/lit/ - Literature

>>20684867
>Great Books of the Western World
>Western World
It's literally in the title.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World

If you want Eastern, go with The Chinese Classics or the Indian Classics, generally. Some of the Japanese stuff is good too, generally.

>>20684867
Literary canon as a concept has merit, but it should simply be different, from culture to culture, country to country. Plenty of originally English language stories and poems still get read in foreign countries, but there isn't really a reason for unwarranted English supremacy, just allow the best works to rise to another country's canon if their academics and general public are receptive to the text in question. If there is interest in Classical Chinese literature in England, and it becomes especially popular to warrant a place for one or more books as part of the literary canon there, then that is fine.

>>20684867
The literary canon is a result of you speaking English and presumably holding English culture and norms, you fucking retard.

The Freud in that series hasn't aged well, but overall it's a great set. Could use some medieval verse.

I did notice that only Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel have books all their own as far as philosophers go. (Arguably Bacon has his own book, but a good chunk of that is science).

Makes sense, I'd say in historical influence these are the big four, even if others are currently more popular (Nietzsche for example).

Interesting that they both came in pairs.

>>20684867
>a result of power structures and white males controlling what is deemed significant
>or are these books actually special?
Those things are not mutually exclusive, and I would tend to say that they are contingent upon one another. Western culture, let alone Western civilization, would not exist if not for White men, and the Western Canon™ is a greatest hits album of what made Westerners who we are today. The West, Western civilization, and Western culture are inseparable from Westerners.

>>20684867

Yes to both. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, anon, and the suggestion that they are is a jew trick.

>>20685505
West gay

>>20684867
The best works are the most popular; for most of history until literature lost its luster men were the most accomplished writers (and the only ones able to get something published); european literature dominates for us in the (european derived) western hemisphere.
Yes, women wrote much in other cultures. No, it’s not racist that we don’t read them, it would be almost as raxist as actively disregarding them to force everyone to read them among what history has presented us, most people simply don’t know anything about let’s say Iranian literature.
Don’t forget that writing fiction often was a taboo in many cultures including European ones, where history was science but a novel nothing but a waste of time spreading decadent ideas etc., see for a more unbroken tradition in the denial of fiction China.. who also developed something similar to the novel around the same time as Europe; but regardless, less technical cultures woulf struggle to produce what we reasonably and only call literature without fiction or secularisation, autonomy from the state also and PRINT!

they are actually special to white men
hope you are one

>>20684867
Begone, tranny

>>20685520
Okay Guenon

>>20684867
What I don't get is why they (by which I mean the ones pushing for diversity) don't just ADD diverse writers to the Western canon, like Bloom did. Instead they revel in kicking people out to make room. "Decolonize your bookshelf" is the perfect example of this. They should be encouraging people to read African/Asian/LatAm authors alongside the Europeans. Instead it's all about getting rid of Europeans.

>>20684867
The literary canon is fake, subjective. It has now sway or powers. Why even take it seriously?

>>20685861
>What I don't get is why they (by which I mean the ones pushing for diversity) don't just ADD diverse writers to the Western canon
Because the ones already there are infecting our minds with racism and sexism. It's dangerous to continue to allow those books to circulate