Harold Bloom on the Literary Canon

According to Harold Bloom, Literary Canon refers to a classification of literature. It is a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place. For example, there can be a canon composed of works from a particular country, or works written within a specific set of years, or even a collection of works that were all written during a certain time period and within a certain region. In this way, a literary canon establishes a collection of similar or related literary works.

2. The school of resentment is a school that is composed of feminist, historicists, deconstructionists, and multi-culturists; among others all of who wish to widen the canon so as to include works of the oppressed. The school of resentment views the traditional canon politically, as a means the social elite drives home the inferiority of subject classes. School of Resentment is a term coined by critic Harold Bloom to describe related schools of literary criticism which have gained prominence in academia since the 1970s and which Bloom contends are preoccupied with political and social activism at the expense of aesthetic values.

3. Other challenges serious literature face in the modern world according to Bloom’s viewpoint are competing media and declining attention spans among citizens, and even the remaining readers. Canonical works demand great cognitive and imaginary effort on the part of the reader. Bloom believes the work that is in the Canon requires a sharp mind and a very open mind, and requires you to have an extent amount of education to understand it and it usually requires rereading. He believes the work favored by the school of resentment is shorter and much easier to read and cannot be reread. Bloom also believes those who read for aesthetic purpose will always be around to read the work in the canon.

4. Anxiety of influence is a writer’s sense of the crushing