes
sense, since it IS the English department. For a course in French
literature, you would take a class from the French department, and so
on. If you were interested in studying world literature, you would major
in Comparitive Literature. This makes sense to me.
Kelly Jane Torrance
Noel Smith
says...
>
>Chris Schweda wrote:
>>Do Bloom's lists really present a danger? Of course not. I could come up
>>with a comparable list, as could you, and everyone else. Lists aren't
>>dangerous. Listmakers have big egos maybe. But so what? Teachers got big
>>egos. Readers got big egos. Authors got big egos. What's with this fear
>>of"big egos?"
>
>This is an excellent statement of what my problem has been, with Michael
>Carley's (and the other canon-bashers') postings in this thread. They
>haven't succeeded in proving that Bloom, or any other listmaker, poses
>a threat to anyone or anything. So much emotion, over just a list or
>two! As I said before, if they don't have the power to *ban* books,
>they're not really causing any harm. So what if they influence a reading
>program or a college course or two? From what I hear in the news about
>high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
>the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
>lists.
Much of the objection to the canon may be ideological. It is
felt that promoting a canon of the works of Western civiliza-
tion suggests that other cultures (Eastern, Third World, etc.)
are not equal. That is not necessarily the case. For those
interested in the (Western) canon, its value may be that it
contains a familiar language of reference (Oedipus, Samson,
Ophelia, Faust, Medea, Frankenstein's monster, Finn, etc.),
whereas other canons are not readily evaluated because of
an unfamiliar language of reference.
- Noel
Jordi Sod
[...]
>in one of my survey of western lit courses--you know, traveling from
>beowulf onwards--there were exactly zero women. (of course we stopped
>before the 19th century).
Zero women, that's bad. However, the trueth is that as a result of
hirtorical circumstance, you cannot expect ever a 50-50. However, the
inclusion of some great women writers would not hurt at all... As far as
English canon goes, George Eliot, the Brontes, Austen are all near the
top.
>
>in a course on literature and revolution, the anti-colonialist
>revolutions of the twentieth century were represented by...nadine
>gordimer! (we did read some kollontai and goldman, and one chinese guy
>whose name escapes me).
>
>this kind of bias is not unique to the western world of course. the
>indian canon--created by the nationalist movement--is grossly biased
>towards sanskrit, and towards philosophical/religious writings. even the
>sources of indian tradition book that ainslee embree edited have
>pitifully few dravidian works, and i got him to apologize to me about it!
I heard a while back about some great Tamil stuff. Can you recommend any
Dravidian works?
>
>
>
Jordi
Shabari Kumar
> In article
> <Pine.SUN.3.91.950831...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu>,
> Shabari Kumar <sm...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > in one of my survey of western lit courses--you know, traveling from
> > beowulf onwards--there were exactly zero women. (of course we stopped
> > before the 19th century).
> >
>
> The thing is, before the 19th century there were almost no women
> writers. Women really were being oppressed, and this prevented them from
> writing books. There was also strong social pressure against being
> intelligent (or at least showing it) if you were a woman. Heck, a lot of
> people *today* don't deal very well with intelligent women (see Hillary
> Clinton, for example). Even Montaigne, who was very open minded in most
> ways, was quite sexist.
> Were there specific early female writers you wanted to read that
> weren't in the syllabus? If so, who?
did i want to read anyone? not particularly. i wanted to go home and
sleep off my hangover. however, the course could have included:
margeurite de navarre, louise labe (whom i actually quite like. do not
hate me that i have
loved etc), gaspara stampa, st. theresa, aphra behn, christine de pisan, sor
juana, etc etc. this is off the top of my head, and i'm no scholar.
mk
>
>
> Doug Turnbull
>
>
Reva Chandrasekaran
I am posting under this thread becuase my two previous posts
under the appropriate subject header asking for help went
unheeded. So, here it goes:
Would someone supporting inclusivity in the Canon repost or
email to me the list of foreign authors in translation that
was posted to this newsgroup a couple of months ago? I am,
of course, assuming that that someone saved it:).
Thanks,
Reva
Diana Bental
> The thing is, before the 19th century there were almost no women
> writers.
And what makes you say that? It is not true - unless I am much
misinformed there were *many* women novelists at that time.
I'm not an expert on this, but here is relevant stuff from:
Dale Spender: "Mothers of the Novel" Pandora, 1986
From the introduction (p5):
"While I leave myself open to the charge of not having looked hard
enough, I must confess that my researches turned up more than one
hundred women novelists before Jane Austen and no more than thirty
men".
This book is subtitled "100 good women writers before Jane Austen". It
includes a list of 106 women writers and their 568 novels published in
the 18th and early 19th century.
From the section "Literary standards" (p118)
".. if since the eighteenth century it has become a well-established
fact that women did not write novels during the 1700s, or that women
did not write good novels, this was a fact which was *not* known
at the time. For then it was widely appreciated that women wrote
novels and wrote them well. ... it was not unknown during the
eighteenth century for men to masquerade as female authors to obtain
some of the higher status (and greater chances of publication)
which went with being a woman writer.
... as early as June 1770 the "Gentleman's Magazine" thought it proper
to conduct its own investigations as to the sex of authors in the
interests of being able to provide its readers with information on
whether the latest production form a supposedly female pen was genuine.
...
In 1773 the "Monthly Review" stated that when it came to fiction the
field was filled by ladies, and well into the nineteenth century
it was conceded that not only were women novelists plentiful, but
that they were good.
Yet by the twentieth century when Ian Watt comes to outline the
rise of the novel, women are no longer held in high esteem. He
does - in passing - acknowledge that *the majority of eighteenth
century novels were written by women*... "
This refers to:
Ian Watt, "The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and
Fielding" (1957)
Spender estimates that about half the novels published during the 18C
were written by women.
If you want lists of names, Spender's book has them, along with
critical discussions of many of their works.
Best wishes,
Diana
John Camp
>Doug Turnbull wrote:
> The thing is, before the 19th century there were almost no women
> writers.
>
Women have always been significant in novel-writing. I think it's
arguable that the most important novel in American history was written
by a woman.
Certainly the most popular novel was.
The reputation of women writers has a way of eroding. I will not
venture to offer reasons for this; I will say that on the very
short list of American winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature,
we find two woman. One is current and famous, and one has virtually
disappeared from our literary memory...
JC
Melynda Huskey
>MH is voicing a contemporary theme, which is that evaluation and ana-
>lysis constitutes disrespect, and that such disrespect is an attempt
>to gain political power. But the alternative is to have no debate at
>all, and to stagnate in mute acceptance of an unchanging received wis-
>dom for all time. Her position has no essential difference from Lim-
>baugh's, which is that the truth is beyond discussion. Their posi-
>tion is to silence criticism by declaring that all attempts to discern
>the good from the not-good are political in character: there is no ob-
>jective search for truth.
Well, not exactly: what I'm trying to get at is that evaluation and analysis
are not disinterested acts. The "mute acceptance of . . . received wisdom"
is what canons are all about. I favor evaluation and analysis, including the
evaluation and analysis of the list-making urge, and of the criteria by which
some works are assigned canonical status and others are not. Yes, I do
think that all discrimination has a political dimension. That doesn't mean that
there can be no discussion: it means that much, much more discussion of
many more things is required. More scrutiny, more analysis, more thought,
more consideration. Although I used to make a living analyzing works of
art (and teaching students to do likewise), I hesitate before the claim
that the comparative ranking of texts is an "objective search for truth."
What I am objecting to in this debate about the canon is the assertion
that Work X is better than Work Y because somebody else said so, or
because it used to be taught in college literature classes in the 40s, or
because it reveals Quality X revered by the critic writing, or because
it's included in that set of Harvard Classics your grandma bought you
for a graduation present. Why not dispense with the ranking altogether,
since the criteria underlying any choice are ultimately indefensible?
Melynda Huskey
mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu
Doug Turnbull
wrote:
> Doug Turnbull wrote:
> > The thing is, before the 19th century there were almost no women
> > writers.
>
> And what makes you say that? It is not true - unless I am much
> misinformed there were *many* women novelists at that time.
> I'm not an expert on this, but here is relevant stuff from:
> Dale Spender: "Mothers of the Novel" Pandora, 1986
[snip]
mMRPHGIpCK
[pop!]
Sorry about that, my foot was wedged in there pretty deep. :)
I was actually somewhat worried when I posted the above (untrue,
apparently) statement. My reasoning was- there are a fair number of famous
female writers in the canon from the 19th century, so it doesn't seem the
canon is predjudiced to the point of excluding women. However, there are
very few female writers in the canon from before 1800. I took this, along
with the slow increase in women's equality, and jumped to the conclusion
that it was uncommon for women to write before 1800. Oops.
Doug Turnbull
Vance Maverick
> What I am objecting to in this debate about the canon is the assertion
> revered by the critic writing [....]
[I've removed the joke 'reasons']
Melynda, could you say a little more about your objection to this? It
seems to me you're ruling out an entire mode of thought here -- the
perception of qualities. I happen to approach art (and many other
things) this way, and I've benefited by other people's discussion of
qualities they perceive, the value of qualities, etc. so I'm curious
what the problem is.
> [...] the criteria underlying any choice are ultimately indefensible?
So tell us -- why read?
Vance
Melynda Huskey
reasons. And of course one evaluates what one has read.
One of the great pleasures of life is discussing a book with
an intelligent person who values it differently or for different
reasons than oneself. Here we all are on rab doing just that.
What I object to (over and over and over again) is the making
of lists which purport to be more than just lists, i.e. the Greatest
Books Ever Written (for all human beings of all times), the
books which every educated person must read, the books
without which Western Civilization must fall, and so on, and
so on, and which purport to be so for indisputable and
self-evident aesthetic reasons. And I object to the jeremiad
usually attached, complaining about the way "liberal" colleges
are presently teaching a bunch of worthless "politically correct"
junk because women and blacks and Hispanics etc. wrote it,
as opposed to the really great works which used to be taught
before the flood-gates burst.
My claim, which really isn't terribly revolutionary, is that
aesthetic judgments can't be universal and are based on
criteria which are not, cannot be, separated from cultural/
political/personal heirarchies which don't apply to everybody.
Anne Rice, let us say, or the prolific V.C. Andrews, is better
than Shakespeare for certain purposes; Shakespeare meets
certain requirements better than Anne Rice. Why need we go
any further?
Melynda Huskey
mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu
Vance Maverick
> aesthetic judgments can't be universal and are based on
> criteria which are not, cannot be, separated from cultural/
> political/personal heirarchies which don't apply to everybody.
This is indeed hardly revolutionary. However, a responsible writer
will make it very clear what "hierarchies" are being called on.
Ungrounded, or inexplicitly grounded, judgments are indeed a waste of
time; but we knew that already. Many of the canoneers have been very
careful in this regard; I don't think T.S. Eliot's criticism, for one
instance, can be called ignorant or inarticulate about its own
assumptions.
> Anne Rice, let us say, or the prolific V.C. Andrews, is better
> than Shakespeare for certain purposes; Shakespeare meets
> certain requirements better than Anne Rice.
And is the choice of purpose arbitrary and neutral?
> Why need we go any further?
Well, we do. You write, for example:
I have read *The Sheik,* and it's an utterly nauseating
piece of work.
This is no merely private nausea, I think; it sounds to me like you
feel the book matters. The sense I see in which a book can warrant
such political criticism is not the trivial one of portraying a bad
political state as good, but the more insidious one of requiring the
reader's implicit consent, for the efficacy of the fiction, in a bad
account of human nature. (Am I right?) Anyhoo, it's clear that you
feel there is political good and evil, and that books can serve at
least the evil -- if not unquestionably, at least discussably so.
We're not far, I think, from admitting they can serve the good, and
from judging how well they do, and how much that good matters.
I don't advocate the sort of crude canonmaking you mock; but I think
relativism like yours (and mine -- I've certainly used lines like
yours about Rice and Andrews above, not long ago) needs to come to
grips with the question of whether books matter. If we have nothing
to say to people who aren't just like us, it's not clear why we talk
at all. (On whose behalf, for instance, are you worried about _The
Sheik_? Not your own or that of your peers, I suspect.)
Vance
Lukas Wagner
Melynda Huskey <mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>One reads for pleasure, for information, for any number of
>reasons. And of course one evaluates what one has read.
>One of the great pleasures of life is discussing a book with
>an intelligent person who values it differently or for different
>reasons than oneself. Here we all are on rab doing just that.
>
>What I object to (over and over and over again) is the making
>of lists which purport to be more than just lists, i.e. the Greatest
>Books Ever Written (for all human beings of all times), the
>books which every educated person must read, the books
>without which Western Civilization must fall, and so on, and
>so on, and which purport to be so for indisputable and
>self-evident aesthetic reasons. And I object to the jeremiad
>usually attached, complaining about the way "liberal" colleges
>are presently teaching a bunch of worthless "politically correct"
>junk because women and blacks and Hispanics etc. wrote it,
>as opposed to the really great works which used to be taught
>before the flood-gates burst.
>
I'd like to describe what I see as a downside of discarding all such
lists, and a practical problem with the attempt.
Hopefully doing this won't put me in the company of
bible-thumpers or people who are upset that college students
are no longer mostly white males.
The problem with discarding too much received tradition is that
being able to refer to common knowledge allows literature and music that
I like quite a bit. Where would T.S. Eliot be without
the knowledge that his readers would pick up on many of his references,
for instance? Auden's _Caliban to the Audience_ without
_The Tempest_? Chopin without Paganini? While there's a great
deal of good that's come out of a more egalitarian culture,
the prescription that no-one should have the authority to suggest
that reading books which others have found important seems to be
a bit much. It seems to me that there's a great deal of room
between Allan Bloom's point of view and the suggestion that
the young'uns shouldn't bother with Shakespeare.
The practical difficulty with the suggestion that we do away with lists
is that what seems to be coming up is not an exuberant flowering
of individual versions of What's Worth Reading, but just a different
canon. The expanded canon seems to include Zora Hurston,
Kate Chopin, Toni Morrison seems to be in also, and there's apparently a
Norton Anthology of African-American Lit. in the works. All of
this seems great to me. What I can't figure out is why the supporters
of a broadened canon seem to so often claim that a list of recommended
books is bad. It's possible that most don't, that my perception of
this claim is a product of biased exposure to anti-canon fodder.
It seems to me that much of the argument is actually
about academic politics (who gets hired, chiefly) rather than about
what literary culture is or even how it should be taught. The issues
are related but not identical. If what someone means is that
the great society - GI bill profs who are now aging should not be
replaced with like-thinking people (their academic offspring),
then that should be said, not something about Homer or Henry Gates.
In any case, I think that the real problem is not so much what gets taught,
but how much. Universities seem to be cutting costs by giving
the students what most of them seem to want-- free time and easy exams.
If this dour perception is accurate, then profs who squabble
because they disagree are making it easier for administrators to
discard them all in favor of a cadre of temporary teachers and a
small number of tenured hipsters with glittering opinions-- maybe
some lucky U. will snare both Gates and one of the Blooms.
>My claim, which really isn't terribly revolutionary, is that
>aesthetic judgments can't be universal and are based on
>criteria which are not, cannot be, separated from cultural/
>political/personal heirarchies which don't apply to everybody.
>Anne Rice, let us say, or the prolific V.C. Andrews, is better
>than Shakespeare for certain purposes; Shakespeare meets
>certain requirements better than Anne Rice. Why need we go
>any further?
>
Would Led Zep be half as groovy if we forgot Robert Johnson?
Because no one can read everything, and because it seems that
it's often entertaining to have a shared background?
--
-Lukas Wagner
wag...@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu
Michael Wise
>Fiona Webster <f...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>>I wrote:
>>> From what I hear in the news about
>>> high school and college curricula, the pendulum has definitely swung in
>>> the direction of more diverse, *less* "Western canon" oriented reading
>>> lists.
>>
>>> It has done nothing of the kind.
>>
>>I'll be interested to hear from others about this matter. I thought,
>>what with Dinesh D'Souza's hysteria and all the multiculturalism
>>talk and all the students yelling "Western civ has got to go!" that
>>a real shift was taking place on the campuses of this country.
>>Could someone in academe give us some info?
>
>suggest that Fiona is not right about the current state of education.
>
>I too would be interested in knowing from whence comes Michael's
>assurance that modern reading lists are still dominated by the Western
>Canon.
>
I would second this. Perhaps Michael's impression is coming from Trinity.
While the traditional canon may hold sway at that august institution, here
in the States it is swiftly going by the wayside. The English department
here offers Shakespeare seminars once every two years, Chaucer seminars
once every two years, Shakespeare classes (for undergraduates) once a
year. There is one eighteenth-century class a year, one romantic poets.
One History of the English Language every three semesters. Each and every
semester, though, there is a contemporary World writers class; each and
every semester there is creative writing; each and every semester there
is modern critical theory. This does not scratch the surface, since the
"popularity" of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Eighteen Century here owes
much to the professors, who are, respectively, a feminist, a New
Historicist, and an art historian. It's a pretty good rule of thumb that
any time one finds oneself reading more criticism than literature, the
way of modern criticism has won, and traditional criticism has lost.
Bloom's book had one very positive side-effect: it made me want to read
the books he talked about, often for a second or third time. I never
got that feeling while I was completing my master's in English.
--
"I dont hate it," Quentin said quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont
hate it," he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air,
the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont. I dont hate it! I dont hate it!
Michael Wise <wwhi...@nevada.edu> Living Hemingwayesque
Michael Wise
>I thought he was presenting a `traditional canon' because he
>thought that all those horrible lefties were making sure that
>no one read proper books anymore.
Hmm, I don't believe it is right to question the gentleman's politics,
when, truly, he is emphasizing an aesthetic standard. The fact is, those
promoting minority literature are doing so for political, and not
aesthetic, reasons. Their tropes of oppression, class struggle,
imperialism, the times making the man, all derive from political theory,
and have nothing whatever to do with aesthetics. If there is anyone who
puts Aristotle before Karl Marx in determining the value of literature,
it is Harold Bloom, and not his adversaries.
>Of course he can present his opinion. The trouble is that
>that opinion is not immune from criticism and we are
>perfectly entitled to question his motives.
I don't know about your credentials, but I know Bloom has a long list of
them. While I may question your motives in criticizing Bloom, I would not
question Bloom's motives. He has done real work in criticism, and has
paid his dues. He has a right to stand against the tide. What is truly
sad is that a graduate student who expressed the same opinions as Bloom
would be drummed out of the program. Bloom is safe from Neo-Marxist
purges; GAs, associate and assistant professors are not.
That said, I do not agree with Bloom's test of canonicity, nor with his
canonical choices (a good start, maybe, but hardly comprehensive, and a
list at the back doesn't do it for me). I find it disingenuous for an
English professor to propose Shakespeare as the center of the Western
Canon. Bloom's reasons don't convince me. But Bloom is proposing an
aesthetic standard for inclusion in the canon, rather than a
sociopolitical one. In that, he is head and shoulders above the advocates
of Alternate Criticisms.
Jim Hartley
>Anne Rice, let us say, or the prolific V.C. Andrews, is better
>than Shakespeare for certain purposes; Shakespeare meets
>certain requirements better than Anne Rice. Why need we go
>any further?
For what purposes are Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews better than
Shakespeare?
--
Jim Hartley
jhar...@mtholyoke.edu
Heather Henderson
I have read *The Sheik,* and it's an utterly nauseating
piece of work.
And I wanted to ask her more, but did not, so now I do. In case
she has gone into detail in other postings, I've missed it --
mea culpa. But Melynda, could you explain further what you
think is so nauseating about the book? Myself, I thought it
was an entertaining melodrama, silly at times but carrying a
powerful erotic charge. Surprising, that, considering it was
published in 1921.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Heather Henderson hea...@hq.media.mit.edu
my home page: http://www.media.mit.edu/people/heather/Welcome.html
my fiction: http://www.media.mit.edu/people/heather/fiction.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Heather Henderson
>Melynda Huskey <mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>>Anne Rice, let us say, or the prolific V.C. Andrews, is better
>>than Shakespeare for certain purposes; Shakespeare meets
>>certain requirements better than Anne Rice. Why need we go
>>any further?
>
>For what purposes are Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews better than
>Shakespeare?
Being sold at the supermarket, perhaps?
Vance Maverick
> Not too many these days have the ability to make fine aesthetic
> distinctions amongst depictions of coprophagy, for example.
But coprophagy *has* been aestheticized. (John Waters / Divine --
which movie was it?) I'm not sure your example makes your point. In
fact, I think it's clear that the possibility of an aesthetic of
disgust and shock (one could multiply examples -- Leigh Bowery comes
to mind, though my knowledge is scant) tells us a 'political' truth
about today.
> And why, exactly, is coprophagy, or anthropophagy,
> for that matter, so much more offensive than, say,
> racism or sexism?
In all honesty, I'm not sure it is. An acquaintance of mine cares
about the Donner Party story -- taking pleasure in its horrors -- in a
way I've never heard of anyone caring about <your most abhorred racist
episode here>.
Vance
Vance Maverick
> In all honesty, I'm not sure it is. An acquaintance of mine cares
> about the Donner Party story -- taking pleasure in its horrors -- in a
> way I've never heard of anyone caring about <your most abhorred racist
> episode here>.
Hmm, dangerous waters these. Of course I know people do take pleasure
in abhorrent racist episodes. But this acquaintance likes the DP
story aesthetically ('beautiful', she says) without wishing it
repeated or being glad it happened. Distinction without a difference?
One may wonder.
Vance
Michael Carley
>Michael Carley <mjca...@maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
>>I thought he was presenting a `traditional canon' because he
>>thought that all those horrible lefties were making sure that
>>no one read proper books anymore.
>Hmm, I don't believe it is right to question the gentleman's politics,
>when, truly, he is emphasizing an aesthetic standard. The fact is, those
An aesthetic standard which just happens to accord with a
certain political outlook.
>promoting minority literature are doing so for political, and not
>aesthetic, reasons. Their tropes of oppression, class struggle,
>imperialism, the times making the man, all derive from political theory,
>and have nothing whatever to do with aesthetics. If there is anyone who
>puts Aristotle before Karl Marx in determining the value of literature,
>it is Harold Bloom, and not his adversaries.
This is the problem. First of all there is no such thing as
a purely asthetic judgement. Secondly, if you believe that
there is such a thing, you expect that candidates chosen
on that basis will be representative of the world's population
as a whole.
>>Of course he can present his opinion. The trouble is that
>>that opinion is not immune from criticism and we are
>>perfectly entitled to question his motives.
>I don't know about your credentials, but I know Bloom has a long list of
>them. While I may question your motives in criticizing Bloom, I would not
>question Bloom's motives. He has done real work in criticism, and has
>paid his dues. He has a right to stand against the tide. What is truly
What tide?
>sad is that a graduate student who expressed the same opinions as Bloom
>would be drummed out of the program. Bloom is safe from Neo-Marxist
>purges; GAs, associate and assistant professors are not.
What neo-Marxist purges?
>That said, I do not agree with Bloom's test of canonicity, nor with his
>canonical choices (a good start, maybe, but hardly comprehensive, and a
>list at the back doesn't do it for me). I find it disingenuous for an
>English professor to propose Shakespeare as the center of the Western
>Canon. Bloom's reasons don't convince me. But Bloom is proposing an
>aesthetic standard for inclusion in the canon, rather than a
>sociopolitical one. In that, he is head and shoulders above the advocates
>of Alternate Criticisms.
Take a look at `Culture and Imperialism' by Edward Said.
Michael Carley
>here offers Shakespeare seminars once every two years, Chaucer seminars
>once every two years, Shakespeare classes (for undergraduates) once a
>year. There is one eighteenth-century class a year, one romantic poets.
>One History of the English Language every three semesters. Each and every
>semester, though, there is a contemporary World writers class; each and
>every semester there is creative writing; each and every semester there
>is modern critical theory. This does not scratch the surface, since the
So there are classes in contemporary World writers, creative writing
and critical theory. Of these only one has anything to do with the
canon. The other two have nothing to do with any writer in particular.
>"popularity" of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Eighteen Century here owes
>much to the professors, who are, respectively, a feminist, a New
>Historicist, and an art historian. It's a pretty good rule of thumb that
>any time one finds oneself reading more criticism than literature, the
>way of modern criticism has won, and traditional criticism has lost.
Too true.
John McCarthy
> jhar...@mtholyoke.edu (Jim Hartley) wrote:
> >Melynda Huskey <mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu> wrote:
> >>Anne Rice, let us say, or the prolific V.C. Andrews, is better
> >>than Shakespeare for certain purposes; Shakespeare meets
> >>certain requirements better than Anne Rice. Why need we go
> >>any further?
For what purposes are Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews better than
Shakespeare?
Being sold at the supermarket, perhaps?
I will hazard a guess that over the years since there have been
supermarkets, Shakespeare has outsold Ann Rice.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
SubGenius
: What I object to (over and over and over again) is the making
: of lists which purport to be more than just lists, i.e. the Greatest
: Books Ever Written (for all human beings of all times), the
: books which every educated person must read, the books
: without which Western Civilization must fall, and so on, and
: so on, and which purport to be so for indisputable and
: self-evident aesthetic reasons. And I object to the jeremiad
: usually attached, complaining about the way "liberal" colleges
: are presently teaching a bunch of worthless "politically correct"
: junk because women and blacks and Hispanics etc. wrote it,
: as opposed to the really great works which used to be taught
: before the flood-gates burst.
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
I think you killed that one. Now try tackling the lion, the tin guy,
or the girl and her little mutt.
While indeed it is possible that some people are proposing a canon
or several canonnae, consideration for which is based on some standard
of Greatestness, this is by no means the only teleological basis for
canon formation.
Indeed, one can (and of course Your Humble Narrator does) look at
matters from a somewhat different perspective.
If, for example, someone was having trouble understanding parts of
_Gravity's Rainbow_, I might suggest they read some Rilke. And
read the libretto to various of Wagner's works. And A. E. Waite's
_The Pictorial Key to the Tarot_. U.s.w.
Nowhere in such suggestions lies the implication that those are the
Greatest Books on [whatever] Ever Written or anything of the sort,
simply that those are works to which Pynchon alludes, and therefore
by being familiar with the secondary sources, one becomes able
to understand (hopefully) the allusions, and so better understand
_Gravity's Rainbow_ itself.
Now, if we decide that we wish to construct a list of such references
for the general case of {a book} rather than the specific case of
{_Gravity's Rainbow_}, it seems that we can set about suggesting
works to which a significant portion of the World of Letters alludes
or owes some other sort of debt of gratitude (antecedentwisespeaking
or whatever).
This, then, is a canon.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
Joseph M Green
It's not quite true that those grad students who might express views
similar to Blooms will be purged from programs. I am flourishing, for
example -- as are a few others here. I know that my views are known -- and,
while there are hissings and attempts to remove children from my path
as I stride through the halls -- and more than a few expressions of amazement
that my horns are not longer -- there has been no attempted exorcism by the
powers. One has ones secret sympathizers. And .. the times they are a changin'
organization that has been formed because of a deep and widwspread concern
about the present state of literary studies. Its purpose is to foster
appreciation of the literary imagination, of the value of literary study,
and of a shared literary culture. It will hold to broad conceptions of
literature rather than the narrow, highly politicized ones often encountered
today. It will serve as a forum for anyone with a serious scholarly or
critical interest in literature, and it welcomes both classicists
and modernists, independent and academic literary critics, as well as creative
writers and publishers."
It had more than a thousand members over a year ago. Members include
Robert Alter, Joseph Brodsky, Denis Donoghue, Donald Hall, E.D. Hirsch,
John Hollander, Alfred Kazin, Edith Kern, Christopher Ricks, Norman Fruman,
Felicia Bonaparte, Rosanna Warren, Walter Sokel, Theodore Ziolowski,
Loraine Clark, Roger Shattuck, Ricardo Quinones (who is its president).
Saul Bellow will address the convention. Robert Pinsky will be there to
discuss his translation of the Inferno... Paul Cantor a member and on the
same panel...
The standard has been raised... (a wet day, the King had a slight cough)
but, nevertheless....
ALANT24FPS
>I thought he was presenting a `traditional canon' because he
>thought that all those horrible lefties were making sure that
>no one read proper books anymore.
Bloom is an enthusiast of the work of John Crowley, who (at least in
'Little, Big') implies that the '60s were an age that touched on Magic.
So it doesn't seem likely that Harold Bloom is the 'horrible rightie' that
Mr Carley imagines.
Perhaps he is thinking of Allan Bloom, author of 'The Closing of the
American Mind.'
This is what comes of not reading the books themselves. And as I've only
skimmed those of either Bloom while standing in the bookstore, myself,
I'll say no more.
Back to lurking.
Alan
Fiona Webster
>For what purposes are Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews better than
>Shakespeare?
Reading at the beach, for one -- because you won't feel bad if you
get suntan oil and sand all over them, or rest them on your wet
belly and soak the edges with sea water.
--Fiona W.
Joe Thomas
me to be the gist of the canon debate -- how should works be analyzed,
how does one work succeed aesthetically while some other work fails,
etc.) but I might suggest a look at the book by C.S. Lewis called _An
Experiment in Criticism_ which purports to look at readers rather than
works. I don't know if this is related to the formal "reader
response" school. Lewis suggests first of all that there is something
like a literary elite (the Few as opposed to the Many) who read books
(and take in other aesthetic experiences) in qualitatively different
ways than the Many. These Few tend to have several habits in common:
reading for the pleasures of language, style, technique, etc. as much
as for plot and character; reading works over again; reading as an
essential element of life rather than a time-passing activity. He
then suggests that the books that are worth reading
can bear this kind of treatment. If there is someone who
can contemplate and appreciate a Tom Clancy book through 20 readings,
then for that person it has real depth. I think the idea of a canon
comes in when it is noted that thousands of smart people have re-read
and analyzed _Pride and Prejudice_ or whatever for a long time without
yet wearing it out so that maybe it has something like objective
worth. _Ulyssess_ and _Gravity's Rainbow_ have already been given
this treatment and seem to be surviving it. _The Color Purple_ may be
on its way. It is not a perfect viewpoint perhaps; but I think some
of us need something beyond ourselves to rationalize our preference
for what we think is "good literature." If this seems like authority
worship I can only say that all of us pick up books for some reason.
Those who say that you should just decide for yourself what is good or
not are not being realistic -- how do you get to the point of picking
out something to try without some authority (a review, a
recommendation, a nice cover, etc.)?
- Joe T.
Joseph M Green
The point should be made -- for Mylynda mostly -- that few ever claim
that aesthetic standards are somehow separate from the rest of life.
To insist that most claim this and then attack that point of view
is to bring the argument to the lowest level. If you argue this way,
you are merely setting up a straw man and, whatever satisfactions that
might provide, you will only be taken seriously by those who share
that particular sort of dullness. The question is whether the
aesthetic is an ideology, whether the aesthetic that admits this and
that into the "Canon" is determined by ideology, or by "politics"
in the way that word is loosely defined. What must be shown is that
this or that literary work is valued, in spite of the Mystification
of the Aesthetic, because it advances a particular ideology -- and then
it must be shown that theWestern Literary Canon (we will assume that
it can be shown that this exists) is constructed this way and consists
of works that are there for (what again is loosely called) "political"
reasons. As an instance -- you have to show that Shakespeare's plays
were valued and are valued becasue they advance a specific ideological/
political agenda and NOT because of any aesthetic reasons that
transcend or subvert these agendas/this agenda. Damned hard to do I guess.
Gary Taylor's "Reinventing Shakespeare" a notable and failed attempt --
mostly because it shows (although Taylor thinks he is showing something
else) is that in spite of changing politics, ideologies, needs of the
theatre, editors, and so on -- including changing aesthetic systems --
Shakespeare remains preeminent -- the moved bones speak.
And this will be so as long as there are any vestiges of a sense of beauty,
of intelligence left out there in the vast inane -- unless, of course,
the politics that insists that one gaze at pictur after picture of
tractors in a field takes over everything and everyone. True as long
as any hierarchy of values remains (of the sort that your assertion
that Shakespeare and Anne Rice are equally "good" because every need
is equally good, every purpose equally worthy attempts to subvert).
iOf course, this assertion is a guide to manners and not to action --
otherwise you would not insist that teaching what you conceive is
"The Western Canon" is bad.
A final point. It might have, sometime, been explained to you that the
works you seem to disdain as oppressive are, in many many instances,
subversive of -- radically subversive of -- the systems you find
oppressive. "Troilus and Cressida" -- as just one instance is there --
finding nothing but wars and lechery, subverting, howling against
all that you find oppressive -- including misogyny. No simple
satisfactions are provided -- there is an intelligence that cuts
through the limbic satisfactions offered by, for example,
Anne Rice.
To be plain -- teaching Shakespeare to undergraduates instead of
teaching Anne Rice -- refusing, let us say, to provide simple
satisfactions. to, once again, confirm everyone in their cozy habits
and identities is, simply, to take them seriously, to offer that
"difference" that everyone pretends they want to offer, is to, in fact,
be a radical, to resist stupidity. Shakespeare is for enlarging intelligence,
enlarging sympathy, enlarging apprehension of beauty. Anne Rice is for... what?
Rebecca Allen
>
> My claim, which really isn't terribly revolutionary, is that
> aesthetic judgments can't be universal and are based on
> criteria which are not, cannot be, separated from cultural/
> political/personal heirarchies which don't apply to everybody.
Now there's a bright idea: what can be appreciated on
an aesthetic level must first meet some minimum
acceptability standards of a more political, ideological
or cultural nature. Not too many these days have
the ability to make fine aesthetic distinctions amongst
depictions of coprophagy, for example.
What matters aesthetic judgment when the work is
inherently offensive to the audience in a way that
the audience is uninterested in changing?
And why, exactly, is coprophagy, or anthropophagy,
for that matter, so much more offensive than, say,
racism or sexism? At least the former instance is
at worst a consensual crime harming none but the
actor.
Rebecca Allen standard disclaimers apply reb...@spry.com
Joseph M Green
been eaten by whatever does this. The organization is the Association
of Literary Scholars and Critics. Its first conference will take
place in Minneapolis on September 23. The description (only partially
erased) is taken from the advertisement in the PMLA -- "the organization..."
Melynda Huskey
account for an opinion of an obscure work of popular
fiction like *The Sheik*?
In all seriousness, I found The Sheik nauseating because
it supports a way of thinking about women and rape which
I hate: that women love their rapists, that women want to be
kidnapped/raped/hurt by men, that women are happiest when
they are most controlled by men.
It's also a very racist book, relying on the conventions of
the worst kind of imperialist fiction.
And that is more than enough for me (and from me!)
Melynda Huskey
mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu
Fiona Webster
>I dunno. Why should anyone feel bad about getting oil and water on
>_Macbeth_? Since you can get a copy of _Macbeth_ for a lot less
>than a copy of _Vampires in the Attic_ or whatever, I'd think
>Shakespeare would be the tome of choice for the beach.
(Caveat lector: This is not a properly framed argumentative
defensible well-organized left-brain-buttressed posting. This is a
posting about books for the beach by a woman who feels wistful
because her last trip to Oahu was in 1992.)
You must not be a regular beach reader, Jim. There are so many
other factors in one's choice of material for the beach. (Money
has very little to do with it, and was not the reason why I'd
feel bad about getting oil on Shakespeare -- that's an issue of
respect.) Anyway, getting on to those factors, it's important, to
name one, that your beach reading not tax the mind unduly or make
you think too much, because prolonged exposure to sun and wine
coolers tends to lower the IQ in a deliciously agreeable way. You
can appreciate Shakespeare anywhere, but there are a number of
authors you can *only* appreciate while at the beach. Beach reading
is a chance to catch up on those books that your friends or family
may have read, but you've been too snobby to take a look at. While
in the proper beach frame of mind, you suddenly feel much less a
snob, and can make yourself more suitable for mixed company by
actually learning something about how an Anne Rice vampire gets
"made," etc.
--Fiona Webster
Phillip LaLande
>From: mely...@osprey.csrv.uidaho.edu (Melynda Huskey)
>Subject: Re: Western Canon
>Date: Thu, 07 Sep 95 22:44:04 GMT
>Jim Hartley asked:
>>For what purposes are Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews better than
>>Shakespeare?
>They move, delight, and instruct some readers more immediately
>and more artfully than Shakespeare does.
>Melynda Huskey
more artfully?
I should think that one is really disclosing one's aesthetic
judgement (or lack thereof) when she can claim Rice and Andrews are more
"artful" writers than Shakespeare.