Publisher's Synopsis
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages is a 1994 book by Harold Bloom on Western literature, in which Bloom defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as central to the canon. The Western Canon is Bloom's best-known book alongside The Anxiety of Influence (1973), and was a surprise bestseller upon its release in the United States. Bloom argues against what he calls the "School of Resentment," which includes feminist literary criticism, Marxist literary criticism, Lacanians, New Historicism, Deconstructionists, and semioticians. The Western Canon includes four appendices listing works that Bloom at the time considered canonical, stretching from earliest scriptures to Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Bloom would later disown the list, saying that it was written at his editor's insistence and distracted from the book's intention.
