Canon Schmanon

What is the western canon, and do we need it anymore?

This week, I want to return to a thorny topic that comes up—when? a lot—and can’t be addressed in a single post, but it’s time to take a first thwack at it: the western canon.

Now, before you decide this post isn’t for you, let me tell you that, most decidedly, it is, because unless you grew up in Asia or Africa and were not educated in English, the western canon was your education. You are who you are, to a greater or lesser extent, because of it.

For those who may be unsure of what I mean by “western canon,” here’s the definition of “canon” from the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature:

canon \’kan-Ən\ [Greek kanōn’ rod, measuring line, rule, standard] 1. An authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture. 2. The authoritative works of a writer. 3. A sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works.

We’re basically working with definition 3 here, though I wanted you to see the “Holy Scripture” part of definition 1 because the western canon is treated as something of a secular Holy Scripture by some. Which I guess is another topic for another time.

As for the “western” part, it refers to literature of the “western” world, which is confusing because it definitely includes European works, which are from the Eastern Hemisphere. In this case, “western” excludes all of Africa and Asia, except for those writers who may have written in English or were translated into English and became widely embraced by "westerners." Someone will no doubt dispute this characterization, but it’s roughly accurate.

Definition aside, it’s also important to note that there is no Holy Book of the western canon, and no two well-read people completely agree on what’s in and what’s out. Except for Shakespeare. They all agree on Shakespeare, even though some of his work is problematic today. But beyond him, everything gets a little bit wobbly, and the farther you walk out toward the edges of the flat pancake of the canon from Shakespeare at the center, the wobblier it gets.

The question I’m interested in for today, though, isn’t what’s in and what’s out. It’s not even really whether the western canon is relevant because obviously, if most of us were educated under it, we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. The question I’m interested in is: What’s in it today for ordinary readers? That is, people who aren’t academics or writers or scholars but who simply enjoy reading, whether they do it on their own or with a book club. Does the western canon have anything to offer us?

Harold Bloom, whose (mostly) praises I sang in my popular post on The Solitary Reader, was a terrible curmudgeon when it came to the western canon. As soon as more women and people of color were “let in,” he felt it went all to hell. At the risk of making you hate Harold Bloom, I have to be totally up front and tell you that he actually wrote that multiculturalism “means fifth-rate work by people full of resentment.” So, wow, that’s a problem.

Bloom’s ugly comment suggests that, in the rush to make up for centuries of exclusion, beginning in the middle of the 20^th century, some writers were embraced who were not doing the same kind of intellectual work that Ralph Ellison and Virginia Woolf (two of the lucky ones to vault over Bloom’s bar of quality) were doing. I’m not going to defend Harold Bloom for thinking that the democratic move to open up the canon was a bad thing. It’s appalling how white and male his list (and the traditional canon) is. I don’t think I have to explain to anyone how that happened because we all took a few history classes and we follow the news, right? So, moving on…

I bring up Bloom here again—and in a less flattering light—because his rigid position can stand in pretty handily for what’s wrong with the western canon. It’s a flawed thing. So, what should we do with this thing we’ve got that has only just begun in the past few decades to admit writers whose experience is more like the experience of the rest of the world? Should we keep revising it? Should we try to start over? Should there even be a canon? How would we define what constitutes good literature so we could keep educating people well if we didn’t have one? Is that even a thing?

These are HUGE questions. In an article in The American Scholar in 2020 titled “The Bloom Has Faded” (get the pun?), professor and author Robert Zaretsky chastised himself for not listening more closely to his students and understanding sooner the problem with canonical works like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; following that revelation, he wondered whether “falling back on gestures of change” to the canon was enough. In a Bookends column in The New York Times in 2015 titled “Who Should Be Kicked Out of the Canon?” Francine Prose noted that the question of the canon “seems to matter most urgently in academic circles” and less so to the rest of us, and added, “I would argue for an approach to teaching literature that focuses less on some notion of literary immortality than on those works that still have the power to engage us.” And in an essay on Lithub earlier this year that delves into philosophy and transphobia, the writer Naomi Kanakia wrote, “[S]ince much of the argument in favor of the Great Books is that they ‘open people’s minds’ and ‘teach them to think,’ I think it’s worth exploring the ways in which that isn’t true. Because I do think there are systematic biases in the Great Books that actually encourage transphobia.” The same could, of course, be said about misogyny and racism and other forms of discrimination.

This is just a peek at the concerns writers and thinkers have aired recently about the western canon. I should add that it also has many staunch defenders. But let’s get back to the concern at hand today: Why should we ordinary readers who aren’t the professors and writers and critics of the world care about the western canon, this minefield of politics and ideology and tradition?

In a piece in The Atlantic this past March, public school teacher Annie Abrams and Roosevelt Montás, a senior lecturer at Columbia University, defined a “canon” as “works that have been pivotal in the political, social, and philosophical development of contemporary culture.” That’s a great definition, leaving plenty of room for books that may not match our current society’s values but that helped to create the conditions under which we live. Abrams and Montás go further:

Democracy is imperiled if we forget the debates and struggles from which it emerged, and if we don’t think deeply about what it means to be human. Not all texts and practices are equally effective for facilitating this type of reflection and conversation. The loose and shifting family of works that have proved exceptionally conducive to this task count as a canon. That canon should be understood not as an inherited fixture but as a process requiring continuous revision and examination.

Abrams and Montás are actually making a larger argument, in this piece, in favor of a liberal education—not politically liberal, but rather an education that “cultivates self-determination, freedom of opinion, and personal agency” and is, ultimately, a fixture of democracy—a type of education that they point out is being eroded by both the political left and the right.

We may be adults who’ve already received our formal educations. But we are still being educated by our experiences, including what we read. Many of us are still interested in thinking about “what it means to be human.” And if we care about which books will facilitate meaningful discourse in that regard, then we’re probably interested in the canon, whether we’d like to admit it or not.

That’s what the concept of a canon has to offer us. That’s also why it has to be a living, evolving thing that people argue over—because as we come to understand one another better (presuming we do get better from one generation to the next at understanding those different from us), we can jettison the books that do a lousy job of that. The canon also has to be flexible because what helps each of us to think about our own humanity is almost by definition going to be different for everyone. Some texts, through their universality (think, again, of love and friendship and war and betrayal and comedy and power and trickery, etc., etc. in Shakespeare) tap into what we share. Some speak deeply to our own personal experience in the world that differs from the personal experiences of others. And still others help us to understand what it’s like to be someone else.

Books that rely on formulas, clichés, and the status quo aren’t going to get us there. They might entertain, us, though. After all, we can’t be expected to wrestle with questions about the human condition every time we read. A friend once told me wryly, “I’m beginning to think Socrates was wrong. The unexamined life really is worth living.” This made me laugh because I got it. The more we “overthink” life, the more dissatisfied we may find ourselves. There are days when it seems we might just do better to stop worrying and be happy. Beach reading definitely has its benefits. But when we find ourselves wrestling, even against our will, with life’s bigger questions, we need “bigger” books. And despite its many flaws, the canon can help us find them.

But maybe we should stop calling it a canon—by definition, “authoritative,” “holy,” and “sanctioned.” It’s not the word of God. The authority and the sanctioning is done by humans—by us. Don’t be afraid to do what Zaretsky’s students did, to express your anger or exhaustion or discontent with reading what’s supposedly, but clearly not, “good for you.” Don’t be afraid to give the canon a good thwack of your own.

photo credit: © Can Stock Photo / ABDESIGN