The term "Western canon" denotes a body of books and, more broadly, music and art that
have been traditionally accepted by Western scholars as the most important and influential
in shaping Western culture.
As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit".
Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the development
of "high culture".
The idea of a Canon has been used to address the question What is Art?; according to this
approach, a work is art by comparison to the works in the canon, or conversely, any aesthetic
law to be valid should not rule out any of the works included in the canon.
The concept has become challenged by advocates of multiculturalism and critics who charge
that it has been influenced by racial, gender, and other biases.
Origins The process of listmaking—defining the boundaries
of the canon—is endless.
The philosopher John Searle has said: "In my experience there never was, in fact, a
fixed 'canon'; there was rather a certain set of tentative judgments about what had
importance and quality.
Such judgments are always subject to revision, and in fact they were constantly being revised."
One of the notable attempts at compiling an authoritative canon in the English-speaking
world was the Great Books of the Western World program.
This program, developed in the middle third of the 20th century, grew out of the curriculum
at the University of Chicago.
University president Robert Maynard Hutchins and his collaborator Mortimer Adler developed
a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading
clubs to the general public.
An earlier attempt, the Harvard Classics, was promulgated by Harvard University president
Charles W. Eliot, whose thesis was the same as Carlyle's:
... The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Debate There has been an ongoing debate, motivated
by politics and social agendas, over the nature and status of the canon since at least the
1960s, much of which is rooted in critical theory, feminism, critical race theory, and
Marxist attacks against capitalism and classical liberal principles.
In the United States, in particular, the canon has been attacked as a compendium of books
written mainly by "dead European men", that does not represent the viewpoints of many
in contemporary societies around the world.
Allan Bloom in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, has disagreed strongly.
Yale University Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom has also argued strongly in favor of
the canon, and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in many institutions,
though its implications continue to be debated.
Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political
interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous.
As John Searle has written:
There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student
generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from Socrates
through the Federalist Papers, through the writings of Mill and Marx, down to the twentieth
century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics
and pieties.
Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional
pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which
to critically analyze American culture and institutions.
Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive.
The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which
must be unmasked.
One of the main objections to a canon of literature is the question of authority—who should
have the power to determine what works are worth reading and teaching?
Searle's rebuttal suggests that "one obvious difficulty with it [i.e., arguments against
hierarchical ranking of books] is that if it were valid, it would argue against any
set of required readings whatever; indeed, any list you care to make about anything automatically
creates two categories, those that are on the list and those that are not."
Works Works which are commonly included in the canon
include works of fiction such as some epic poems, poetry, music, drama, novels, and other
assorted forms of literature from the many diverse Western cultures.
Many non-fiction works are also listed, primarily from the areas of religion, mythology, science,
philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, and history.
Works which directly address the canon: Debating the Canon: A Reader from Addison
to Nafisi by Lee Morrissey The History of Western Literature by Otto
Maria Carpeaux The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other
Reflections on the Classics by Bernard Knox (ISBN 9780393312331.
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
Other: "The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy" by E.D.
Hirsch Examples
Examples of shorter canonical lists of most important works include the following:
The Big Read by the BBC and its spin-offs in Bulgaria, Germany, and Hungary
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade Directed Studies at Yale University curriculum
Great Books Great Books of the Western World
The Harvard Classics Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century – books
of the 20th century Modern Library 100 Best Novels – English-language
novels of the 20th century ZEIT-Bibliothek der 100 Bücher German Die
Zeit list of 100 books Library of America
University reading lists reflect the Western canon:
Fordham University's Honors Program Curriculum Brigham Young University's Honors Program's
Great Works List Colgate University's required Western Traditions
class University of Chicago Core Curriculum
Columbia College Core Curriculum Concordia University's Liberal Arts College
Dartmouth College's Dialogues With the Classics program
Hillsdale College's Great Books and Western Heritage classes
New York University's mandatory Texts and Ideas course
Oglethorpe University's mandatory Core Curriculum sequence
Princeton University's Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture
St. John's College Great Books reading list Saint Mary's College of California Collegiate
Seminar Stanford University's Program in Structured
Liberal Education curriculum University of Notre Dame's Program of Liberal
Studies curriculum Boston College's Perspectives Program and
Honors Program Reed College's Humanities 110
Trinity Western University's Great Books Reading List
Longer, more comprehensive, lists include the following:
Everyman's Library The Modern Library
Penguin Classics Oxford World's Classics
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Chronological brackets:
Philosopher John Searle suggests that the Western canon can be roughly defined as "a
certain Western intellectual tradition that goes from, say, Socrates to Wittgenstein in
philosophy, and from Homer to James Joyce in literature..."
See also Canons of Elizabethan poetry
Easton Press – Books That Changed the World series
Franklin Library – Great Books of the Western World and Oxford Library of the World's Great
Books series Great Conversation
Classic book World literature
Liberal arts List of books banned by governments
Notes and references
External links "The English Literary Canon – a work in
progress" "Great Books Lists: Lists of Classics, Eastern
and Western" "World Canonical Texts"
"Harold Bloom's canon" Harold Bloom's Western Canon, with links to
online texts "Great Ideas" Website
A "Great Books" Website Western Canon Great Books University
Columbia College Core Curriculum The World's Greatest Books page at Project
Gutenberg of Australia Greater Books - a site documenting lists of
"great books," classics, canons