The implications of this fact for our understanding of...

The implications of this fact for our understanding of Western culture are still largely unexamined, but at a minimum it shows that the roots of European culture in its classical past are fundamentally intertwined with what we think of as non-Western sources. In short, the Western culture that is often branded today as Eurocentric in fact already incorporates a strong Islamic and hence non-Western component, even in such a canonical author as Dante. And Dante's case is by no means unique.

Careful examination of another classic of the Western canon, Don Quixote , would similarly show that Islamic thought played a great role in shaping Cervantes's vision. Recall that in Cervantes's fiction the ultimate source of the details of Don Quixote's story is an earlier text said to be by an Arab narrator, Cide Hamete Benengeli.

To today's opponents of the canon, I would thus say: "Instead of rejecting the Western canon, study it carefully, and you will find that it is not exclusively Western after all.

The situation is in fact far more complex than you realize, and studying classics like the Divine Comedy or Don Quixote may well introduce you to issues that have been quite central in what you yourselves think of as non-Western cultures, issues to the understanding of which non-Westerners have made major contributions." But I have a caution to the defenders of the Western canon as well: [ End Page 148] do not defend it by reading it canonically.

Authors may be canonical in the sense of being essential to the understanding of our culture without being canonical in the sense of being orthodox proponents of something monolithically designated as the Western tradition. As I have tried to show, it is only by reading Dante noncanonically that we become aware of the full richness and complexity of his thought, especially the way he is open to countercurrents of ideas within the supposedly rigid orthodoxy of the Middle Ages.

We do no service to the Western tradition when we present its canonical authors as one monument to orthodoxy after another. Such a rigidification of the canon only invites adventurous students and scholars to search elsewhere--outside the canon--for the excitement and novelty of independent and subversive thought.