Content area
Full Text
IN 1994 HAROLD Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale, and arguably the most important -- and surely the best read -- literary commentator of our times, authored The Western Canon: Books and Schools of the Ages. In this book Bloom produced a list of hundreds of canonical books -- works that matter most. The politically correct rebellion against Dead White European Male authors has no place in Bloom's choices. In fact, the only black writer who succeeded in entering Bloom's canon was Frederick Douglass, who was included for his work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Bloom did concede that works by black authors Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and several others might one day be considered as part of the literary canon if they withstand the test of time. But as of now they remain outside the select group of great literary works.
Having established a decade ago the great canon of English literature, Bloom's latest effort attempts the same...