Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
himself) as George Orwell's essay "Lear,
Tolstoi and the Fool," but without acknowledging
it. Shakespeare was also a problem
for Freud, whose entire work is according
to Bloom merely "prosified Shakespeare."
Bloom has fun with Freud's fervent belief
in Thomas Looney's theory that the Bard's
works were actually composed by the Earl
of Oxford: "misreading Shakespeare's
works was not enough for Freud; the
threatening precursor had to be exposed,
dismissed, disgraced." Bloom also traces
Joyce's engagement with Shakespeare
through the Hamlet theme in Ulysses.
Bloom's Western Canon, centred on
Shakespeare, extends from Dante to
Beckett: Endgame is described as "literature's
last stand," implying that the Canon
may have been closing even before the
School of Resentment got to work. The lists
at the end, however, extend these limits
back to the classics (in Sanskrit as well as
Greek and Latin), and forward to the contemporary
scene, the latter suggesting that
the Canon can still be opened. The twentysix
authors who get a chapter (or part) are
selected for their centrality to their national
canons (Dante for Italy, Goethe for
Germany, Cervantes for Spain, and so on),
but also to represent canonical forms like
the novel. But despite Bloom's disparaging
remarks about historical "context," the
main structure for the book is chronological
(with the sole exception of
Shakespeare). Bloom adapts Vico's cycle of
Ages into a sequence of the Aristocratic Age
(Dante to Goethe), the Democratic Age
(essentially the Nineteenth Century), and
the Chaotic Age (the Twentieth), but never
really specifies what effect this has on the
Canon. The Theocratic Age (pre-Dante) is
not covered in the text, but there are
prophetic hints of an imminent return to a
new Theocratic Age, only a few years away,
in which "ignorance of the Koran is foolish
and increasingly dangerous," and Bloom is
careful to include it in the Western Canon.
Where the School of Resentment stresses
group identity (race, class, gender, and so
on) Bloom emphasizes individuality and
universality. The canon contains only works
of universal scope, transcending time, place
and culture. Individual writers seek admission
through struggle with their predecessors.
For Bloom, literature is "an ongoing
contest," not between classes or other categories,
but between individual writers. The
goal is creative originality; only those who
do not imitate the Canon can be admitted
to it. The writer does not represent class or
anything else, and "will frequently betray
or neglect his class in order to advance his
own interests, which center entirely upon
individuation" This "desire to be different"
(a phrase of Nietzsche's which Bloom
alludes to twice) is common to readers and
writers. Readers, like writers, are essentially
"free and solitary" (where the Resenters see
them as socially constructed and categorized).
The aim of reading the Canon is "to
confront greatness directly," and thus realize
individuality through universality. The
canonical reader is not seeking the "pleasure
of the text," but the "high unpleasure
or more difficult pleasure" which leads up
to the aesthetic heights.
The critic must emulate the solitary
struggles of the writer and reader. Dr.
Johnson is chosen as the "canonical critic"
and gets a chapter to himself. He is praised
because he "directly confronts greatness
with a total response, to which he brings
his complete self." This demand for full
existential encounter with the text is reminiscent
of Leavis, though he is unmentioned
in the book. Bloom's own
encounters actually cite other criticism
more often than the stress on "directness"
would lead one to expect. Often the choice
of critics is refreshingly independent of
current fashion (W.G. Moore is preferred
as a critic of Molière, for example, or
Charles Williams of Dante), but at other
times Bloom quotes contemporaries who
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