Harold Blooms Centers of Western Canon

Explore Harold Bloom's Centers of the Western Canon, featuring his definitive list of essential books and authors that shape literary greatness. Discover Bloom's influential literary critique and must-read works.

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ID: 0802141919
(Type: books)
The Iliad Cover
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The Iliad

by Homer

The great war epic of Western literature, translated by acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles, and featured in the Netflix series The OA A Penguin Classic Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace. Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer’s poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad’s mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls “an astonishing performance.” This Penguin Classics Deluxe edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. 9780140275360
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ID: 0140448144
(Type: books)
The Aeneid Cover
Book

The Aeneid

by Virgil

"Fitzgerald's [translation] is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come." —New York Review of Books Virgil's great epic transforms the Homeric tradition into a triumphal statement of the Roman civilizing mission—translated by Robert Fitzgerald.
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ID: 0195004124
(Type: books)
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ID: 014042234X
(Type: books)
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ID: 0140714901
(Type: books)
Don Quixote Cover
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Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes

A definitive English translation of the sixteenth-century classic follows the adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through Spain and become subject to the noble knight-errant's fanciful imagination. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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ID: 014044730X
(Type: books)
Paradise Lost Cover
Book

Paradise Lost

by John Milton

John Milton's celebrated epic poem exploring the cosmological, moral and spiritual origins of man's existence A Penguin Classic In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time, populated by a memorable gallery of grotesques. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked, innocent Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his fifties - blind, bitterly disappointed by the Restoration and in danger of execution - Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intense debate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men', or exposes the cruelty of Christianity. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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ID: 0192836366
(Type: books)
The Major Works Cover
Book

The Major Works

by William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth, the Major Works presents a selection of Wordsworth's essays and a collection of his major poems. The study includes recommended additional reading and notes to give the essence of his work and thinking processes.
Persuasion Cover
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Persuasion

by Jane Austen

Jane Austen's beloved and subtly subversive final novel of romantic tension and second chances. Now a motion picture from Netflix starring Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding, and a TikTok Book Club Pick. At twenty-­seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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ID: 0195183428
(Type: books)
complete poems of Emily Dickinson Cover
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complete poems of Emily Dickinson

 

No summary available.
Bleak House Cover
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Bleak House

by Charles Dickens

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Nicola Bradbury.
Middlemarch (Penguin Classics) Cover
Book

Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)

 

No summary available.
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ID: 0812967119
(Type: books)
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ID: 019283746X
(Type: books)
In Search of Lost Time Cover
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In Search of Lost Time

by Marcel Proust

The first installment of the French author's multivolume autobiographical novel, originally published in 1913, in which he recalls his childhood and first infatuation.
Finnegans wake Cover
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Finnegans wake

 

No summary available.
The Castle Cover
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The Castle

by Franz Kafka

From the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial—one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman. Arriving in a village to take up the position of land surveyor for the mysterious lord of a castle, the character known as K. finds himself in a bitter and baffling struggle to contact his new employer and go about his duties. The Castle's original manuscript was left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power previously unknown to English language readers.
Orlando Cover
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Orlando

 

No summary available.
Three Novels Cover
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Three Novels

by Samuel Beckett

No summary available.