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THE COMPAnATIST REVIEWS HAROLD BLOOM. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994. 578 pp. Harold Bloom was once considered something ofan enfant terrible in English studies for his theories in TheAnxiety ofInfluence and even for his recent speculations in The Book ofJ. But now, both by the affirmative nature ofhis book title (The Western Canon) and by its marketing for trade rather than for a scholarly audience, he seems to place himself in the company of the late Allan Bloom and of E. D. Hirsch, who adopted similar strategies when they published, respectively, The Closing ofthe American Mind and Cultural Literacy in 1987. Although Harold Bloom does not mention these two predecessors, he is clearly responding to the same perceived crisis in education and to the "culture wars" that have been shaking the academic literary establishment for several years now. Most academics have in fact grown rather tired ofthe subject. Bloom himselfclaims to be uninterested in "mimic cultural wars" (1) and adopts a strategy ofreferring to his opponents with dismissive remarks throughout rather than addressing their arguments directly. It would seem that by casting his net to a wider audience, Bloom hopes to win battles by garnering fresh and more numerous troops. It is true that certain fundamental questions have never really been answered, and that Bloom does not hesitate to take them on and to give his own answers to them. Given the fact that we can only devote a certain amount ofour brieflifetimes to reading, what should we read and why? Similarly, in the profession ofteaching literature, what books shall we teach—or pass on as valuable to the next generation "—and why? Are there universal aesthetic standards by which we can judge literary greatness? As suggested in Robert Scholes's excellent survey "Canonicity and Textuality" (Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages andLiteratures, ed. Joseph Gibaldi, 2nd ed. [New York: MLA, 1992], pp. 138-58), much recent writing on canons chooses not to answer these questions directly, proposing instead ever more sophisticated approaches to and questions about the notion ofcanonicity and canon formation. By historicizing the formation ofthe meaning ofwords such as "canon" and "literature," by pointing out their alliance with social forces and ideologies, and by opposing to their hierarchical status the fluid, semiotic construction of"texts," such writers would either greatly extend the field ofthe canon or do away with it altogether. Bloom, on the other hand, does not spend any time on definitions and etymologies; "canonical," he states on the first page, means both "authoritative in our culture" and having "aesthetic value." Although he would not claim that the list he gives is exhaustive (a much longer one appears in the appendix ), he then proceeds to discuss 26 authors (the author here, in opposition to Roland Barthes and followers, is far from dead, but more alive than we as readers are) and to tell us why we should read their works. Bloom prefaces his enquiry by lumping together some major schools of modern criticism, such as feminism, Marxism, and New Historicism, under the rubric of"The School ofResentment." He also positions himselfin opposition to what he calls the right wing ofcriticism, those who claim that the western canon Vol.20 (1996): 179 REVIEWS somehow reinforces our traditional moral values. To read in the service of any ideology, in Bloom's view, is not to read. We don't read literature—a term that he does not define or question—for moral values or political convictions. Yet although he defends the term "aesthetic," he does not argue for pure aesthetic contemplation but actually states that the reading ofliterature has a use. "The true use of Shakespeare or ofCervantes ... is to augment one's own growing inner self. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one's solitude, that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality" (30). But what is it in the work ofa writer that permits the reader to do this? Bloom's answer seems to be "originality," a quality he also calls "strangeness." This brings him back to his anxiety of influence theories...

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