Harold Bloom, The Western Canon 

Great lecture. I make sure to listen to it each year.

Do NOT get rid of the canon, people! Read it, understand the ideas in the classics, and equip yourself with that understanding (regardless of whether or not you agree) in order to better construct arguments for or against those ideas; along with ideas that might be floating around today.

Greetings from Brazil! Thank you for this amazing lecture.

The purpose of art is to refine our perceptions and deepen and broaden our sympathies. This is useful because it allows us to get more value out of life and become better people. The trouble is that they pull in opposite directions. The refinement of our perceptions can make us snobbish. But the deepening and broadening of our sympathies can also lead us to be kinder and more sensitive to the feelings of others. The experience of beauty too has a positive moral effect because beauty, truth and goodness are intimately related. This can be seen from the fact that beauty without truth and goodness is just cosmesis, goodness without truth and beauty is hypocrisy and humbug, and truth without goodness and beauty is just a desire to shock. Therefore separated from each other they become allied to ugliness, lies and evil. Or perhaps even worse.

"Shakespeare wrote for Harold Bloom. That's absurd." This was not really a fair representation of Bloom's views. The point is that Shakespeare's characters explore universal aspects of human experience that transcend their historical setting, and Bloom reads Shakespeare in so far as it enriches his understanding of his own experience of life. And he believes that such an understanding is available to all of human beings regardless of historical context or identity.

have really enjoyed it, thank you so much!

Is there a podcast version of these lectures? Really enjoying this content. Excellent presentation.

It's totally fine to criticize other theorists, but it's a disservice to students to caricature and misrepresent those theorists' views. Bloom does not believe that beauty is the only virtue of literature. He believes there are three characteristics of works that potentially make them great and/or canonical: (1) aesthetic splendor, (2) cognitive power and (3) wisdom. Obviously something like "wisdom" could entail wisdom of a moral, social or political nature, and so Bloom is not saying that great literary works do not touch upon moral, social or political themes or that this might not be part of their appeal. His point, fairly understood, is merely that great works are never reducible to -- or to be judged by -- their political contributions, as the theorists of the "schools of resentment" would have it. Bloom often writes hyperbolically, as you know, and so it's easy to find out-of-context exaggerations like the one about relevance that you latch onto and use to caricature his approach, but it's not fair to him or to your students. You also blithely dismiss the theory of the "anxiety of influence" as "silly," but you do not present it in any manner that could be comprehended or appreciated by anyone. The idea is that would-be-artists are moved to create in a particular medium, such as literature, by experiencing and falling in love with the works of their predecessors, but those works also naturally create anxiety because they overdetermine the new would-be-artist's own vision. Think of teenagers who read something they love (assuming teenagers still read anything today) and then are moved to write something themselves. Chances are that whatever those kids produce will wind up being thoroughly derivative, a pale imitation. As they mature, they have to work very hard and struggle with themselves to outgrow and overcome their predecessors' influence, to get out of their shadow in the same manner that, for example, an aspiring academic mentored by a towering intellect is necessarily in an agonistic relationship with his mentor, notwithstanding the mentor's formative influence on his would-be-successor. Most of those who try to escape the influence of strong predecessors will fail, of course. In this way, influence is a destructive force that robs people of their opportunities to create (in contrast to the traditional notion of benign inspiration). This is a deep and profound insight of Bloom's and not remotely "silly." It's fine to critique it, but you can't simply facilely wave it away. I value your perspective and agree with you in many respects, but you can do better than debating with lampooned versions of monumental theorists like Harold Bloom.

Fully endorse John Martin's comments. His statements present a clear and concise assessment of Harold Bloom's thoughts and writings. Bravo!

How much of canon problems remain outside university class format, for independent people who want as full an intellectual experience as possible? I appreciate exegeses that come from public profs like here, so the texts they choose can semi-determine my awareness of texts, but what about the list part of the canon?

who else got here through Jordan Peterson's FB fan page?

China was not a Soviet ally :)

Is your approach not a Christian literary theory? It would seem the identity politics detest, you also espouse. Also, as a member of the liberal left I wish you would not conflate us with identity politics and literary theory. We mostly agree with Bloom--At least I do..

The Church was, is, and will always be the authority to decide what books contstitutes the Canon. You have no credibility to interpret that authority because you do not belong to the Magisterium of the Church. The standard you use for the literary canon cannot be applied to the Canon of Scriptures.