/lit/ - Literature

i finally went ahead and made it. convince me against posting these up on the department wall... or dont

Some anons may faintly recall the thread I made last summer where I talked about wanting to write a manifesto against the School of Resentment, as I found the Critical Theory influenced political approaches to canonical texts and the tokenistic inclusion of writers from oppressed groups to be at odds with what I consider literary-and all other artistic-discussion should center around: aesthetic appreciation.

I've talked to my lectureres about this, and while they did take the time to respond (perhaps because I was the only one showing any interest at all) and even agree on certain things or make some effort (though again a tokenistic one) to focus more on the text itself rather than its cultural place, I can't help but feel that overall I've been brushed off with Frankfurt sophistry. So I've decided to fall back on the manifesto plan, although now I'm leaning towards simply designing a poster and hanging that up.

This is where I'm asking for your help. I'm thinking of assembling a bunch of quotes from writers with aestheticist views, then maybe writing a very minimal preface to it, or maybe not to save myself the embarrassment. So far I want to include Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom and Nabokov. Who else? Gimme quotes

Also how do I argue such a subjective position? It's self evident to me that art is an end in itself and not a utilitarian tool to improve people or examine culture from, but these are still popular notions, even on here. I'm aware that this issue will never not be subjective, but this blurry area is abused to discuss mediocre works and make the discussion much less relevant to art. Maybe I'll phrase my thoughts like I just did, acknowledging my subjectivity, and leave it at that. It's not hard to see my complaints when almost every text is being reduced to one of four political cliches.

Some anons may faintly recall the thread I made last summer where I talked about wanting to write a manifesto against the School of Resentment, as I found the Critical Theory influenced political approaches to canonical texts and the tokenistic inclusion of writers from "oppressed" groups to be at odds with what I consider literary-and all other artistic-discussion should center around: aesthetic appreciation.

I've talked to my lectureres about this, and while they did take the time to respond (perhaps because I was the only one showing any interest at all) and even agree on certain things or make some effort (though again a tokenistic one) to focus more on the text itself rather than its cultural place, I can't help but feel that overall I've been brushed off with Frankfurt sophistry. So I've decided to fall back on the manifesto plan, although now I'm leaning towards simply designing a poster and hanging that up.

This is where I'm asking for your help. I'm thinking of assembling a bunch of quotes from writers with aestheticist views, then maybe writing a very minimal preface to it, or maybe not to save myself the embarrassment. So far I want to include Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom and Nabokov. Who else? Gimme quotes

Also how do I argue such a subjective position? It's self evident to me that art is an end in itself and not a utilitarian tool to improve people or examine culture from, but these are still popular notions, even on here. I'm aware that this issue will never not be subjective, but this blurry area is abused to discuss mediocre works and make the discussion much less relevant to art. Maybe I'll phrase my thoughts like I just did, acknowledging my subjectivity, and leave it at that. It's not hard to see my complaints when almost every text is being reduced to one of four political cliches.

Will it make any sense if I read The Western Canon first and then the books that are mentioned or should I read the books first? I didn't have a proper literature class.

sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html
Go through Bloom's list and post the worst one you can find.
For me? It's Frank O'Hara's selected poems

>book of most influential writers
>doesn't include Greeks or Romans
Did he really think Samuel Beckett was more influential than Homer or Virgil?

im a lit student. when summer ends, i will buy a copy of pic related for each member of my english department and anonymously gift it to them in hopes that it makes a change in the school of resentment situation. im thinking of just leaving them on the doorstep of their office. am i dumb for thinking i can make a change, or that they haven't already read it? will i get kaczynski'd? will they at least find it cute?

Is the 'School of Resentment' a strictly American phenomenon? Or does it appear in academia across the pond as well?

No, really, what's wrong with understanding canonicity in light of its inseparability from and enmeshment in structures of power? Surely there must be more nuanced positions in existence besides "I love the canon uncritically!" and "I hate the canon because it's all dead white men!"

http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

Why didn't he put Dostoyevsky in Canon?

Help me make a solid list from greeks to present, a synthesis of the charts posted here as a complete guide to newcomers to literature and a companion to those looking to flesh out their reading lists. Too many people just read garbage off the NYT bestselling list and get no real literary grounding. We need something to point these bugmen towards to reestablish the western literary canon. Bloom’s list is too long for any non-academic to chew through, and it needs to be distilled.
Here’s what I have so far:

Homer: The Iliad
Homer: The Odyssey
Sophocles: Oedipus, Antigone
Plato: Dialogues, Republic
Aristotle: Ethics
Virgil: The Aeneid
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Cervantes: Don Quixote
William Shakespeare: Plays
Francis Bacon: Essays
Milton: Paradise Lost
Edmund Burke: ???
Molière: Misanthrope, Don Juan
Rousseau: Confessions, Emile
Voltaire: Candid
Goethe: Faust I, II., ???
Schiller: The Robbers, Mary Stewart
Victor Hugo: Les Mis, ???
Balzac: ???
Stendhal: ???
Zola: ???
Lord Byron: ???
Charles Dickens: ???
Richard Wagner: ???
Frederich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power
Pushkin:
Gogol:
Turgenev:
Dostoevsky:
Tolstoy:
Chekhov:
Emerson:
Whitman:
Hawthorne:
Melville:
Thoreau:
Twain:
Proust:
Sartre:
De Beauvoir:
Camus:
Shaw:
Joyce:
Huxley:
Kafka:
Benjamin:
Hemingway:
Pynchon:
Houellebecq:

Can someone convince me that the Western Canon is not just codeword for, "Shit white people have written"?

Seriously, what's the justification in grouping all of these disparate cultures and ethnicities together and treating them like they're some sort of homogeneous bloc? Italy shares more history with North Africa than it does with Norway (Rome even had an African emperor), yet Africa isn't included in the West even though Norway is. Similarly Ancient Greece, which we consider the pillar of the West, shared much more with Asia/Persia/Turkey than it did with Europe. The fucking Trojan War, on which those two well-known classics are based, was set in Turkey. There is literally nothing linking these different peoples together that would justify grouping them in this way.

I've heard it said that because in the modern day the West has a set of shared values the Western Canon is justified. But the values we share today are the product of liberal humanist philosophy and the French Revolution, so what's the justification for grouping us with the Vikings and the Tsarists and the 1600s British when those people had radically different values to us? And furthermore why does Bloom include Russia and others in the Western Canon when they have different values to us even to this day?

I can't get my mind around this. We don't share a language, we don't share a culture, we don't share history-- the only thing binding us together is race.

Like what the debate entails? Who is winning? What is the goal of each? Who are the major players on each side? Who is likely to win?

>implying women CAN understand books

>keeps going on and on about maturation
>look up author's ethnic background
Every. Single. Time.

I just picked this up from my local library. What am I in for?

Will reading this book be a waste of time compared to reading the works this book promotes?

ITT: books that give a good overview of the significant thinkers and ideas of western civilization

is pic-related worth reading?

>/lit/ hates Jane Austen
>/lit/ hates Charles Dickens
>/lit/ considers Harold Bloom to be the definitive authority on literature

explain

Is it me or is this book a bunch of shit?

I guess it's supposed to be about why these writers are great, and why their books should be in a canon, but he barely gives a proper argument and just says a bunch of random crap without explaining his ideas well. I often end up finishing a chapter and not knowing what the hell I was supposed to learn. He just says shit like, "Yes this is like Shakespeare," and then quotes a passage from the book saying it's great without explaining, and then quotes some other critics.

I guess I have to give him props for going against SJW teaching of literature, but because he can't argue, reading about his stance is useless to me.

Thoughts? I feel like, putting aside his irrational hate of T.S. Eliot, he is the most-correct modern critic.
Also, Harold Bloom general.

>>7545128
forgot my pic

>>7545112
>vollman

2/pleb

too contemporary/pleb

>>7545122
>foundation

10/pleb

>Warlock-Oakley Hall

4/pleb

>Paris Peasant-Louis Aragon

0/pleb

>Satantango-László Krasznahorkai

movie was better/pleb

>Mythologies-Roland Barthes

0/pleb

2/pleb overall well done