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Canonization has multiple meanings. If you ask Harold Bloom, it’s the highest honor an author can aim for. Creating something canon-worthy suggests you’ve captured the sublime and managed to put it in writing, achieving a feat few could. Bloom, in “The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages,” talks about 26 authors who accomplished that feat.
Starting with Shakespeare and bringing the book to a close with Beckett, Harold Bloom takes the reader through the centuries. Some of the examples found in this book include “Hadji Murad” by Leo Tolstoy and “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. The extraordinary “Don Quixote” and inimitable “Peer Gynt” are also on this list.
“The Western Canon” is more than a literary list featuring 26 of the best artists to ever live. It’s a discussion with Professor Harold Bloom on the passage of time, the importance of literary values and aesthetics: how readers and writers participate and play in making a canon the Western world can call their own.
‘The Western Canon’ Summary
Harold Bloom wrote a 26-author list for book lovers to find their next challenging read: “The Western Canon” is a long catalog of the defining authors of European and American literature. The list was (and still is) as polarizing as it gets.
It’s difficult to argue against the canonicity of Shakespeare, Dante and Cervantes; Whitman, Tolstoy and Ibsen; or Kafka, Joyce and Borges. According to Bloom, each of these trios represents a different literary age — the Aristocratic, Democratic and Chaotic ages — with a looming Theocratic age that still hasn’t begun three decades past this book’s publication.
Divided into three eras featuring one chapter per author, “The Western Canon” became Bloom’s go-to book for most readers starting with his work. Here, the reader will get Bloomean insights on literary anxiety, influence and the process of canonization.
Originality: The Key to the Canon
Bloom lists 26 authors (and some — not all — of their work) as canonical. Is he doing it on a whim, or does the canon follow certain characteristics? The truth is that Father Time holds the key to the canon, but originality is the key itself.
You can only achieve literary greatness if you stand out from other authors, Bloom argues. Doing so is, of course, easy in theory but close to impossible in practice.
Shakespeare, who Harold Bloom calls “the center of the canon,” changes literature by creating characters capable of cognition. Cervantes comes up with two unique characters in Don Quixote. Beckett — the last one on the list — is an heir to Joyce, who is an heir to Shakespeare. Nevertheless, the Irish author achieves the originality needed for canonization in his plays, especially “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame.”
Originality is the ultimate literary goal because every author struggles with anxiety — a foundational trait in Bloomean literary theory.
A Matter of Influence
Influence is pervasive in literature if one believes what Bloom says about it. Shakespeare has to shake off bits of Chaucer and Marlowe before achieving greatness; Joyce and Freud struggle with a Shakespearean shadow throughout their career; and Beckett inherits Joycean characteristics that are obvious early in his work.
What’s influence according to Bloom? It’s the shadow cast by a precursor over an artist. You grow up reading an author, and by the time you decide to write something original, you can’t. You find yourself writing like other artists because of their influence. Reading “The Anxiety of Influence” is a great way to understand how this process works.
The new writer has to succumb to anxiety (and never write anything canon-worthy) or revisit their understanding of literature to create something original: a successful push toward originality grants canonization. Genius artists —Bloom says— will do anything in their power to lose any influence received early in their life and, in doing so, get one step closer to becoming part of the canon.
A few sentences can hardly do justice to influence; writers may recognize how hard it is to write something that feels unique.
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Audience and Genre: Great Primer for Laymen
This book is not for academics but for those who read for pleasure over anything else. However, you won’t get much out of “The Western Canon” if you’re already familiar with all 26 authors featured here, unless you’re interested in reading about what Bloom had to say about them (which, for some, is controversial enough to avoid).
Bloomean insights are impossible without spoilers. That risk shouldn’t trouble or prevent you from reading this book, because most authors in this volume have been dead for hundreds of years. You probably know how Hamlet ends. If you don’t, Bloom will write it down so he can explain the importance and impact of the play.
However, as Bloom advances through the literary ages, you may want to slow down your reading. Near the end of the book, Bloom will discuss Borges, Beckett and a few other authors who, although they’re far from contemporary, you may not have read. Those who want a spoiler-free list should stay away from this book (or read the first few paragraphs of each section, read the works listed there, and come back right after!)
Three Cs: Compelling, Clear, Concise
Editorial Note: We believe these three factors are important for evaluating general writing quality across every aspect of the book. Before you get into further analysis, here’s a quick breakdown to clarify how we’re using these words:
- Compelling: Does the author consistently write in a way that would make most readers emotionally invested in the book’s content?
- Clear: Are most sentences and parts of the book easy enough to read and understand?
- Concise: Are there sections or many sentences that could be cut? Does the book have pacing problems?
Compelling: For Book Lovers, Of Course
Do you care about literature? Do you have a deep love for books? Do you think reading is important? If your answers are all a resounding “Yes!”, “The Western Canon” is right up your alley.
However, Bloom’s biggest polarizing point was that certain books were better than others. Some people agree with that; other people take such a statement as an insult.
Bloom pushes an aesthetic narrative that may not be acceptable or appropriate for some people, especially those with an English major. In fact, Harold Bloom often charged against the current state of education (back in 1994 when this book was published until he died in 2019).
For example, at the end of the book, he argues whether his guesses about Pynchon’s canonical potential will hold in the future. That point alone could anger Pynchon’s diehard fans. Something similar happens with fans of authors not included in this volume.
Clear: From a Professor With Experience Explaining, But Not Handholding
Harold Bloom knew how to explain something, especially anything literature-related. That much should come as no surprise because Bloom taught at Yale (and other universities) for several decades. The man spent most of his life reading, writing and teaching.
However, Bloom will not hold your hand. He believed literature should challenge readers, not indulge them. That attitude means you will find a few references you may not understand here, though they will push you in the right direction: finding new authors that will challenge your literary knowledge (and skills).
The one thing that may go over most people’s heads (if they haven’t read any other book written by Bloom) is the concept of anxiety, which Harold Bloom developed throughout his career and first explained in his breakthrough book, “The Anxiety of Influence.”
Editorial Note: Read our review of “The Anxiety of Influence.”
Concise: Perhaps, If You Skip A Lot of the Shakespeare Mentions
It’s difficult to define whether Harold Bloom is concise in his over 500 pages worth of a literature catalog. You could write an entire volume (that’s twice the size of this book) on “Ulysses” by James Joyce alone, one of the many books listed here. So is “The Western Canon” succinct? In some ways it is; in some ways it isn’t.
How can one book be concise and drawn out at the same time? Harold Bloom pulls off that weird feat by sprinkling a little bit of Shakespeare anywhere he can, which is pretty much everywhere.
Almost all authors are indebted to William Shakespeare, according to Bloom: The Bard gets a mention when you discuss any other author. Whenever an author isn’t a successor to Shakespeare, Bloom manages to compare the two (as he does that with Cervantes and Dante, for example.)
So, this book is concise when Bloom doesn’t go out of his way to talk about the author of “Hamlet.” Sometimes, the Shakespeare comparisons work; other times, you feel like you’re back in the Shakespeare section when reading about other authors.
Prose Style: Seamless
Harold Bloom had taught at Yale for over four decades and had written over 20 books by the time he published “The Western Canon.” He had enough practice when he released this book, and his prose reflects that fact.
The author, however, will explore certain concepts and quote several authors who may shake things up from time to time. The seamless style of Bloom sometimes contrasts with the eclectic prose of Joyce or early Burgess (among many other authors) quoted in several parts of this book.
You’ll face a few changes of pace, yes — but don’t worry: Professor Bloom will be there to guide you whenever necessary.
Rhetoric: Relies on Intuition
Bloom’s biggest sticking point is that he takes a few things for granted. The author believes “Shakespeare and The Western Canon are one and the same,” for example, meaning The Bard will pervade every point of the canon because of his influence. At the same time, almost every author after Shakespeare will struggle with anxiety.
Does Bloom expand upon why Shakespeare is the central figure of Western literature? Ever so slightly. The reader will face Bloom using Shakespeare as a measuring stick, but we’ll hardly get an explanation to validate that idea.
However, the reader will find a terrific book in “The Western Canon” whenever Bloom is talking about an author and using their prose or verse to make a case.
Bloom will also draw ideas from some of his previous books to continue talking about influence (which may feel confusing if you’re not familiar with the Bloomean theory of literary anxiety). From time to time, Bloom will also rely on aesthetics to make his case, though these elements may feel unfounded to the reader (e.g., why Bloom prefers one poet over the other).
Cultural and Political Significance: Rally Against Resentment
Bloom made countless political statements throughout his career; ironically enough, his main goal was to remove politically motivated people from literary studies. Doing so, of course, made him a bit of a target, even more so after publishing “The Western Canon.”
The school of resentment is anyone — academic or otherwise — who tries to interpret or teach literature through a political lens. Bloom thought Marxist, feminist and historicist interpretations (among other -isms) were wrong and degraded literature unlike nothing else: whenever you’re promoting an author because of his background, you’re punishing someone whose work is better.
Bloomean canonization, for example, relies on aesthetics and time. Readers have to wait to see which books stand the test of time before lauding an author; that’s the reason why, at the end of this book, Bloom is reluctant to include contemporary writers in his canon.
In contrast, other critics are quick to cater to minority writers because of their background, not their work: the way Bloom interprets literary importance in “The Western Canon” provides a good counterweight to current academia.
Authenticity: Life-Long Dedication
The author of “The Western Canon” spent most of his life reading, teaching, and writing. All three activities were born out of the same purpose: promoting aesthetics over politics in literature. This book is one of the many fruits of that effort.
One can argue whether Bloom was right about his life-long views or the ones expressed in this book. However, what nobody can do is doubt whether Bloom was authentic in his efforts. More than half a century devoted to his sole mission provides a halo of authenticity seldom has.
In fact, Bloom earned countless detractors and, we could say, enemies because of his canon talk, and he never retracted his statements, even after becoming a one-man department at Yale.
Critiquing the Critics
Bloom was a polarizing figure. “The Western Canon” was his most polarizing work. It’s easy to earn a fair number of critics when listing the very best authors because you’re bound to leave countless others out. Harold took the enormous task of listing 26 alone in this book — and spent quite a bit of time criticizing contemporary authors while he was at it.
Bloom’s main sticking points as a literature critic and lover are hard to miss when reading “The Western Canon.”
For example, most one-star reviews on Goodreads follow a motif: Bloom is self-absorbed and Shakespeare-obsessed. Two-star reviews tend to follow the same pattern, though some two-star reviewers also find Bloom hard to read.
One fantastic three-star review embodies the compromise of all three-star reviewers of “The Western Canon” by stating that this book is “half brilliant, a quarter nonsense, and a quarter defensible but repetitive and angry venting at deconstructionists, New Historicists, neo-Marxists, queer theorists, feminists, etc.”
On Goodreads, Four- and five-star reviews outnumber three-, two- and one-star reviews two to one, so while the book has its shortcomings, it still is a great read. A four-star review calls Bloom “the last major proponent of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm of higher education,” and a five-star review sums up the Bloomean experience by stating that “Bloom’s religion is literature; this is its originating text.”
Professional critics and reviewers praised the book early on, though that sentiment faded as time went on. Norman Fruman called this book “heroically brave, formidably learned and often unbearably sad response to the present state of the humanities” in his review for the New York Times published in 1994. Twenty years later, in 2014, Pankaj Mishra offered an opposing view by stating that this book “did not offer a more capacious and complex idea of culture than the one vended by English departments in the 1930s.”
Reviewer’s Personal Opinion: Far From My Favorite Bloom Book
The idea of a Western canon written by Harold Bloom should be the definitive list for people who read for pleasure and, in many ways, the go-to book for people who want to start reading Bloom’s work. It’s far from that.
“The Western Canon” is a good book and an enjoyable read, but it’s not something I will go back to anytime soon, perhaps ever.
Harold Bloom presents a list of over two dozen authors who he believes are the most important of the canon (hence the name) while offering great insights about them. However, it’s not the best book by Bloom or the best to start with.
I felt it was, at best, a novelty read. Something you read if you really like Bloom, his theory of influence or his battle against people pushing politics into literature. It’s far from something I’d recommend to anyone unless they already liked what Harold Bloom had to say.
That’s not to say there are no great moments here. Most people criticize this book for all the wrong reasons: for example, I’ve read a handful of reviews that question the idea of Bloom being capable of cataloging the canon when Bloom clearly states that “Writers, artists, composers themselves determine canons, by bridging between strong precursors and strong successors.”
That recurrent criticism against “The Western Canon” is founded on Bloom going against authors being promoted because of their background instead of their books, which Bloom brilliantly addresses by writing that “The movement misnamed ‘multiculturalism,’ which is altogether anti-intellectual and anti-literary, is removing from the curriculum most works that present imaginative cognitive difficulties, which means most of the canonical books.”
I feel most people miss the mark when pointing out the faults in this book: they feel mad because their favorite author is not there. In contrast, I felt Bloom didn’t write “The Western Canon” to reinforce our literary tastes but to help us find more challenging reads.
‘The Western Canon’: More Shakespeare Than Canon
Harold Bloom presents a primer for literature lovers that gets as close to perfect as possible — as long as you’re looking at the writers listed here but not the way Bloom talks about them (most of the time).
The author brushes past Homer, for example, among other authors and books (like The Bible), so he can start his list with William Shakespeare, who Harold Bloom calls “The Center of the Canon” and, in fact, points out that “Shakespeare and the Western Canon are one and the same” later in the book. It’s no surprise that Bloom goes back to Shakespeare, even when talking about Borges, Cervantes, Dante — or any other author on this list.
If you’ve read “The Anxiety of Influence,” using this approach makes sense. Bloom understands literature as a struggle between artists who strive for immortality. That struggle begets anxiety in all great authors, and most of them are indebted to The Bard. However, even if that were true, the reader will sometimes want a break from reading about Shakespeare and hope to read about the author who Bloom should’ve actually written about in any given section of this book.
That Bard fixation is far from unique in Bloom’s oeuvre. In the prologue he wrote for “Don Quixote,” the ninth word he uses is “Shakespeare.” In this book, Bloom comes up with pretty clever insights when he centers the canon on the English playwright — but even clever insights can become tiresome when they are always about the same author.
In contrast to the seemingly never-ending Shakespeare references, Bloom explains that “[Walt] Whitman centers the American canon because he changes the American self and the American religion by changing the representation of our unofficial selves and our persuasive if concealed post-Christian religion.”
The Whitman section is superb, and that quote is but a small glimpse of what Bloom says about that author. In a way, The Western Canon is, at worst, a Shakespeare-full introduction to great literature and, at best, a fantastic read about 26 of the best authors to ever pen a poem, play or story.
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