This past winter, following pressure from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the College Board “purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism” from its AP African American Studies curriculum. Since 2020, we seem to have found ourselves in a heated cultural debate regarding the inclusion of specific literary and historical works in American school curricula. As these issues have become increasingly enmeshed in our political debates, texts and ideas once confined to academia now fuel the culture war being waged in viral tweets, front-page news, and even congressional hearings. It is essential to recognize, however, that much of this debate is not entirely new. Curricula always evolve, not only because of new discoveries or demographic changes but also because the construction of our collective identity is always in flux. While we may never arrive at some broad consensus, we can better understand the roots of our current culture war by looking at an earlier one, sometimes known as the “Canon Wars” of the 1980s and 1990s. In those decades, novelist and Princeton Professor Toni Morrison publicly clashed with literary critic and Yale Professor Harold Bloom over what works should be universally included in the Western literary canon. Ultimately, the “Canon Wars” never yielded a definitive solution to which works belong in the canon or even to the canon’s best organizing principle. But by reexamining this debate, we can discover valuable insights and perhaps even potential resolutions for our contemporary cultural and academic conflicts.
The concept of the literary canon posits that specific works possess enduring cultural relevance owing to their ongoing influence or their historical significance. Canonical works often exemplify a particular artistic movement (such as Romanticism), cultural or religious ideology (such as Confucianism or Stoicism), or historical period (such as the Enlightenment). However, some works may be included in the canon based on their exceptional aesthetic accomplishments alone. Typically, a canonical work is regarded as embodying the pinnacle of human literary accomplishment and ingenuity. For centuries, the Western literary canon remained mostly stable, and as such, it steadily reinforced a European system of classical education that made its way to American shores through colonization. However, the 1970s saw a significant shift when a group of literary scholars, led by Toni Morrison, publicly challenged the literary canon. Specifically, Morrison began to question whether the canon was functioning more as a form of social oppression than an ideal core curriculum. As a solution, she advocated for the inclusion of literary works authored by members of historically oppressed groups. Not only had the literary merit of such works been overlooked, Morrison argued, but also the very definition of canon needed to expand to include considerations of a work’s social impact. Social impact, in this view, rendered a work historically significant and justified its inclusion in the canon. Controversy soon followed as Harold Bloom, one of the most important and vocal critics of the time, pushed back against this change in criteria. Bloom maintained that even if the works that Morrison championed possessed literary merit, including them in the canon based on social or political considerations would inevitably compromise the canon’s integrity. In his view, works should be deemed canonical solely based on their aesthetic qualities, mostly irrespective of the cultural contexts of their creation. This guiding principle of aesthetic quality would allow the canon to stand as a living testament to human artistic achievement. As both sides entrenched themselves in their positions, the canon wars ignited.
Bloom’s position was not so much that the existing literary canon should be preserved but that the canon should be motivated by the “autonomy of the aesthetic.” He even published a list of what he believed were the 26 authors of the literary canon. He argued that these canonical writers—those ranging from the ancient period until now—have withstood the test of time because they say something universal about human nature, something that transcended their own era. In his view, sociopolitical activism, while admirable, is too dependent upon the cultural contexts of a given era to evaluate the aesthetic quality of a given poem, novel, or play. Such activism cannot be the driving force behind a canon seeking to represent the most fundamental aspects of human nature over time; it can only undermine the autonomy of the aesthetic. In sum, Bloom was opposed to the expansion of the literary canon for sociopolitical considerations (whose advocates he pejoratively termed the “School of Resentment”) because he believed aesthetically superior works would be replaced by inferior writing.
Some considered Harold Bloom’s criteria as “old-fashioned” insofar as it fundamentally disregarded how the preservation of these criteria had historically marginalized certain groups of people. Toni Morrison was one of these critics, who was far more social constructionist in her view of canons. She considered literary canons to be “contingent products of history and associated forms of domination and erasure” rather than “timeless embodiments of universal human experiences or values.” Her solution was to expand the canon to include more minorities and those whose voices were suppressed throughout history. In many ways, her vision was similar to the vision of many post-colonialists who hoped to recover the “subaltern” (groups of people who have been displaced or marginalized from the hierarchy of power and who have thus been excluded from the general history of their period). Morrison believed in creating a new method of literary scholarship and pedagogy that could serve as “a process of reclaiming that historical complexity,” which had been lost from the literary canon due to the historical domination of some groups by others. Just as subaltern studies seek to remedy this historical exclusion by examining “histories from below,” Morrison sought to expand the literary imagination by opening the canon to previously excluded groups. Crucial to Morrison’s view of the literary canon was her understanding of language itself, an understanding influenced by post-structuralist and neo-Marxist thought. Morrison viewed language not as neutral or objective—a mere tool for description—but as a complex web, a sociocultural repository of personal and collective history. In her eyes, language—including literature and the written word—is shaped by and actively shapes the world we all experience. To that end, she believed that literature could help create a more equitable society, especially by recovering diverse and previously oppressed perspectives. She demonstrated this belief with her novel A Mercy, whose story she suffuses with the perspectives of groups previously excluded from American colonial history: slaves, Native Americans, and women. After spending time with Morrison’s characters and learning their backstories, we come away from A Mercy understanding the entire novel to be an origin story of its own, a tapestry of subaltern perspectives traditionally left out of the mythology of America’s own origin story. In imagining the lives and stories of characters marginalized in colonial America, Morrison sought to recover and reinvigorate the history of the subaltern groups to which they belonged. In so doing, she altered and expanded our present understanding of American history. Ultimately, Morrison believed that the same kind of expansion of perspective she accomplished in A Mercy could be achieved through the inclusion of works by oppressed groups in the literary canon.
As we review the debate between both scholars, we can find quite a bit to learn and apply to our intellectual and sociopolitical struggles. First, we can learn from Morrison’s successes, specifically the ways in which she and her colleagues successfully argued for the expansion of the canon to include works by historically marginalized authors. This expansion was enabled by—and further enabled—the critique of previously-hidden power dynamics in what was determined canonical cultural production. Lastly, their efforts successfully argued for deeper study of literature from non-Western cultures and subcultures that were historically oppressed within the West.
We also have something to learn from Bloom’s argument, namely the importance of judging a literary work on its aesthetic qualities and understanding tradition. While Bloom certainly overstretched in his defense of the canon, we should still always consider the aesthetic qualities of the works we hold up as the highest forms of human achievement and collective wisdom. We can further recognize the truth in Bloom’s assessment that great literature represents universal human experience. Bloom’s insight, after all, is that the autonomy of the aesthetic is precisely what allows us to connect with all works of literature—whether ancient, modern, dominant, or subaltern. From Bloom’s example we must also learn caution, for in his aggressive defense of the canon he displayed firsthand how the canon could be used as a tool of oppression and erasure and he risked embodying the exclusionary tendencies Morrison critiqued. While Bloom would no doubt shudder at Ron DeSantis’s assault on academic freedom, some may find echoes of what we might call ‘canon policing’ in our current political right’s obsession with critical race theory and other subaltern academic frameworks. As Morrison argued, our focus as a nation should be on promoting inclusion rather than exclusion. It is crucial for us as a society to recognize this dynamic and take steps to prevent it from happening.
Ultimately, the legacy of the canon debate seems to have favored Morrison and her colleagues. As a result of her efforts, the study of literature now incorporates more diverse voices and perspectives, ensuring that students are exposed to a wide range of experiences and viewpoints. Furthermore, literary studies have expanded to include the social, political, and historical context in which works were written. As a result, the field now champions an interdisciplinary approach to literary analysis that connects literature to other fields of study and fosters a deeper understanding of complex societal issues. Lastly, it has become widely accepted that literature contributes to shaping social awareness and promoting equity, leading marginalized voices to receive more attention in literary studies. These shifts continue to create a more inclusive and comprehensive approach to literary education, but it is ultimately up to us to ensure that this legacy remains intact.
Works Cited
Hartocollis, Anemona, and Eliza Fawcett. “The College Board Strips down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies.” The New York Times, 1 Feb. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/college-board-advanced-placement-african-american-studies.html.
Karaganis, Joe, and David McClure. “Opinion | Did Harold Bloom or Toni Morrison Win the Literary Canon Wars?” The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/opinion/sunday/harold-bloom-canon.html.
Morrison, Toni. “The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993.” NobelPrize.org, 2019, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/.
Reed, Betsy. “Harold Bloom’s Defence of Western Greats Blinded Him to Other Cultures | Kenan Malik.” The Guardian, 20 Oct. 2019, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/20/harold-bloom-defence-of-western-greats-blinded-him-to-other-cultures.