Informasjon om listen:
http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Library_100_Best_Novels

Er utvalget upåklagelig, og er rekkefølgen det?

Omsider seiler vi inn i mer kjente litterære farvann, ja, endog til Skandinavia og Ibsen. Mange saftige godbiter i denne listen! Balzac, Flaubert, Hugo, Stendhal, Zola, Austen, Scott . . . og selvsagt flere.

Om "The Democratic Age" (år 1832-1900) skriver Bloom:
- - - I have located Vico's Democratic Age in the post-Goethean nineteenth century, when the literature of Italy and Spain ebbs, yielding eminence to England with its renaissance of the Renaissance in Romanticism, and to a lesser degree to France and Germany. This is also the era where the strength of both Russian and American literature begins.

Link til boken her på Bokelskere.no.

Bloom skriver om "The Aristocratic Age" (år 1321-1832):
- - - It is a span of five hundred years from Dante's Divine Comedy through Goethe's Faust, Part Two [1321-1832], an era that gives us a huge body of reading in five major literatures: Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German. In this and in the remaining lists, I sometimes do not mention individual works by a canonical master, and in other instances I attempt to call attention to authors and books that I consider canonical but rather neglected. From this list onward, many good writers who are not quite central are omitted.

Link til boken her på Bokelskere.no.

Som følge av at antall bøker for slike lister er begrenset til hundre, har jeg delt opp "The Aristocratic Age" i to bolker. I denne beveger vi oss fra tidlig Italiensk renessanse til den engelske barokken. God fornøyelse!

Bloom skriver om "The Aristocratic Age" (år 1321-1832):
- - - It is a span of five hundred years from Dante's Divine Comedy through Goethe's Faust, Part Two [1321-1832], an era that gives us a huge body of reading in five major literatures: Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German. In this and in the remaining lists, I sometimes do not mention individual works by a canonical master, and in other instances I attempt to call attention to authors and books that I consider canonical but rather neglected. From this list onward, many good writers who are not quite central are omitted.

Link til boken her på Bokelskere.no.

Dette er første del av Harold Blooms mye omdiskuterte utvalg av vår litterære arv. Til inspirasjon eller frustrasjon? Den rommer i det minste mange gode og matnyttige titler-! Hvor mange har du lest?

Om "The Theocratic Age" (2000 f.kr. -1321 e.kr.) skriver Bloom:
- - - Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest. I would think that, of all the books that are in this first list, once the reader is conversant with the Bible, Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists, and Virgil, the crucial work is the Koran.

Link til boken her på Bokelskere.no.

Jeg kommer til å legge ut de gjenværende delene av kanonen i løpet av julen.