During his writing of The Western Canon,1 Harold Bloom must have reflected wryly, more than once, on a remark he quotes from Johnson: “he that writes must be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom everyone has a right to attack.” Pre-publication furor over the book centered on the well-publicized appearance, in an appendix, of a list of over 850 works representing the achievements of Western literature from the earliest times to the present day. This silly idea has inevitably led to profitless wrangling about the inclusion and exclusion of this or that author or work, and has distracted attention from Bloom’s arguments. Accordingly, after this paragraph, I shall ignore the list. However, it does have one use. It reminds us of the Great Books, and of F. R. Leavis’s characteristically bracing...

 

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