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The author explores Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. In this book, the author argues against ideology in literary criticism; laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; and tackles topics including multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of the aesthetic," the author places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon. Shakespeare has become the touchstone for all writers who come before and after him, whether playwrights poets or storytellers, the author argues. In the creation of character, he maintains, Shakespeare has no true precursor and has left no one after him untouched. Milton, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Ibsen, Joyce, and Beckett were all indebted to Shakespeare; Tolstoy and Freud rebelled against him; and Dante, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Whitman, Dickinson, Proust, the modern Hispanic and Portuguese writers Borges, Neruda, and Pessoa are exquisite examples of how canonical writing is born of an originality fused with tradition.--adapted from jacket.… (more)
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Solely because of this book, in the past few years I have done all of the following, which I might not otherwise have done: 1) Read Goethe's "Faust," Parts I and II. Part II is absolutely wild, and is every bit as great as Bloom says. 2) Read "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, which Bloom regards as the greatest English novel. It probably is. 3) Seen a production of "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett. Not my cup of tea, but it piques discussion at least. 4) Read several novels by Cormac McCarthy, beginning with "Blood Meridian." Bloom regards McCarthy as one of many successors to Shakespeare. Bloom is right; McCarthy is a powerful writer. I don't think I had ever heard of him before I read Bloom. 5) Read "Persuasion" by Jane Austen; Bloom regards this as Austen's greatest novel. 6) Read "Ficciones" by Jorge Luis Borges.
No other author has so influenced me to expand my range of reading as Bloom. However, I do not share Bloom's pessism. He sees literacy as in decline, which it probably is. However, the literary acumen with which previous generations have been gifted is probably being replaced by a new set of audio-visual skills that are more related to electronic media. Whether this is as tragic a thing as Bloom seems to think it is will have to be determined by history, but I don't think it is. Unfortunately, Bloom is a follower of Vico's historical theories, which envision the current chaotic age being replaced by a theocratic age. I simply cannot envision that happening in the western democracies. But we won't know until this writer, at least, is long gone from this world.
He was a way of identifying the essence of an author, and putting him into perspective.Compare and contrast.