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PARTISAN REVIEW
Harold Bloom's heterodoxy was always of a different kind. It con–
sisted in his inventing one critical theory after another with hardly a nod
toward received opinion. His anti-traditionalism consisted not in direct
attacks like Herrnstein Smith's, or Fish's, or Lentricchia's. Their threat
was like that of the atheist toward religion; Bloom's was like the more
troubling indifference of someone who functions as though God simply
does not exist.
As with Hart's favorable reception of Lentricchia's apparent depar–
ture from theory, Bloom's recent book,
The Western Canon,
has in–
spired enthusiasm among beleagured traditionalists. In their view, with his
defense of the canon, Bloom has emerged as a champion of the tradi–
tional. Admittedly, his contemptuous dismissal of what he calls the
School of Resentment (that is, of "Feminists, Afrocentrists, Marxists,
Foucault-inspired New Historicists, or Deconstructors") is vigorous. But
he also dismisses defenders of the canon. And he, too, attempts to posi–
tion himself on a middle ground. He is not concerned, he writes, with
the debate between the School of Resentment and "right-wing defenders
of the Canon, who wish to preserve it for its supposed (and nonexistent)
moral values." Elsewhere he condemns "ideological defenses" of the
canon for being "as pernicious in regard to aesthetic values as the on–
slaughts of attackers. "
But these are caricatures. Not all "right-wing" defenders of the
canon emphasize moral values - and certainly not to the exclusion of
aesthetic judgment. Bloom, though, adopts the extreme aestheticist con–
tention that literature has no ethical or moral effect. He correctly points
out that "the undeniable economics of Literature" (Lentricchia's
concern) "do not determine questions of aesthetic supremacy." But
Bloom soon contradicts himself. The canon turns out to be "the
authentic foundation for social thinking." In other words, it serves a
social and perhaps even moral function very like that claimed by its
"right-wing" defenders.
But by resting his defense of the canon on personal opinions about
style, Bloom puts the traditionalist case on its weakest possible footing.
He pronounces T . S. Eliot a canonical author thanks to his stylistic in–
fluence on the poet Hart Crane. "Crane rejected Eliot's vision but could
not evade Eliot's idiom," Bloom asserts. And he concludes that "great
styles are sufficient for canonicity because they possess the power of con–
tamination, and contamination is the pragmatic test for canon forma–
tion." But in 1977, again evaluating famous writers no less authorita–
tively, Bloom made the following pronouncement in
The New York
Times Book Review:
"Most overrated:
T.
S. Eliot, all of him, verse and
