Dr. Scott Masson: Harold Bloom's strange defence of the Western Canon
This lecture briefly discusses the idea of a literary canon, as opposed to the Biblical canon. The former unlike the latter can admit of additions. Harold Bloom defends the idea of the Western canon on exclusively aesthetic grounds, which is an extraordinary departure from the rationale given for studying it traditionally.
However, while the 'canon wars' of the 1980s that pushed for the inclusion of authors usually on grounds of what we now call 'identity' was objectionable, it is nothing like as problematic as the idea that the previous canon needs to be utterly replaced. The cultural studies approach to literature is an expression of the latent cultural Marxism of the earlier critics being more fully articulated.
I have transcribed some passages from the lecture. I'm simply reproducing the automatically generated transcription without capitalization and punctuation, etc. Starting at about 19:37:
the problem that he brings up at the beginning here is that overpopulation malthusian repletion [p. 19 in The Western Canon] is the authentic context for canonical anxieties this is his rather interesting way of presenting this there are too many books to be read now and and um this is the the problem now when you read Bloom by the way I think you always have to realize that he is um being um humorous I don't think he's altogether serious in his uh it's sort of a playful engagement with the critics and yet there's something that is serious in it and his where where he is serious is in thinking that the Canon serves aesthetic purposes alone and nothing but aesthetic purposes that's the purpose of the the Canon of literature and the Western Canon he sees it as a uh collection of books whose inclusion in the Canon is solely on the basis of aesthetic Merit solely he's very strong on this
Continuing at 21:34:
he strongly opposes uh morality as a consideration here which is an extraordinary position to take now this is the defender of the western Cannon you have to realize when he writes this in the early 90s I think it's 1994 he is defending against the what he calls the uh what does he call them his critics School of resent School of resentment yes so these people who are just motivated by Envy and resentment whing negative emotions um are just not readers at all or they are readers that are moved by politics or social uh motivations and that's not the right way to understand literature well what is the right way well Bloom says to study for the purpose of aesthetic Merit and that alone so this is the defense of the western Canon and interesting you'll you'll be interested interest interested in this as well uh Harold Bloom was uh a Jewish um I say an atheistic Jew um committed to a very Gnostic understanding of life you can see other works written by him and he's also a romantic scholar and I think that's also key to his development [...] but he's opposed to the idea of the Canon including a concept like goodness let alone truth and uh in so doing I think that he abandons the whole humanistic tradition going back from the ancient world all the way up to his contemporaries so he's a very unusual figure
Then at 24:22:
forget the Canon as a list of books for required study will be seen as identical with the literary art of memory not with the religious sense of Canon so it's something that individuals and it's for individuals the Canon then is for individuals it's not it doesn't have a broader humanizing function and it's something that you choose that and here's Mr Bloom's Canon that as an aesthete but it doesn't serve the purpose of humanitas then which the uh tradition of the helenistic critics would most certainly have held that's why we read to be educated Mr Bloom's notion of canonicity is not for the purposes of Education it's for the purposes of titilation or Delight that's it but we saw last semester that um even in Horace he sees the that there are two purpos at least for good literature and one of them is that bloom excludes is to teach to teach and to Delight Augustina adds to move to that to teach to Delight to move and Bloom has reduced it to delighting and I don't see what the difference is in certain respects between uh great works of literature and entertainment at that point it's just one's high brow and the other's low
