News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011). Parent comment

Re:The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011) by keiferski on Saturday January 04, 2020 @11:00AM (#21955565)
Your comment is misleading because it doesn’t mention that Bloom spent virtually his entire career defending the value of classic literature. The fact that he had minor criticisms of his list and didn’t want to talk about it doesn’t mean that he disavowed it and that isn’t what the word disavowed means.

Disavowed suggests that he is dismissive of the contents of the list entirely, which again, could not be further from the truth. Quoting a brief Vice article leaves out decades of context.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011) by valvar on Saturday January 04, 2020 @11:27AM (#21955733)
As I understand it, he was opposed to the idea of composing a list like that, i.e. a definitive list of what the canon is and what you should read. There's no contradiction with such a disavowal and defending the canon as such. Obviously there are some works that are core to the canon, that I'm sure he would urge everyone to read, such as the works he mainly discusses in the book (Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Goethe, the Bible, etc). That doesn't mean that he has to be a proponent of compiling them into a neat list.
[ Parent | on HN ]