Secular and literary applications of the term “canon” refer to a constellation of highly valued, high‐cultural texts that have traditionally acted as arbiters of literary value, determining the discipline of literary studies as well as influencing the critical and cultural reception of literature. In his influential work on the subject,
The Western Canon
(1994), Yale critic Harold Bloom offers several approximate definitions of canonicity. The canon is “the literary Art of Memory,” if by memory we mean “an affair of imaginary places, or of real places transmuted into visual images” (17). The canon serves as a memory system, which receives, retains, and orders selective works. It is “the relation of an individual reader and writer to what has been preserved out of what has been written” (17). The canon, Bloom argues, is a standard of measurement that cannot be tethered to political or moral considerations: it should remain instead “a gauge of vitality” (38). Finally Bloom declares that the canon is “Shakespeare and Dante,” before proceeding to offer creative readings of 26 of the most prominent canonical authors, and an egregious list of 400 canonical authors or works.