Canons V

III
The differing approaches to the Canon issue may be summarised under six headings. (which I pinched from Bill Readings)
1 - Conservative Idealism
The aim of this position as far as possible is preservation of the “existing” Canon. In such literature may be found transcendental and uplifting values. They represent an ideal of literary merit. The Canon is “closed”. There is a growing band of more conservative authors, such as Robert Alter, Allan Bloom and Alvin Kernan who want to defend the Canon, or to bemoan its loss as an armageddon for Western culture. David Lehmann in his book Signs of the Times - Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man, writes of a “programmatic assault now in progress against the venerable idea of the Canon....The determination of a Canon, a syllabus, a reading list of any kind, is stripped of all but political considerations, with results that are nothing if not arrogant” .

Harold Bloom, as we have seen, argues vehemently that Canonical writings possess a purely aesthetic superiority, which in part explains how they have attained their Canonical status.