Or take Toni Morrison, who died in August. This context is vital in understanding Dante, but one that Bloom largely ignored. It is also a poem that engages with the Christian tradition and, at a time when the relationship between faith and reason was being rethought within that tradition, particularly through the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, is itself an attempt to remake the moral landscape of Christianity. Photograph: Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Imagesĭante’s Divine Comedy is a superlative work of poetry. Toni Morrison: Bloom insisted that her Song of Solomon be judged purely aesthetically. We may judge the quality of a literary work in its own terms, but its social, political and historical context nevertheless remains vital in understanding it. Too often, though, Bloom conflated judgment and understanding. These may be dead white men but their works still matter (or, at least, should). He was right, too, that we have slipped into a culture in which too many even well-read people have never read Dante or Milton or Tolstoy. He was right that some books are more profound, more significant and more valuable than others. His legacy, however, is more complicated than such a polarisation suggests.īloom’s writing was often bloated and repetitive, his judgments frequently questionable, but his insistence on the importance of reading and of making aesthetic judgments was invaluable. It’s little wonder that Bloom became a central figure in the “culture wars” of the 1990s, embraced by conservatives and loathed by many on the left, for whom he was a champion of “dead white males”. He insisted, too, that the “western canon” – the body of great works that represents the triumphant best of western culture – was something to celebrate and defend. The quality of a poem or novel or play must be judged in its own terms social or political concerns were irrelevant in such judgment.

Bloom insisted on “the autonomy of the aesthetic”.

The Western Canon by Harold Bloom