Abstract The 20th century saw many contrasting approaches to Homer. The American literary canon, or the books deemed important enough to teach in schools and survive over generations, is a fraught subject. On the one hand, Homer was often seen as the father of the western literary canon, the first author in a genealogy that included canonical poets such as Apollonius, Virgil, Dante, and Milton.

(There is one 20th-century megastar, Albert Einstein, but he is not an artist.) With regard to books, what makes a book "classic" has concerned various authors, from Mark Twain to Italo Calvino, and questions such as "Why Read the Classics? None the less, modernism was a mighty creative force, and 50 years ago people still felt that there were giants upon the earth: Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Le Corbusier. Take a 19th century American literature course, for instance. The canon also includes a disproportionate number of deceased white men, though more works of women and people of color … Modernism is a major literary movement of the first part of the twentieth-century. The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. That is not an experience that has been available to anyone in the last 100 years. ", and "What Is a Classic?" Irish writers were especially important in the twentieth-century, including James Joyce and later Samuel Beckett, both central figures in the Modernist movement. Bloom’s reputation perhaps unfairly fell victim to the so-called “ Canon Wars ,” likely at times because of a misidentification with … The United States is home to so many cultures that it is impossible to encapsulate the best work without leaving out important figures. And in many quarters of academia, mention of the name of Yale literary critic Harold Bloom provoked, at the very least, a raised eyebrow and pointed silence. have been considered by others, including Calvino, T. S. Eliot, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Michael Dirda, and Ezra Pound.
The term “literary canon” refers to a body of books, narratives and other texts considered to be the most important and influential of a particular time period or place. American literature - American literature - The 20th century: Important movements in drama, poetry, fiction, and criticism took shape in the years before, during, and after World War I. The eventful period that followed the war left its imprint upon books of all kinds.