Talk:Western canon/Archive 1

message: I think this article is a good beginning, but could someone help in producing a good opening definition and history of the canon? What we have here is a very brief def, a big paragraph of how it has been under attack (without much discussion of WHY) and then the list which i have started and which has grown a bit. The canon is a problem of duality: we need to anchor more strongly why it exists both historically and socially, and then why it has been opposed (for good and for ill). I know the issues at stake in general, but I will need to find the time to do more research if I were to flesh out this article any more than it is. Is someone else more fluent in the canon debate? Please help. --trimalchio
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Where does this list come from? It doesn't mention Plato or Aristotle, and yet it mentions Salman Rushdie! They have been FAR more influential on the development of Western civilisation than Rushdie ever will be.
Not only that, who decides who is in and out of the canon? Any attempt to draw up a list can't be objective, its just going to end up as a "list of works anonymous likes". -- SJK
::Well, the list is ongoing. If you think its insufficient, add people to it. But you can't accurately describe the Western canon in literature without some sort of list. That's the whole point of a canon. But I agree wholeheartedly that the very idea of choosing who is and is not on the list is a problematic and controversial endeavor. Does anyone know a Canon expert (not that any one "expert" would be of tremendous help)? I also put a second list header, people who may be considered to belong on the canon. Maybe move more minor authors there. Just don't freak out. I agree that the idea of a western canon is a real mess, but I didn't invent it. And who said literature was an objective subject? Pretending that there is virtually anything objective about literature is a misdirection of worry. One might argue that the very idea of a Western Canon stems from the misplaced assumption that literature COULD be considered objectively. anyway, these issues need to be addressed somehow in the article itself. -t
:::I added names to the list because it was extremely short (only Homer and Shakespeare). Of course, my choices were subjective, and everyone elses will be too. Maybe it's better to have some examples of canon lists during the times to show how the canon has changed. --Tsja
::The problem with that Tsja is that I don't believe there really have been canon lists. A canon of sorts has always existed, in the sense that certain works have always been studied and considered important, but I doubt many people ever explicitly listed what works were in it. Besides, the canon is a fuzzy set -- its not a question of works being in or out, but of degree. A list, being inherently binary, can't really capture the true nature of the canon. (I suppose you could in theory give a list with a number (0-1) showing the degree to which each work belongs to the canon, but good luck finding an objective means of calculating it.) -- SJK
:The best way to add lists is to add more than one coherent list developed by outside sources, and then commment on what the list leaves out and what it chooses.  For example, the reading list from one of the 'Great Books' programs - either Mortimer Adler's or the curricular list from St. John's College of Annapolis.  That way we won't have yet another 'Famous Authors' list with endless bickering (I for one don't think Rushdie belongs on the Western Canon.  He's an interesting case, though).  It's actually very interesting to compare the publishers list for Penguin's World Classics with major French publishing houses (I wrote a paper on the topic long ago and far away).  The overlap outside their own national literatures was considerable, but not identical. --MichaelTinkler
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Harold Bloom's list of the Western Canon is here: 
http://www.literarycritic.com/bloom.htm
It might be a good start.
--AV
:I'll put it among external links on the page.  Thanks, Anatoly!
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<IANAL> However, we cannot include the list itself because
#it was first published on or after January 1, 1923 (US copyright statute), and/or
#one of the authors was surviving on or after January 1, 1931 (EU copyright treaty).
See Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act for information on relevant recent developments in copyright law. </IANAL> --Damian Yerrick
:However, it is simply a list of books, which probably can't be put under copyright. I'm not a laywer either. We should really get a copyright laywer hooked on Wikipedia. --Stephen Gilbert
:It might qualify as a "compilation" which is protected under copyright law: "a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." This quote comes from a text I received from Susan Kornfield, J.D. when she spoke to my class on copyright law for writers. her email address is: skornfield@bodmanlongley.com and I think the issue might be well addressed by her. She's a cool lady... or at least seemed so for the brief minute that I met her personally after class. --t
I think if we included a copy of Harold Blooms list and other lists also, for the sole purpose of commenting upon them and comparing them, that would fit within fair use requirements I suspect. The other possibility is that we ask him -- he might not mind us including a copy, if we explain why we want to. Also, MichaelTinkler, about that paper you said you wrote years ago: could that be used in Wikipedia? Would its content be suitable? -- SJK
:Yep, but it was very unambitious (it was a presentation write up for a seminar on What are the Liberal Arts/What is a Liberal Arts Education?).  I'll look around.  It's fun to compare people's reading lists. --MichaelTinkler
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Niccolo Machiavelli, John Milton, and Thomas More weren't on the list before I added them. Joseph Heller, J. D. Salinger, and Alice Walker are on the list. Whatever one's personal opinion on the merits of these authors, shouldn't we have a "cooling off period" of 75 years or so after their deaths before we add them to the Canon? (Something of the sort is done with Catholic saints). Well, whether we include popular modern authors or not, we need to be sure we include those who have been fundamental for centuries (or millenia).
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I believe that Charles Darwin should be added to the list. Any discussion to the contrary?
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I believe that Karl Marx should arguably be added to the list. Any discussion?
:Hmmmm.  Darwin and Marx both wrote seminal things that have influenced Western thought one way or another ever since they were published, but they aren't works of art in the conventional sense.  I think we need to decide whether we're defining the canon as "books that have had a major influence on Western civilisation" (in which Darwin, Marx, Machiavelli etc. certainly qualify) or "works of art (in written form) that have had a major influence on Western civilisation" (in which case they don't). So which is it, everyone?--Bth
IMHO, in general usage, it's primarily "written works that have had a major influence on Western civilisation, including some fiction or works of art".
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I think it makes very little sense to have a 'canon' of authors rather than of books. While there may be SOME authors whose complete works belong (Plato, arguably Shakespeare) most of the other authors have one or two works which belong here.
Darwin doesn't belong, Origin of the Species does. Marx doesn't belong: Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto do (as does Wealth of Nations...
Canonical works would be those essential to the understanding of western civilization. Most authors, and most works of most authors, wouldn't be on it. Someone else 21:55 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)
:Agreed. Can we make such a list? If not, better to have the list of authors than no list. Tell you what, I'll try to start it and we'll see how it grows.
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Interesting discussion so far. My advice is, follow the experts (and isn't that what the Canon is all about anyway -- following the advice of those who've gone before?) Bloom's list is really too big for here, but you can use it as a guide. And the Adler list too. There are some others also available at http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html (and elsewhere). The entry must have some kind of list to be credible, so let's just start updating. There's a lot to add. I've made a start just now, but I think we need to work on the formatting and agree on a single format for the list. Also need to add a philosophy section.  As to whether author's should appear, they have to -- you can't cite a title without its author. But I agree that generally specific titles need including. (A few authors deserve the more general Works. Pamplemousse 08:41 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)
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then we'll need to move Joyce as well right? I'm ok with that but I don't want to see the canon broken up by tribal rivalries. the scots, the irish. the welsh etc. but then again I'm a yank, so that stuff doesn't really make sense to me so what do I know?
: It's not clear to me why you'd want to break up the list by nationality anyway. It's supposed to be a Western canon, not a national one.  Classification by genre seems pertinent, but not by nationality or language... these should be works that have transcended those classifications. Someone else
::good point. I've tried to keep it kind of chronological actually and the point of national origin seemed to be useful because it seems so varied, and therefore more interesting, at the beginning. But again, the western part of it... the Nations represented are western, hence the reference. Debatable. or not. but you're right. the canon should transcend...but, that said. I'm going to work on fleshing out the genre more anyway. the refs. to nations will be nominal at best.
:::Getting rid of the nationality break-downs wouldn't much bother me - I just moved Beckett because I didn't like seeing him labelled as from England when he wasn't. However, I do think there's something to be said for division by language - it would seem a bit odd to me to have Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Ibsen all in the same section (although now I've written that down, it doesn't seem too odd any more...). (btw - I'd've moved Joyce if I had spotted he was listed as British, yes) --Camembert
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I've reformatted the list with bullet points and proper headers. I think it looks better now. I've also removed most of the divisions by nationality, but I've kept the Greek/Shakespeare/other division under "Drama" because that seems quite a useful one. With the removal of nationalities, a lot of the chronological nature of the lists has gone, so I don't know if somebody wants to fix that up. Also: shouldn't Goethe's Faust be listed under "Epic poetry" (it certainly isn't a novel, whatever it is); and is Poe really a "novelist"? I'm not sure he ever wrote a novel, but in any case his short stories (and a couple of his poems) are better known. --Camembert
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I hope this doesn't start a ruckus, but by definition a canon is determined by a particular authority (although that authority might be consensus).
This particular canon list doesn't state its authority, other than to mention some of the (conflicting) sources that it draws from. So by default it can be assumed (and in practice it is indeed working out) that the authority declaring the canon is the Wikipedia consensus. As several people have mentioned above, Wikipedians are adding works because they believe them to be famous and/or influential and/or good. Indeed, several comments above are proposing works for inclusion precisely on the grounds of the judgement of the poster, and in each individual case it would be hard to argue conclusively for exclusion. But "influential" is almost always a subjective (i.e, not NPOV) judgement.
So, I think the article should explain more clearly what the criterion is for mentioning a work on the list - namely, that some Wikipedian feels it to be influential, rather than that it is considered influential by any cited academic source. Either that, or each work individually could have an external reference cited for its canonical status. Inclusion in "enough" school or university English reading lists might qualify, for example, if "enough" were defined with a bit of rigour.
There's a big difference between "Western canon according to academic sources, as compiled by Wikipedia" and "Western canon according to Wikipedia". I don't think this article makes that difference adequately clear, and I think that since it is providing such a list, it should. -- Onebyone 17:11, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)