The most represented languages in The Western Canon of Literature™ - by the numbers

[Xmmm]

When it comes to the Nobel prizes, let's not forget some of the choices were also political (for example Karel Čapek), and it is always just one book. I think the laureates together with the nominees would make a much more representative sample.

War with the Newts is the scariest book I ever read.

[Deinonysus]

Of course the canon is always heavily biased. That's why prof. Arguelles came up with his own list and it is a big part of his polyglottery.

http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/great_books.html
Here, you can read a lot about the canon, about the usual bias, about his opinions, and about his own list. He has also been compiling several lists (I am not sure whether he finished and published them) concerning non western literature, and a list focused on the 20th century authors

The best part is The Expanded Comprehensive Canon for Western Civilization, which is done exactly with the usually biases on mind.

It is a larger compendium. I don't agree that much with his choices for Czech, I think there are better representants than for example Klicpera, and better works, but that is just a personal opinion. (You would be astonished by the sheer stupidity of one version of the new canon for Czech high school leaving exams, so many Czech works were there despite being horrible compared to the world literature, and even the world selection was rather weird. The bias is not just in the anglophone countries).

I find this book much more interesting.

When it comes to the Nobel prizes, let's not forget some of the choices were also political (for example Karel Čapek), and it is always just one book. I think the laureates together with the nominees would make a much more representative sample.

The list of nominees is not public for 50 years. Right now, it is possible to consult only the list 1901-1963. It is not too easy to navigate and sometimes it is not clear what language did the author write in, it would take a while but might be worth going through. I'll consider it later in the night

Very good points, and great article!

Of course, bias is completely unavoidable but I like Dr. Arguelles' attempt to at least consciously redirect it. Here is a comparison of his Standard and Expanded canons:

Language	Count of Language	% of Canon
Standard	154
English	48	31%
French	26	17%
Greek	24	16%
Latin	24	16%
German	17	11%
Russian	6	4%
Italian	4	3%
Spanish	2	1%
Danish	1	1%
Norse	1	1%
Norwegian	1	1%
Expanded	832
Latin	212	25%
French	111	13%
German	95	11%
English	65	8%
Greek	49	6%
Spanish	45	5%
Italian	35	4%
Russian	24	3%
Occitan	23	3%
Dutch	19	2%
Portuguese	19	2%
Icelandic	18	2%
Irish	14	2%
Catalan	12	1%
Norwegian	12	1%
Polish	12	1%
Swedish	11	1%
Welsh	10	1%
Croatian	9	1%
Serbian	9	1%
Danish	8	1%
Hungarian	7	1%
Romanian	6	1%
Czech	4	0%
Finnish	1	0%
Slovak	1	0%
Slovenian	1	0%
Grand Total	986

His Expanded canon is definitely the first list I've seen so far where English isn't #1 by a large margin and French isn't #2 by a large margin. Interestingly, the top 8 languages in his Expanded canon are the same as every other list, just with the order changed. It basically looks like if someone took a standard list and swapped English with Latin and then with Russian.

On his Standard canon, he seems to rate the classics much higher than average. His rating of Greek is probably within normal variation, but he also ranked Latin quite high, while it's at the bottom of most other Top 8 language rankings.

[Cavesa]

Comparing the two (and thinking of the other lists we've seen), I think it is safe to make a few assumptions:

1.I understand, why so many English natives feel their culture is so superior to others (and they show it sometimes). Even the school classes include this message. And unfortunately, a part of this bias is spreading all over a large part of the planet. And the "underestimated" languages from the western tradition are just one part of it, overlooking the other traditions almost completely is another problem.

2.Italian, Spanish, and Russian are vastly underestimated. And they definitely should be more celebrated. Than there is a host of other languages like Portuguese, Norwegian or Croatian, and it is a shame most lists don't include them almost at all.

3.All the lists we've been talking about are also biased by the authors being part of the western tradition as a whole, not only by their nationality. It would be interested in seeing a list like this compiled by an asian author. For example the japanese kids must be learning about their tradition and this one too, it might be interesting to see what works they get to learn about. Perhaps the Canon looks a bit different from the outside. Or a chinese list, I guess that one would also be affected by censorship, it might be an interesting read.

edit: a typo

[nooj]

I'd be interested to see a Literature Canon that includes oral literature.

[Deinonysus]

I'd be interested to see a Literature Canon that includes oral literature.

Interesting, could you expand on what you mean by that? Western Canon lists typically do include works that were either transcribed from or inspired by oral traditions, especially the oldest works such as Bloom's "Theocratic Age" list.

[kanewai]

I just came across this related passage in The Count of Monte Cristo. Dantès, the hero, meets an Italian scholar in prison. The scholar speaks five modern languages, English, German, Spanish, Italian, and French, and was teaching himself modern Greek. He doesn't mention dead languages. Here's his "canon":

I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and studying these one hundred and fifty volumes, till I knew them nearly by heart; so that since I have been in prison, a very slight effort of memory has enabled me to recall their contents as readily as though the pages were open before me. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.

(translation from Project Gutenberg)

I wish Dumas had an appendix of what the 150 books were! I haven't even heard of some of the writers (Titus Livius, Strada, Jornandes, and Bossuet), and they aren't on any of the modern lists.

[devilyoudont]

Is there any list that is more or less a World Canon?

[lichtrausch]

It would be interested in seeing a list like this compiled by an asian author. For example the japanese kids must be learning about their tradition and this one too, it might be interesting to see what works they get to learn about. Perhaps the Canon looks a bit different from the outside.

There's a compiled list of the top 100 books recommended to new students at four of Japan's leading universities. Here's the first 25:

1　「銃・病原菌・鉄」 Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
2　「オリエンタリズム」Orientalism by Edward Said
3　「利己的な遺伝子」 The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
4　「カラマーゾフの兄弟」 Братья Карамазовы by Dostoevsky
5　「日本人の英語」 by Mark Petersen ("Japanese English")
6　「解析概論」 by Teiji Takagi ("Introduction to Mathematical Analysis")
7　 「沈黙の春」 Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
8　「理科系の作文技術」 by Koreo Kinoshita ("Techniques for Science Writing")
9　「ワンダフル・ライフ」Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
10　「夜と霧」 …trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager by Viktor Frankl
11　「人間を幸福にしない日本というシステム」The False Realities of a Politicized Society by Karel van Wolferen
12　「ご冗談でしょう、ファインマンさん」Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
13　「ヘラクレイトスの火」 Heraclitean Fire by Erwin Chargaff
14　「ワイルド・スワン」Wild Swans by Jung Chang
15　「栽培植物と農耕の起源」 by Sasuke Nakao ("Cultivated Plants and The Origin of Agriculture")
16　「種の起源」 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
17　「進化と人間行動」 by Toshikazu Hasegawa ("Evolution and Human Behavior")
18　「知的複眼思考法」 by Takehiko Kariya ("Intelligent Multifaceted Thinking")
19　「中島敦全集」 Collected Works of Atsushi Nakajima
20　「方法序説」 Discours de la méthode by Descartes
21　「理解とは何か」by Yutaka Saeki ("What is Understanding?")
22　「南方熊楠」 Minakata Kumagusu by Kazuko Tsurumi
23　「それから」And Then by Natsume Soseki
24　「三四郎」 Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki
25　「失われた時を求めて」À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust

東大・京大・北大・広大の教師が薦める１００冊

Titles in parentheses are my translations.

[Cavesa]

I wish Dumas had an appendix of what the 150 books were! I haven't even heard of some of the writers (Titus Livius, Strada, Jornandes, and Bossuet), and they aren't on any of the modern lists.

Yes! I would love that!

Also, I'd like some authors quoting stuff a lot to put such lists in the appendix too. For example Dantec. I've read one of his awesome scifi books and he quotes philosophers all the time. I am keeping up till Descartes. Then it gets more difficult (my modern philosophy knowledge is very superficial and full of holes. even more than the earlier stuff) and he starts mixing fictional writers and philosophers in! Sometimes, they are easy to tell apart (for example those living in the next century), sometimes not so much.

Is there any list that is more or less a World Canon?

Yes and no. Professor Arguelles has been compiling several lists, one for each big tradition. And I believe there must be such lists at universities too, for students focused on a specific region. However, once they get compiled together to a "world canon", I am afraid the same bias prevails again.

There's a compiled list of the top 100 books recommended to new students at four of Japan's leading universities. Here's the first 25:

Thanks, this is awesome! I find the choice of authors fascinating, but it makes me wonder, whether this is really a canon like the others we've discussed. To me, it looks more like an "advanced list" for people who have already covered a lot during their pre-university education, but I can easily be wrong here.

[Glossy]

English has been the world’s most important language since 1945, so of course modern lists overrepresent English.

As late as the 17th century Spain and the Netherlands, for example, seemed more important than England. I’m not even talking about France, Germany or Italy.

Well, in an alternative history where Dutch became the world’s lingua franca by the 20th century, lots of Dutch writers most of us have never heard of would have been retroactively promoted to the status of global classics.

I think that’s what happened to English lit. That’s why English tops the lists in this thread. In the 18th and 19th centuries everyone in Europe looked up to French literature. It was kind of the model. Before that everyone read the Greek and Latin classics.

A list of what’s considered important now is very different from a list of what was considered important in every one of the periods covered. Very different from a list of what was considered important on average, over the entire period.