THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501050376
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBOTHAM
LENGTH: Long : 215 lines
THE DEBATE OVER the literary canon is now in full Bloom, so to speak, but it's not likely to be resolved soon.
After all, the conflict is not just about college reading lists. It's about which books we value as a society. And as such, it reflects a fundamental dilemma: Should we, as a nation, strive toward some semblance of cultural unity, or should we simply celebrate our cultural differences, then try to get along as best we can?
Needless to say, there is no simple answer to this question. But it's worth grappling with. And there's no better way to get a handle on it than to consider the arguments between multiculturalists and literary traditionalists.
Battles over the content of liberal arts curricula are not new. As several literary scholars have pointed out, teaching Shakespeare instead of the Greek and Latin classics was, at one time, considered a radical innovation. In 1987, however, a transformation occurred with the publication of The Closing of the American Mind, by the late Allan Bloom. Suddenly the debate was no longer limited to academia. Almost overnight, it had become a matter of public concern.
Bloom's book was not about the literary canon per se. It was about a general decline in the quality of higher education and the insidious effects of moral relativism on our society. But throughout the book, Bloom kept coming back to the classics of Western thought.
The problem with higher education, he believed, was that universities no longer prescribe a traditional and uniform core humanities curriculum. Left to their own devices, he claimed, students now chose courses pretty much according to their own whims - or worse, according to some political agenda dictated by left-wing faculty. As a result, he noted, few of them graduate with an appreciation of our civilization's intellectual foundations. Moreover, while many students criticize these foundations, they are rarely able to articulate the reasons for their views.
The only serious solution to this problem, Bloom suggested, is a return to ``the good old Great Books approach, in which liberal education means reading certain generally recognized texts. . . '' Such works, he argued, acquaint students with ``the big questions'' and provide clues as to ``how to go about answering them.'' What's more, they provide a ``fund of shared experiences and thoughts.''
Despite its deeply intellectual tone, the book soared to the top of the best-seller lists. But many critics - especially those on the political left - dismissed it as a reactionary diatribe. Pushing the so-called classics, these critics argued, was nothing more than a veiled attempt by white men to retain control over our increasingly diverse culture. The best way to improve the liberal arts curriculum, they countered, was to open it up to works by women, blacks and other minorities.
Now the debate has come full circle with the publication of The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (no relation to Allan). The heart of the book is a series of essays on the 26 writers whom Bloom considers central to the canon. He regards Shakespeare as the most important by far, but the core list also includes Dante, Milton, Cervantes, Montaigne, Tolstoy, Whitman, Joyce, Beckett and other writers who are part of most conventional reading lists.
The Closing of the American Mind and The Western Canon are very different. Whereas the tone of the former is moralistic, the latter dismisses the idea that the canon can provide moral guidance.
``The silliest way to defend the canon,'' Harold Bloom writes, ``is to insist that it incarnates all of the seven deadly moral virtues that make up our supposed range of normative values and democratic principles. This is palpably untrue.'' Nevertheless, the books converge on two important points: first, that the reading of great literature (which in its broadest sense includes philosophy and history) aids us in our quest for self-knowledge; and second, that feminists and multiculturalists - by politicizing the study of literature - have unleashed ``mere anarchy'' on ``the learned world.''
Over the past decade, many scholars, journalists and political leaders have taken a similar position. About the same time that Allan Bloom's book hit the best-seller lists, for example, Secretary of Education William Bennett addressed an audience at Stanford University, which was altering its humanities curriculum in the name of cultural diversity. Bennett argued that the curriculum should focus on the great books of Western thought simply because ``the West is the culture in which we live.''
James Atlas, an editor with The New York Times Magazine, picked up on this theme in The Book Wars: What It Takes To Be Educated In America (1990), a remarkably balanced analysis of the debate. Atlas recognized the importance of culturally diverse reading lists. But, in the end, he agreed with the traditionalists. ``Only a nation schooled in basic values. . . will grasp the negotiation between personal freedom and collective self-interest that is the essence of our American democracy. Those ideas are learned in books. The Great Books. The best that has been thought and said. The canon.''
The only problem with Atlas' book is that it does not fully address the multiculturalists' concerns. Scattered throughout are fond recollections of the author's own experiences with literary classics. But the very personal nature of these references raises an important question. What is to become of the students who aren't moved by Western European and Anglo-American literature the way Atlas was?
Multiculturalists argue that Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales and other works by ``dead white European males'' have stood the test of time only because white men of European descent have established the criteria by which literature is judged. Whether these men admit it, the multiculturalists argue, their judgments are shaped by cultural prejudices. We must recognize this, they argue, and balance curricula with works by writers who bring other cultural experiences to the table.
The logical extension of this argument is that no work of literature is inherently superior to any other. Indeed, the most radical canon-busters would probably assert that the plays of Shakespeare have no more literary value than the novels of Alice Walker or Shusaku Endo. Most people would reflexively scoff at this argument, and the cultural conservatives have gained a lot of mileage by dwelling on the ``absurdity'' of such views. But when the radical multiculturalist position is simply dismissed with a sneer, students, and others who are interested in the debate, lose out.
The level of the debate would be raised considerably if the traditionalists, instead of simply digging in their heels, paid more attention in their writings to the question of why certain books deserve to be included in the canon. Bloom's book is unusual because it does just that. His essay on Shakespeare, for example, explains in clear, compelling language why the Bard's great tragedies have more universal appeal than any other literature in history.
Unfortunately, one book - particularly one as intellectually challenging as Bloom's - isn't likely to alter the tone of the Great Books controversy. Most of the traditionalists, with the exception of Atlas and a few other politically moderate thinkers, remain intent on depicting all multiculturalists as radical lunatics. They appear to have no interest in approaching the debate with respect for the other side. The multiculturalists, meanwhile, have proved to be wholly ineffective at explaining their position to the public.
As Duke University Professor Stanley Fish has pointed out, ``there is no evidence that either Shakespeare or those who teach him have been run out of the academy by an intolerant coalition of Marxists, rabid feminists, godless deconstructionists, and diseased gays.''
In his collection of essays, There's No Such Thing As Free Speech. . . and it's a good thing too,'' Fish notes that he is widely regarded as a leading proponent of multiculturalism. In reality, he writes, the traditional curriculum focusing on Chaucer, Shakespeare, et. al. is firmly in place at Duke. Moreover, Fish has devoted his career to the study and teaching of Milton, John Dunne, Francis Bacon and other ``canonical male authors.'' Fish does believe the canon should be opened up to include more works by women and minorities. But he believes there's no reason these works cannot be included in a curriculum that also includes the so-called classics.
The traditionalists counter Fish's argument with an obvious point: There is only so much time in the day, and in the school year, in which to study literature. As soon as we begin requiring multicultural studies, or even giving students the option of choosing between Chaucer and Chinua Achebe, we'll lose an opportunity to give all students a sense of our common cultural heritage.
Ultimately, both the traditionalists and the multiculturalists have a point. If American society is to endure as a society - and not as a collection of competing groups - we must share a knowledge and appreciation of our culture's intellectual underpinnings. On the other hand, anything worthy of being called ``the canon'' must reflect our nation's cultural diversity. In American universities, an infusion of multicultural literature is already well under way. Such change is inevitable and will be ongoing. But it will not displace the greatest works of Western literature.
For the individual reader, of course, the central question remains: What does it mean to call a book ``great''? Bloom supplies a partial answer in The Western Canon. Great literature, he writes, does not exist to give us pleasure, but rather ``the high unpleasure or more difficult pleasure that a lesser text will not provide.'' The reader of difficult books is rewarded, in other words, not with a few hours of diversion but with an epiphany - a revelation, or series of revelations, about the human condition. Books that yield such ``difficult pleasures'' tend to last beyond the generation during which they were written. Moreover, like Shakespeare's plays, they appeal to people of all cultures.
The problem is, when we limit the canon to the traditional list of great books, we miss out on works of other cultures that also can transcend time and culture boundaries.
Serious readers will never reach an absolute consensus on this matter. As a result, the literary canon is best approached by each of us with a mixture of skepticism and respect. No one made this point more effectively than Ralph Waldo Emerson when he addressed the 1837 Harvard graduating class.
``Meek young men,'' he wrote, ``grow up in libraries believing it is their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.'' MEMO: Tom Robotham is a writer and historian who lives in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: JOHN CORBITT/Staff
Graphics
HAROLD BLOOM'S TOP 26
In his book ``The Western Canon,'' scholar Harold Bloom names the 26
authors he considers most important:
1) William Shakespeare
2) Dante
3) Geoffrey Chaucer
4) Miguel de Cervantes
5) Michel Eyquem
6) Moliere
7) John Milton
8) Samuel Johnson
9) Charles Dickens
10) George Eliot
11) Leo Tolstoy
12) Henrik Ibsen
13) Sigmund Freud
14) Marcel Proust
15) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
16) William Wordsworth
17) Jane Austen
18) Walt Whitman
19) Emily Dickinson
20) James Joyce
21) Virginia Woolf
22) Franz Kafka
23) Pablo Neruda
24) Jorge Luis Borges
25) Fernando Pessoa
26) Samuel Beckett
``NEW'' GREAT BOOKS
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB