The
Western canon is the body of
books and, more broadly,
music and
art that Western scholars generally accept as the most important and
influential in shaping
Western culture. As such, it includes work perceived as the
greatest works of
artistic merit. Such a is important to the theory of
educational perennialism and the development of
high culture. The idea of a Canon has been used to address the question
What is Art?; according to this approach, a work is art by comparison to the works in the canon—or conversely, any
aesthetic law, to be valid, should not rule out any work included in the canon.