Western canon
The Western canon is the body of high-culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, and such works are also valued throughout the globe. It is "a certain Western intellectual tradition that goes from, say, Socrates to Wittgenstein in philosophy, and from Homer to James Joyce in literature".[1]
Recent discussions on it emphasize cultural diversity within the canon. The canons of music and visual arts have broadened to encompass overlooked periods, while newer media like cinema grapple with a precarious position. Criticism arises, with some viewing changes as prioritizing activism over aesthetic values, often associated with Marxist critical theory.[2] Another critique highlights a narrow interpretation of the West, dominated by British and American culture, prompting calls for a more diverse canon.[2]
Evolution and criticism[edit]
More recent discussions have been centered on expanding the canon of books to include more women and racial minorities, while the canons of music and the visual arts have greatly expanded to cover the Middle Ages, and subsequent centuries once largely overlooked. But some examples of newer media such as cinema have attained a precarious position in the canon. Also during the twentieth century there has been a growing interest in the West, as well as globally, in major artistic works of the cultures of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, including the former colonies of European nations.
Expansion and changes to the canon have been criticized as promoting political and social activism at the expense of aesthetic values. Broadly, such criticism associates such changes with Marxist critical theory, including African-American studies, Marxist literary criticism, New Historicist criticism, feminist criticism and post-structuralism—specifically as promoted by Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.[2] Yale humanities professor and literary critic Harold Bloom labeled such approaches to modifying the canon as the School of Resentment.
A different criticism comes for narrow interpretation of the concept of the West. This criticism argues that the Western canon is dominated by British and American culture, with a small dose of ancient western classics and a few non-English works, primarily from other Western European countries (like Germany or France), and almost no works from other regions such as Eastern Europe.