Editing Western canon (section)

==Literary canon==
===Classic book===
[[File:William Shakespeare by John Taylor, edited.jpg|thumb|[[Chandos portrait]] of the English playwright and poet [[William Shakespeare]]]]
{{main|Classic book}}
A [[classic]] is a book, or any other work of art, accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy. In the second-century [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] [[miscellany]] ''[[Attic Nights]]'', [[Aulus Gellius]] refers to writers as "classicus... scriptor, non proletarius" ("A distinguished, not a commonplace writer").<ref name="Gellius">{{cite book |last1=Gellius |first1=Aulus |title=Noctes Atticae| pages = Book 19, Par. 8, Line 15|url=https://archive.org/details/auligelliinocte02gellgoog |access-date=5 November 2018 |archive-url=https://archive.org/details/auligelliinocte02gellgoog/page/n3 |archive-date=March 25, 2008|language=la}}</ref> Such classification were initiated with the Greeks' ''ranking'' their cultural works, with the word ''[[wikt:canon|canon]]'' (ancient Greek κανών, kanṓn: "measuring rod, standard").<ref>{{Cite book |editor-last=Gorek |editor-first= Jan |title=Canon Vs. Culture {{!}} Reflections on the Current Debate |chapter=The Origin of the Concept of a Canon and Its Application to the Greek and Latin Classics |first=George A. |last=Kennedy |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pLVFOkXrAR4C&pg=PA105 |publisher=Routledge |date=2016 |isbn=9781138988064}}</ref> Similarly, early [[Christianity|Christian]] Church Fathers [[Biblical canon|declared as ''canon'']] the authoritative texts of the [[New Testament]], preserving them given the expense of [[vellum]] and [[papyrus]] and mechanical book reproduction. Thus, being included in a ''canon'' ensured a book's preservation as the best way to retain information about a civilization. In contemporary use, the Western canon defines the best of [[Western culture]]. In the ancient world, at the [[Alexandrian Library]], scholars coined the Greek term {{Transliteration|GRC|Hoi enkrithentes}} ["the admitted", "the included"] to identify the writers in the canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature, music and art, etc. from all traditions, such as the [[Chinese classics]].

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?", and "What Is a Classic?" have been considered by others, including [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve]], [[Michael Dirda]], and [[Ezra Pound]].

The terms "classic book" and Western canon are closely related concepts, but are not necessarily synonymous. A "canon" is a list of books considered to be "essential", and it can be published as a collection (such as ''[[Great Books of the Western World]]'', [[Modern Library]], [[Everyman's Library]] or [[Penguin Classics]]), presented as a list with an academic's imprimatur (such as [[Harold Bloom]]'s<ref>{{cite book|author=Bloom, Harold|title= The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages|url=https://archive.org/details/westerncanonbook00bloorich|url-access=registration|location= New York|publisher= Harcourt Brace & Company|date= 1994|isbn= 9780151957477}}</ref>), or be the official reading list of a university. In ''[[The Western Canon]]'' Bloom lists "the major Western writers" as [[Dante Alighieri]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], [[Miguel de Cervantes]], [[Michel de Montaigne]], [[William Shakespeare]], [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], [[William Wordsworth]], [[Charles Dickens]], [[Leo Tolstoy]], [[James Joyce]] and [[Marcel Proust]].

===Great Books Program===
[[Image:Great Books.jpg|thumb|The ''[[Great Books of the Western World]]'' in 60 volumes]]
A university or college [[Great Books]] Program is a program inspired by the Great Books movement begun in the United States in the 1920s by [[John Erskine (educator)|John Erskine]] of [[Columbia University]], which proposed to improve the higher education system by returning it to the western [[liberal arts]] tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included [[Robert Maynard Hutchins|Robert Hutchins]], [[Mortimer Adler]], [[Stringfellow Barr]], [[Scott Buchanan]], [[Jacques Barzun]], and [[Alexander Meiklejohn]]. The view among them was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of [[higher education]] by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought.

The essential component of such programs is a high degree of engagement with primary texts, called the Great Books. The curricula of Great Books programs often follow a canon of texts considered more or less essential to a student's education, such as Plato's ''Republic'', or Dante's ''Divine Comedy''. Such programs often focus exclusively on Western culture. Their employment of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the Great Books do not fall neatly under the prerogative of a single contemporary academic discipline. Great Books programs often include designated discussion groups as well as lectures, and have small class sizes. In general students in such programs receive an abnormally high degree of attention from their professors, as part of the overall aim of fostering a community of learning.

Over 100 institutions of higher learning, mostly in the United States, offer some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students.<ref>{{cite web|last=Casement|first=William|title=College Great Books Programs|url=http://www.coretexts.org/college-great-books-programs/#tz|publisher=The Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC)|access-date=May 29, 2012|archive-date=November 16, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121116234705/http://www.coretexts.org/college-great-books-programs/#tz|url-status=dead}}</ref>

For much of the 20th century, the [[Modern Library]] provided a larger convenient list of the Western canon.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Giddins |first=Gary |date=1992-12-06 |title=Why I Carry a Torch For the Modern Library |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/06/books/why-i-carry-a-torch-for-the-modern-library.html |access-date=2024-07-22 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> The list numbered more than 300 items by the 1950s, by authors from Aristotle to Albert Camus, and has continued to grow. When in the 1990s the concept of the Western canon was vehemently condemned, just as earlier Modern Library lists had been criticized as "too American," Modern Library responded by preparing new lists of "100 Best Novels" and "100 Best Nonfiction" compiled by famous writers, and later compiled lists nominated by book purchasers and readers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/|title=Top 100 « Modern Library|website=www.modernlibrary.com}}</ref>

===Debate<!--'Dead white male', 'Dead white males', 'Dead white man', and 'Dead white men' redirect here-->===
{{anchor|Dead white men}}
Some intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism" that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny the existence of universal truths.<ref>Gerald J. Russello, ''The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk'' (2007) p. 14</ref> [[Yale University]] Professor of Humanities and famous literary critic [[Harold Bloom]] also argued strongly in favor of the canon, in his 1994 book ''[[The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages]]'',  and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in many institutions.<ref name="Searle"/> [[Allan Bloom]] (no relation), in his highly influential ''[[The Closing of the American Mind|The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students]]'' (1987), argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great [[classics]] that shaped Western culture. Bloom further comments: "But one thing is certain: wherever the Great Books make up a central part of the curriculum, the students are excited and satisfied."<ref>Allan Bloom (2008), p. 344.</ref> His book was widely cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by [[cultural relativism|cultural relativists]].<ref>{{cite book|last=M. Keith Booker|title=Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: A–G|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JcFC4oiDmpgC&pg=PA180|year=2005|publisher=Greenwood|pages=180–181|isbn=9780313329395}}</ref><ref>Jeffrey Williams, ed. ''PC wars: Politics and theory in the academy'' (Routledge, 2013)</ref>

[[Classicist]] [[Bernard Knox]] made direct reference to this topic when he delivered his 1992 [[Jefferson Lecture]] (the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the [[humanities]]).<ref name="jefflect">[http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/jefflect.html Jefferson Lecturers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111020121101/http://www.neh.gov///whoweare/jefflect.html |date=2011-10-20 }} at NEH Website (retrieved May 25, 2009).</ref>  Knox used the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males"<ref>Nadine Drozan, [https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/06/style/chronicle-879492.html  "Chronicle"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', May 6, 1992.</ref> as the title of his lecture and his subsequent book of the same name, in both of which Knox defended the continuing relevance of [[Classics|classical]] culture to modern society.<ref>Bernard Knox, ''The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics'' (1993) (reprint, W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), {{ISBN|978-0-393-31233-1}}.</ref><ref name="Lehmann">[[Christopher Lehmann-Haupt]], [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/29/books/books-of-the-times-putting-in-a-word-for-homer-herodotus-plato-etc.html "Books of The Times; Putting In a Word for Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Etc."], ''[[The New York Times]]'', April 29, 1993.</ref>

Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous. As [[John Searle]], Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, has written:
{{Blockquote|There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from [[Socrates]] through the [[The Federalist Papers|''Federalist Papers'']], through the writings of [[John Stuart Mill|Mill]] and [[Karl Marx|Marx]], down to the twentieth century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics and pieties. Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.<ref name="Searle">Searle, John. (1990) "[https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/12/06/the-storm-over-the-university/ The Storm Over the University]", ''The New York Review of Books'', December 6, 1990.</ref>}}

One of the main objections to a canon of literature is the question of authority; who should have the power to determine what works are worth reading?

[[Charles Altieri]], of the [[University of California, Berkeley]], states that canons are "an institutional form for exposing people to a range of idealized attitudes." It is according to this notion that work may be removed from the canon over time to reflect the contextual relevance and thoughts of society.<ref>{{cite web|author=Pryor|first=Devon|date=2007|title=What is a Literary Canon? (with pictures)|url=http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-literary-canon.htm|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071226223217/http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-literary-canon.htm|archive-date=2007-12-26|website=wisegeek.org}}</ref> American historian [[Todd M. Compton]] argues that canons are always communal in nature; that there are limited canons for, say a literature survey class, or an English department reading list, but there is no such thing as one absolute canon of literature. Instead, there are many conflicting canons. He regards Bloom's "Western Canon" as a personal canon only.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Compton|first=Todd M.|date=2015-04-19|title=INFINITE CANONS: A FEW AXIOMS AND QUESTIONS, AND IN ADDITION, A PROPOSED DEFINITION|url=http://toddmcompton.com/infinitecanonsprint.htm|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150427142930/http://toddmcompton.com/infinitecanonsprint.htm|archive-date=2015-04-27|website=toddmcompton.com}}</ref>

The process of defining the boundaries of the canon is endless. The philosopher [[John Searle]] has said, "In my experience there never was, in fact, a fixed 'canon'; there was rather a certain set of tentative judgments about what had importance and quality. Such judgments are always subject to revision, and in fact they were constantly being revised."<ref name="Searle"/> One of the notable attempts at compiling an authoritative canon for literature in the English-speaking world was the ''[[Great Books of the Western World]]'' program. This program, developed in the middle third of the 20th century, grew out of the curriculum at the [[University of Chicago]]. University president [[Robert Maynard Hutchins]] and his collaborator [[Mortimer Adler]] developed a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading clubs to the general public.<ref>Adler, Mortimer Jerome (1988). ''Reforming Education'', Geraldine Van Doren, ed. (New York: MacMillan), p. xx.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Great Books of Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810105020932 |website=Oxford Reference |access-date=June 13, 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=History of the Great Books Foundation |url=https://www.greatbooks.org/nonprofit-organization/history/ |website=Great Books |access-date=June 13, 2024}}</ref> An earlier attempt had been made in 1909 by [[Harvard University]] president [[Charles W. Eliot]], with the [[Harvard Classics]], a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature. Eliot's view was the same as that of Scottish philosopher and historian [[Thomas Carlyle]]: "The true University of these days is a Collection of Books". ("The Hero as Man of Letters", 1840)

===In the English-speaking world===

==== British renaissance poetry ====

{{main|Elizabethan literature|Metaphysical poets}}
The canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th and early 17th century has always been in some form of flux and towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was criticised, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers.<ref name="Waller-2013">{{cite book|last1=Waller|first1=Gary F.|title=English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-0582090965|pages=263–270|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L9gFBAAAQBAJ&q=Waller,+Gary.+English+Poetry+of+the+Sixteenth+Century&pg=PR4|access-date=30 March 2016}}</ref> However, the central figures of the British renaissance canon remain, [[Edmund Spenser]], Sir [[Philip Sidney]], [[Christopher Marlowe]], [[William Shakespeare]], [[Ben Jonson]], and [[John Donne]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bednarz|first=James P.|title=English Poetry|url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0209.xml|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018190048/http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0209.xml|archive-date=2014-10-18|access-date=2020-10-12|website=Oxford Bibliographies|language=en}}</ref> [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]], [[John Donne|Donne]], and [[Ben Jonson|Jonson]] were major influences on 17th-century poetry. However, poet [[John Dryden]] condemned aspects of the metaphysical poets in his criticism. In the 18th century [[Metaphysical poetry]] fell into further disrepute,<ref>"Life of Cowley", in Samuel Johnson's ''Lives of the Poets''</ref> while the interest in [[Elizabethan literature|Elizabethan poetry]] was rekindled through the scholarship of [[Thomas Warton]] and others. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed in the Victorian period with anthologies like Palgrave's ''[[Golden Treasury]]''.<ref>Gary F. Waller, (2013). ''English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century''. London: Routledge. p. 262</ref>

In the twentieth century [[T. S. Eliot]] and [[Yvor Winters]] were two literary critics who were especially concerned with revising the canon of renaissance English literature. Eliot, for example, championed poet [[Sir John Davies]] in an article in ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' in 1926. During the course of the 1920s, Eliot did much to establish the importance of the metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. However, by 1961 [[A. Alvarez]] was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with the passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry."<ref>Alvarez, p. 11</ref> Two decades later, a hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a 'high Anglican and royalist literary history' on 17th-century English poetry.<ref name="ODNB">Brown & Taylor (2004), ''ODNB''</ref>

The American critic [[Yvor Winters]] suggested in 1939 an alternative canon of [[Elizabethan poetry]],<ref>''Poetry'', LII (1939), pp. 258–272, excerpted in Paul. J. Alpers (ed): ''Elizabethan Poetry. Modern Essays in Criticism''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.</ref> which would exclude the famous representatives of the [[Petrarchan|Petrarchan school]] of poetry, represented by Sir [[Philip Sidney]] and [[Edmund Spenser]]. Winters claimed that the Native or Plain Style ''anti-Petrarchan'' movement had been undervalued and argued that [[George Gascoigne]] (1525–1577) "deserves to be ranked […] among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher".<ref>''Poetry'', LII (1939), pp. 258–272, excerpted in Paul. J. Alpers (ed): ''Elizabethan Poetry. Modern Essays in Criticism''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967: 98</ref>

Towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was increasingly disputed.<ref name="Waller-2013"/>

===Expansion of the literary canon in the 20th century===
In the twentieth century there was a general reassessment of the [[literary canon]], including [[Women's writing in English|women's writing]], [[post-colonial literature]]s, [[LGBT literature|gay and lesbian literature]], writing by racialized minorities, working people's writing, and the cultural productions of historically marginalized groups. This reassessment has resulted in a whole scale expansion of what is considered "literature", and genres hitherto not regarded as "literary", such as children's writing, journals, letters, travel writing, and many others are now the subjects of scholarly interest.<ref name=Blain/><ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Buck |editor1-first=Claire |title=The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature |publisher=Prentice Hall |year=1992 |page=vix}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Salzman |first=Paul |chapter=Introduction |title=Early Modern Women's Writing |publisher=Oxford UP |year=2000 |pages=ix–x}}</ref>

The Western literary canon has also expanded to include the literature of Asia, Africa, the [[Middle East]], and South America. Writers from Africa, Turkey, China, Egypt, Peru, and Colombia, Japan, etc., have received Nobel prizes since the late 1960s. Writers from Asia and Africa have also been nominated for, and also won, the [[List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction|Booker prize]] in recent years.

==== Feminism and the literary canon ====
{{See also|Écriture féminine|List of American feminist literature|List of feminist literature|List of feminist poets}}
[[File:Sartre and de Beauvoir at Balzac Memorial.jpg|thumb|[[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and [[Simone de Beauvoir]] at [[Balzac]] Memorial ]]

Susan Hardy Aitken argues that the Western canon has maintained itself by excluding and marginalising women, whilst idealising the works of men.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hardy Aiken |first1=Susan |title=Women and the Question of Canonicity |journal=College English |date=1986 |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=289–292}}</ref> Where women's work is introduced it can be considered inappropriately rather than recognising the importance of their work; a work's greatness is judged against socially situated factors which exclude women, whilst being portrayed as an intellectual approach.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hardy Aiken |first1=Susan |title=Women and the Question of Canonicity |journal=College English |date=1986 |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=290–293}}</ref>

The feminist movement produced both feminist fiction and non-fiction and created new interest in women's writing. It also prompted a general reevaluation of women's [[Women's history|historical]] and academic contributions in response to the belief that women's lives and contributions have been underrepresented as areas of scholarly interest.<ref name=Blain>{{cite book |author=Blain, Virginia |author2=Clements, Patricia |author3=Grundy, Isobel |title=The feminist companion to literature in English: women writers from the Middle Ages to the present |year=1990 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=0-300-04854-8 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/feministcompanio00blai/page/ vii–x] |url=https://archive.org/details/feministcompanio00blai/page/ }}</ref>

However, in Britain and America at least women achieved major literary success from the late eighteenth century, and many major nineteenth-century British novelists were women, including [[Jane Austen]], the [[Brontës|Brontë family]], [[Elizabeth Gaskell]], and [[Mary Ann Evans|George Eliot]]. There were also three major female poets, [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]],<ref name="Leighton">{{cite book|author=Angela Leighton|title=Elizabeth Barrett Browning|url=https://archive.org/details/elizabethbarrett00leig|url-access=registration|access-date=22 October 2011|year=1986|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-25451-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/elizabethbarrett00leig/page/8 8]–18}}</ref> [[Christina Rossetti]] and [[Emily Dickinson]].<ref name="Bloo9">Bloom (1999), 9</ref><ref>Ford (1966), 122</ref> In the twentieth century there were also many major female writers, including [[Katherine Mansfield]], [[Dorothy Richardson]], [[Virginia Woolf]], [[Eudora Welty]], and [[Marianne Moore]]. Notable female writers in France include [[Colette]], [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Marguerite Yourcenar]], [[Nathalie Sarraute]], [[Marguerite Duras]] and [[Françoise Sagan]].

Much of the early period of feminist literary scholarship was given over to the rediscovery and reclamation of texts written by women. [[Virago Press]] began to publish its large list of 19th and early 20th-century novels in 1975 and became one of the first commercial presses to join in the project of reclamation.

====African-American authors====
In the twentieth century, the Western literary canon started to include African writers not only from [[African-American literature|African-American writers]], but also from the [[African diaspora|wider African diaspora]] of writers in Britain, France, Latin America, and Africa. This correlated largely with the shift in social and political views during the [[civil rights movement]] in the United States.  The first global recognition came in 1950 when [[Gwendolyn Brooks]] was the first African American to win a [[Pulitzer Prize]] for Literature. American [[Toni Morrison]] was the first African-American woman to win the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], in 1993.

Some early African-American writers were inspired to defy ubiquitous [[Racism|racial prejudice]] by proving themselves equal to [[European American]] authors. As Henry Louis Gates Jr., has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture."<ref name = "Stryz_p140">"The Other Ghost in Beloved: The Specter of the Scarlet Letter" by Jan Stryz from ''The New Romanticism: a collection of critical essays'' by Eberhard Alsen, p. 140, {{ISBN|0-8153-3547-4}}.</ref>

African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity."<ref name = "Stryz_p140"/> This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with the very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the [[African diaspora]], African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and [[patriarchal]] power."<ref>Quote from Marjorie Pryse in "The Other Ghost in Beloved: The Specter of the Scarlet Letter" by Jan Stryz, from ''The New Romanticism: a collection of critical essays'' by Eberhard Alsen, p. 140, {{ISBN|0-8153-3547-4}}.</ref> In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of the European intellectual filter. This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for African-American political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, most famously by [[W. E. B. Du Bois]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mason|first=Theodore O. Jr.|date=1997|title=African-American Theory and Criticism|url=http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/free/african-american_theory_and_criticism-_1.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000115080159/http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/free/african-american_theory_and_criticism-_1.html|archive-date=2000-01-15|access-date=2005-07-06|website=The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism}}</ref>
[[File:WoleSoyinka2015.jpg|thumb|Nobel laureate [[Wole Soyinka]] in 2015.]]

====Latin America====
[[File:Gabogarciamarquez1.png|thumb|left|[[García Márquez]] signing a copy of ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]'' in [[Havana]], Cuba]]
[[Octavio Paz Lozano]] (1914–1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 [[Miguel de Cervantes Prize]], the 1982 [[Neustadt International Prize for Literature]], and the 1990 [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].

[[Gabriel García Márquez]]<ref>[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/garcia+marquez "García Márquez"]. ''[[Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary]]''.</ref>  (1927–2014) was a [[Colombian people|Colombian]] novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century and one of the best in the [[Spanish literature|Spanish language]], he was awarded the 1972 [[Neustadt International Prize for Literature]] and the 1982 [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1982/ | title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982 | access-date=18 April 2014}}</ref>

García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]'' (1967), ''[[The Autumn of the Patriarch]]'' (1975), and ''[[Love in the Time of Cholera]]'' (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as [[magic realism]], which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called [[Macondo]] (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace [[Aracataca]]), and most of them explore the theme of [[solitude]]. On his death in April 2014, [[Juan Manuel Santos]], the President of Colombia, described him as "the greatest Colombian who ever lived."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/19/gabrielgarciamarquez-colombia|title=Gabriel García Márquez: 'The greatest Colombian who ever lived'|first=Ed|last=Vulliamy|newspaper=The Observer |date=19 April 2014|via=www.theguardian.com}}</ref>

[[Mario Vargas Llosa]], (1936-2025)<ref>[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mario+vargas+llosa "Vargas Llosa"]  {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141231151539/http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mario%2Bvargas%2Bllosa |date=December 31, 2014 }}. ''[[Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary]]''.</ref> is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/perus-mario-vargas-llosa-wins-nobel-literature-prize-2100592.html|title=Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Literature Prize|newspaper=[[The Independent]] | location=London|date=October 7, 2010}}</ref> Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the [[Latin American Boom]].<ref>{{Citation |title=Library of Congress to Honor Mario Vargas Llosa |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-16-041/library-of-congress-to-honor-mario-vargas-llosa/2016-03-08/}}</ref> <!--<ref>{{Harvnb|Boland|Harvey|1988|p=7}} and {{Harvnb|Cevallos|1991|p=272}}</ref> These "citations" are unusable since no detail provided. --> Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the [[Swedish Academy]] said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".<ref>{{cite web|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 2010|publisher=Nobelprize|date=October 7, 2010|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/|access-date=October 7, 2010}}</ref>