The Western Canon
The Books and School of the Ages
Will be published approx. on 25. September 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
592 pages
978-0-06-345204-6 (ISBN)
Description
The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller.
"An impressive work...deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past."-Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list-it is a "heroically brave, formidably learned" defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the essential writers of the western literary tradition (The New York Times Book Review).
Placing William Shakespeare at the "center of the canon," Bloom examines the literary contributions of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, and many others. Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition and passion.
"An impressive work...deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past."-Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list-it is a "heroically brave, formidably learned" defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the essential writers of the western literary tradition (The New York Times Book Review).
Placing William Shakespeare at the "center of the canon," Bloom examines the literary contributions of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, and many others. Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition and passion.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
565 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-06-345204-6 (9780063452046)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
HAROLD BLOOM was a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Before that, he was Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than forty books include Possessed by Memory, The Anxiety of Influence, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, The Western Canon, The American Religion, and The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime. He was a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the Catalonia International Prize, and Mexico's Alfonso Reyes International Prize. He lived in New Haven until his death on October 14, 2019, at the age of eighty-nine.