16 Responses to “The western literary canon”

1. Mike Withey Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

   If only I’d have known about this course before applying to uni!

   There’s very little I would add. Maybe Heidegger’s Being and Time instead of ‘What is Philosophy?’, and maybe some more modern literature - some Proust or Kafka, or even Henry James would go down well.

   As for the music, one of Wagner’s operas would be nice, and it would be good to put the development of Western classical music into more context by adding what preceded it (that is to say, medieval music, to allow people to appreciate the development of harmony-based music from music based on modes), and possibly the decline of tonality (Wagner again, but obviously the Second Vienna School, then possibly Messiaen and Boulez).

   Weirdly, I’ve also read 37 of the texts here.

2. Gracchi Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

   I’ve read 49- I’m going to respond at length later because this is an interesting list and concept.

3. dave Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

   I look forward, Gracchi, to your further response.

   Mike, my sentiments were very much the same as your first line. However, I don’t think that when I applied for university I would have gone for that choice. In a way, I’m pleased that I’ve grown up a bit.

   It’s hard for me to comment, not having read all the texts, but the list seems like it could use some updating. It also seems to miss out literature that focusses on what might be called the banality of modernity - The Catcher in the Rye, for instance - and the rich dystopian vein of literature.

4. Matt W Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 10:04 am

   Er … umf. At the edge of my reading here.

   I reckon about 12, plus parts of some covered in anthologies - and some (not a lot) was in Latin.

   This is the sort of list that our Universities would only cover in their dreams; I think. Too many DWEMS.

   But how does one read Mozart Operas?

   Criteria: I suggest authors or texts that are both significant in themselves, and can be seen as definitive of an era.

   What is missing? It seems to assume that nothing happened between the New Testament and about 1500 (with a few exceptions). My thoughts:

   Quran (I say it has sufficient influence)
   Roman poets - Catullus, perhaps others.
   Early - Beowulf
   Medieval - Pilgrim’s Progress definitely, Thomas Aquinas (?), Galileo (?).
   Magna Carta + Bill of Rights etc.
   The French Revolutionary Documents

   For the modern: Certainly Bonhoeffer, Perhaps Barth and Hegel, Churchill?

   I’m also tempted to say the likes of Richard Feynmann (physicist), and if you want a curve ball - I’d throw in Alistair Cooke as an introduction to the modern era (although a documenter rather than a thinker).

   I’m not getting into feminist writers. They will roast a man who attempts to define their Canon.

   Matt W

5. Matt Wardman Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

   OK. I admit it - Aquinas is there.

6. Which Books are in your Canon of Western Literature? | The Wardman Wire Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

   [...] a look at the full list, and leave a [...]

7. Jock Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

   Bede - Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum? or even De temporum ratione, perhaps?

   I’d be tempted to include the bible twice actually - for linguistic rather than religious reasons. Once under St Jerome for the Vulgate which effectively set the standard for a thousand years and also which set in stone ecclesiastical Latin, and once under the King James Authorized Version which set in stone modern English in a way that no other work has done for other western languages IMO.

8. Jock Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

   By the way - I wouldn’t say “Pilgrim’s Progress” was mediaeval. It’s post reformation, indeed post restoration in England. Definitely a piece of renaissance literature I’d say!

9. dave Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

   Matt W - as to the dead English white men, there are relatively few English on the list. Nevertheless, I take the criticism. This, however, is a criticism of the societies at the time and doesn’t devalue the list in and of itself and, although we have to bear in mind the perspectives from which they were written and the way society affected its authors, its component books are still “great”.

   There are a whole host of issues around religion. I would tend to say that no primary religious texts should be included. While I accept Jock’s comment about the Vulgate and the Authorised versions (particularly the beauty of the Authorised’s sound when read aloud), their importance was due to the way they were used. In terms of the canon, the Pilgrim’s Progress (for instance) is more important as a literary work. The Bible is important as a concept. Equally, if we extend to the Qu’ran, we start extending to the Torah and so on and it becomes hard to put an end on it. Aleister Crowley?

   I suppose ‘interesting’ and ‘influential’ are not the same. There is nothing listed, for instance, from Bentham or either Mill. Equally, it is weak on the modern, both here and across the west outside the anglosphere. There is a good rationale for excluding, say, Latin America, but not Spain. We do not see Lazarillo de Tormes or anything by Delibes or Sender.

   Jock - I agree with you about the Venerable Bede. Would we extend to the Domesday Book? I agree with Matt about Beowulf and would add Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory.

   xD.

10. Eamon Says:
    February 17th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    Joyce: Dubliners, Ulysses
    Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment

    Bishop Berkeley (immaterialism)

    Handel: The Messiah
    Charles Dickens: David Copperfield

    WB Yeats

11. davecole.org » blog » Blog Archive » Picaresque Says:
    February 17th, 2008 at 11:30 pm

    [...] I mentioned in the comments to my earlier post on the western literary canon, a book called Lazarillo de Tormes by an [...]

12. Matt Wardman Says:
    February 18th, 2008 at 6:08 am

    >There are a whole host of issues around religion. I would tend to say that no primary religious texts should be included.

    That opens up a debate as to where philosophy ends and religion starts - which I won’t open here.

    Except to note that texts such as the Aeneid were religious texts for the Romans, weren’t they?

13. douglas clark Says:
    February 18th, 2008 at 11:34 pm

    Think maybe that Richard Dawkins ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ ought to be on the list, although, obviously not ‘The God Delusion’

    Yup, I know you went to the source with ‘Origin of the Species’ but it is quite hard going for undergraduates.

14. Jock Says:
    February 19th, 2008 at 12:09 am

    I wondered too about the Domesday Book, but I’m not sure that I’d class it as literature, or art (though I did wonder if you’d count the Bayeux Tapestry!), except perhaps the art of the bureaucrat. Though it was undoubtedly important.

    On the bible, particularly the King James Version, the reason I mention it is that people like Anthony Burgess, if I recall correctly, name it as the single most influential work that codified modern English (and led to the great vowel shift which he also names as the main reason why we are “divided by a common tongue” between over here and over there!…:) Its religious nature is if you like “only” so important because it ensured massive readership.

    However I do offer two more to fill the “dark ages” - the Book of Kells and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? And not quite dark ages, but what about Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus - marking the “rediscovery” of the classical arts from the Muslim scholars who had kept it alive during the western dark ages? And slightly later still, how about More’s Utopia? And far later, what about Samuel Johnson?

15. dave Says:
    February 19th, 2008 at 12:33 am

    Jock -

    Hang on - the KJV was written in the early seventeenth century, by which time the vowel shift was nearly complete.

    I’m going to reply at greater length about the Bible’s place; I’m not entirely sure what I think yet. What would your justification be for the books you mention? The Book of Kells is just the four gospels, albeit beautifully written!

    Eamon - same question to you; why those books?

    Douglas -

    I would want to put something in that represents the atheist current. However, I would probably go for something by Russell rather than Dawkins if for no other reason than that Dawkins work has not had enough time to be ‘great’.

16. Jock Says:
    February 19th, 2008 at 8:33 am

    OKay - “led to” was misleading, but Burgess felt that the existence of a “national text” in the form of the KJV marked the standardization/formalization of the new language that had emerged from the vowell shift in a definitive way that no other language enjoyed.

    Kells because I think there ought to be an example of dark ages illustrated manuscript - this monastic tradition is credited with keeping written language alive. Anglo-saxon Chronicle because it tells the history of a people coming together out of a mass of different competing traditions (and because the “dark ages” are somewhat light on anything else) and Fra Bacon as I said, marking the rediscovery of the ancients from the Arabic world which enabled the flourishing of rennaissance science.

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