THE THEOCRATIC AGE PART I OF  HAROLD BLOOM'S WESTERN CANON

In The Western Canon; The Books and School of the Age (1994), Harold Bloom examines the Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. Bloom concludes his work with an extensive bibliography covering 36 two-columned pages. Here he provides a complete list of essential writers and books - his version of the Canon. The list is divided into four chronological ages: Theocratic, Aristocratic, Democratic , and Chaotic. Each of these is presented as a separate file at this site. He writes about the first part of the Canon, the Theocratic Age as Follows. "Here, as in the following lists, I suggest translations wherever I have derived particular pleasure and insight from those now readily available. There are many valuable works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature that are not here, but the common reader is unlikely to have time to read them. As history lengthens, the older canon necessarily narrows. 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." His list follows. See Bloom's book for his recommended translations.

                        THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
                                    Gilgamesh.
                                    The Egyptian Book of the Dead
                                    The Holy Bible. Authorized King James Version
                                    The Apocrypha
                                    Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth)

                        ANCIENT INDIA
                                    The Mahabharata.
                                    The Bhagavad-Gita. The Crucial religious section of Mahabharata,
                                         Book 6
                                    The Ramayana.

                         THE ANCIENT GREEKS
                                    Homer                The Iliad. The Odyssey.
                                    Hesiod           The Works and Days. Theogony.
                                    Archilochos
                                    Sappho
                                    Alkman
                                    Pindar                 The Odes.
                                    Aeschylus           The Oresteia. Seven Against Thebes. Prometheus
                                                                    Bound. The Persians. The Suppliant Women
                                    Sophocles           Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colunus. Antigone.
                                                                    Electra. Ajax. Women of Trachis. Philoctetes
                                    Euripides           Cyclops. Heracles. Alcestis. Hecuba. The Bacchae.
                                                                    Orestes. Andromache. Medea. Ion. Hippolytus.
                                                                    Helen. Iphigeneia at Aulis
                                    Aristophanes      The Birds. The Clouds. The Frogs. Lysistrata. The
                                                                    Knights. The Wasps. The Assemblywomen (The
                                                                    Parliament of Women)
                                    Herodotus          The Histories.
                                    Thucydides        The Peloponnesian War.
                                    Heraclitus
                                    Empedocles
                                   Plato             Dialogues.
                                    Aristotle           Poetics. Ethics.

                        HELLENISTIC GREEKS
                                    Menander           The Girl from Samos.
                                    Longinus            On the Sublime
                                    Callimachus       Hymns. Epigrams
                                    Theocritus          Idylls
                                    Plutarch             Lives. Moralia
                                    Aesop               Fables
                                    Lucian               Satires

                        THE ROMANS
                                    Plautus            Pseudolus. The Braggart Soldier. The Rope.
                                                                      Amphitryon
                                    Terence           The Girl from Andros. The Eunuch. The
                                                                      Mother-in-Law
                                    Lucretius           The Way Things Are
                                    Cicero             On the Gods
                                    Horace            Odes. Epistles. Satires
                                    Persius                  Satires
                                    Catullus            Attis. Other Poems.
                                    Virgil                The Aeneid. Eclogues. Georgics.
                                    Lucan               Pharsalia
                                    Ovid                Metamorphoses. The Art of Love. Epistulae
                                                                        Heroidum (Heroides)
                                    Juvenal             Satires.
                                    Martial             Epigrams
                                    Seneca             Tragedies (particularly Medea and Hercules
                                                                       Furens).
                                    Petronius           Satyricon
                                    Apuleius            The Golden Ass

                        THE MIDDLE AGES: LATIN, ARABIC, AND THE VERNACULAR
                              BEFORE DANTE

                                    Saint Augustine                The City of God. The Confessions
                               The Koran
                                    The Book of the Thousand and One Nights
                               The Poetic Edda
                                    Snorri Sturluson              The Prose Edda
                               The Nibelungen Lied
                                    Wolfram von Eschenbach     Parzival
                                    Chretien de Troyes           Yvain: The Knight of the Lion
                                    Beowulf
                                    The Poem of the Cid
                                    Christine de Pisan            The Book of the City of Ladies
                                    Diego de San Pedro          Prison of Love