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An Elegy for the Canon |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / WHAT IS LITERATURE? TEACHING AND THE CANON |
| Author: Harold Bloom |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 4,235 Words, 25,415 Characters |
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Originally the Canon meant the choice of books in our teaching institutions, and despite the recent politics of multiculturalism, the Canon's true question remains: What shall the individual who still desires to read attempt to read, this late in history? The Biblical three-score years and ten no longer suffice to read more than a selection of the great writers in what can be called the Western tradition, let alone in all the world's traditions. Who reads must choose, since there is literally not enough time to read everything, even if one does nothing but read.
Mallarme's grand line--"the flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books"--has become a hyperbole. Overpopulation, Malthusian repletion, is the authentic context for canonical anxieties. Not a moment passes these days wi...
. . .
...ut the Canon, we cease to think. You may idealize endlessly about replacing aesthetic standards with ethnocentric and gender considerations, and your social aims may indeed be admirable. Yet only strength can join itself to strength.
Excerpted from pp. 15-41 of The Western Canon by Harold Bloom, copyright ©1994 Harold Bloom. To be published by Harcourt Brace & Company, October 1994.
(806 of 25,415 characters)
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