A canon is a list. That’s all. We need it because we have to read Shakespeare; we have to study Dante; we have to read Chaucer, Cervantes, the Bible; … we have to read Proust, Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot and Jane Austen. It is inescapable that we have to read Joyce and Samuel Beckett. These are absolutely crucial writers. They provide an intellectual — dare I say a spiritual — value which has nothing to do with organized religion or the history of institutional belief. They remind us in every sense of re-minding us. They not only tell us things that we have forgotten but they tell us things we couldn’t possibly know without them. And they reform our minds. They make our minds stronger; they make us more vital. They make us alive! —Harold Bloom [interview with Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBS Radio’s Original Minds]

As a literature student and teacher, I know a bit about the Western canon, those books that scholars have identified as the works most influential in shaping Western culture. I say a bit because I’m humbled and awed enough by the likes of such authors as William Butler Yeats, Fydor Dostoevsky, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to know that I’m still a novice in the literary land of the canon.

But this literary land is peopled by many DWEMs (dead white European males), and many have argued that this is a problem. They contend that their works don’t represent modern perspectives and, as such, are no longer relevant. They insist that the very fact that these works are written by white men is enough to question their literary value and authority. After all, they argue, the white men of the Western world are colonialists who have dominated by might and by pen. For decades, the traditional Western canon has been questioned, criticized, and denounced.

Although I’ve been awed by traditional Western writers, I’ve also been awed by many other writers who represent a variety of cultures and viewpoints: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Louise Erdrich’s The Master Butchers Singing Club, Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement, as well as the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Li Bai–the list goes on and on. I added these writers and their works to the literary canon in my classrooms. And if I were still teaching, I would continually expand and modify my reading list, hoping to expose my students to a variety of the best works.

It goes without saying that there will be continued debate over the value and relevance of the traditional Western canon, but that’s not what really concerns me today. I wholeheartedly agree that the canon should include a variety of authors from a variety of cultures, races, and persectives. What concerns me is that many (most?) of the books in the traditional canon may be removed from high school and university courses, taken from library shelves, and perhaps canceled altogether. I mentally ran down the list of works I’ve taught in American Literature courses and found that many wouldn’t pass muster using the current standards for what is offensive and harmful, what is acceptable and what is not.

For example, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men would probably have to go because of Curly, the stable hand who, as a black man, must live apart from the white ranch hands (there is also mild profanity as well as some use of the “n” word). Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has a host of black maids and nannies who serve wealthy white folk, and the female protagonist who can find no way to fufillment as a woman ultimately takes her own life (her story is a far cry from I am woman, hear me roar). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” centers on a husband who finds his wife’s birthmark repulsive and kills her while trying to remove it (think about the American With Disabilities Act and all those with physical scars, marks, and defects who might be deeply offended–and terrified–by this story). Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” includes African natives whose job it is to risk their lives by literally beating the bush for the wealthy white hunters as they hunt wild game (not to mention that Hemingway is considered a “man’s man” and has been accused of being sexist). Tennesse William’s play, The Glass Menagerie, has two female protagonists: a melodramatic mother and mentally fragile daughter. Neither represents an empowered female role model. And Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn? The controversy around this novel persists. Many schools have removed it from their curricula because one of the primary characters is a black slave and because Twain uses the “n” word throughout the novel.

British psychiatrist, prison physician, and author Theodore Dalyrmple shares my concern:

This posture of skepticism towards the classics displays a profound misjudgment. For the great works of Western culture are remarkable for the distance that they maintained from the norms and orthodoxies that gave birth to them. Only a very shallow reading of Chaucer or Shakespeare would see those writers as endorsing the societies in which they lived, or would overlook the far more important fact that their works hold mankind to the light of moral judgment, and examine, with all the love and all the pity that it calls for, the frailty of human nature. It is precisely the aspiration towards universal truth, towards a God’s-eye perspective on the human condition, that is the hallmark of Western culture.

Dalrymple contends that only a shallow reading of these classic authors would reveal them as endorsing the societies in which they lived. Many of these dead white men actually held their societies up for scrutiny, exposing the flaws and sins of their systems and cultures. For example, Twain’s primary character, Jim, may have been an uneducated black slave, but he is also the best man in the entire book. Twain portrays him as a compassionate, loyal, courageous man who truly cares for others, including Huck, a foolish white boy. He doesn’t endorse slavery but rather criticizes it. His use of the “n” word is is an attribute of literary realism, a writing style that authentically portrays the speech, actions, and thoughts of a particular time period. Twain isn’t cavalier in his use of this word but intentional. The very white folk he criticizes are those–including Huck–who carelessly use this word. Again and again, Twain exposes the frailty of human nature, and in this novel, the white characters are the frailest of them all.

Will shallow readings of these works be the primary means by which they are judged? Will works of literary realism be summarily banned because of their authentic portrayals of the past? Will the traditional canon be canceled as a whole because of its authorship?

In a PBS radio program, host Ben Wattenberg interviewed Stanley Fish, English professor at Duke University, Andrew Delbanco, humanities professor at Columbia University, and Andrew Flaumenhaft, dean of St. Johns College, which places a special emphasis on the Western canon. He asked these academics whether or not we need the Western canon today. Mr. Flaumenhaft defended it:

Because good books make people think. They make — they shake you out of your complacent assumption that what you know or what you believe or what you think is the only thing to know, or believe or think.

It’s true that the traditional Western canon isn’t exclusively responsible for works that make people think and shake them out of their complacent assumptions. As I’ve mentioned earlier, there are many excellent works outside the canon that do this well. But we’re often a throw-the-baby-out-with-the bath-water people. That is, charged with new principles and perspectives, we tend to trash the old and celebrate the new. We do this with great conviction and the best intentions. And sometimes, we realize too late what we’ve given up and regret our losses. This, I fear, may be the fate of the Western literary canon.

At the very least, I think there is much to be studied and discussed. I think there are important questions that should be answered: How should we view works of literary realism? Should we remove works from curricula and libraries on the sole basis of an offensive word(s)? What do we really mean when we identify a work as relevant or irrelevant? What is the end game here and who should be responsible for it?

In his interview concerning the Western canon, Ben Wattenberg asked Stanley Fish about how he viewed his work as an English professor at Duke University. Fish responded:

I’m a literary person, mostly. My job is to present the materials that make up the content of my discipline. And to introduce students to those materials in as forceful a way as possible. What they then do with that material, and my teaching, when they go into the ballot box, or go into the marketplace is, of course, something I cannot predict, and over which I shouldn’t want to have any control.

Fish’s claim that he shouldn’t want to have any control over what his students do with the ideas from the works they’ve read in his courses is particularly important, I think. Removing works from the Western canon–or the entire canon itself–would be an attempt to control by omission. I’d like to think that capable teachers could create the appropriate context in which these works might be taught. I’d like to think that students have the right to be exposed to these classic works and the right to think about them as they choose. I’d like to think that this isn’t–and shouldn’t be–an either/or venture. Above all, I’d like to think that we won’t make these decisions emotionally from shallow readings.

Only time will tell what will happen to the Western canon. I’m hoping that we won’t lose literary works that hold mankind to the light of moral judgment even if they are written by DWEMs.