02-01-2026, 05:49 AM
(01-31-2026, 10:06 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: I assume people who claim to be experts in both the Western and Eastern Canons either have a superficial understanding of both, or they have no other interests xD.There is always a trade off between depth and breadth when it comes to academic expertise, but I find the concept of a 'western canon' to be meaningless except for the purposes of historical analysis. The world since colonisation has been a connected one, and without reading Chinua Achebe's essay on the Heart of Darkness, one may continue to treat that piece of trash from Conrad as some marvel of profundity. It is similarly possible to write like Hopkins and believe that Jesus was the literal son of god, like him, thereby foregoing the entirety of contemporary biblical scholarship, but I wouldn't consider the reflections of such a person worthwhile.
The western canon ended in 1945.