Speaking of 'Greatness'

Here is another literary critic who has defined greatness in literature: Harold Bloom made a list of the "Western Canon of Literature." I found this list online, I hope it's accurate.

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

As I was perusing it, I saw that Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was included but not Slaughterhouse Five. Why would that be? Also, Stoppard's Travesties made the list but not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I just thought this site/list was interesting and went along with what we had discussed in class about what should be included in the canon. Well, here it is, a *genuine?* canon.

I haven't counted the number of women writers in it, however, the list was just too long.

Standards and Greatness

Looking through the blog topics, I have noticed that no one has yet started a thread about our current question: “What should we read?” In discussing Arnold and Leavis, the two big topics in class were “can there be standards?” as well as “is there such a thing as greatness?” What we didn’t talk about and what I have been thinking about lately is the ramifications of taking the opposites of these questions. What I wonder is, how can there NOT be standards for literature? and, also, is there such a thing as “poorness” in literature? My guess is that, when you just read these questions, you immediately agree that there is no way that literature has NO standards and also, most people would probably agree that there is definitely such a thing as poor writing. If this is correct, then I don’t understand how people can argue that there is no way to discern standards for great writing. Anyone who was sitting in the middle group: can you explain? I believe that there MUST be at least some base set of standards! And, also, there seemed to be a lot of confusion on exactly what “great” means. If we can easily define “poor,” then why can we not do the same for “great?” If everyone could volunteer their thoughts on this, I think that it would be a very helpful discussion for everyone!

~ Kristen

In case you were wonding what Fish is doing these days

This was passed on to me by a former Theories student:

> Hi Dr. Chapman!
>
> I saw this on the New York Times today. I thought it was amusing that a staunch
> reader-response critic would critique the truth produced by an interpretive community.
> http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/

I have to say, it really does seem like he's trying to say that Clinton is saying something very particular, quite apart from what everyone else thinks she said...can anyone see any way that he is being consistent with his reader-response self?

Wes