Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the
Sterling Professor
Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a tenured faculty member considered the best in his or her field. It is akin to the rank of university professor at other universities.
The appointment, made by the ...
of
Humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at th ...
at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." Following the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of
literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. During his lifetime, he edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the
Chelsea House publishing firm.
Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Bloom was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communi ...
in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional
Western canon
The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, ...
at a time when literary departments were focusing on what he derided as the "
school of resentment" (
multiculturalists,
feminists,
Marxists
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
, and others).
He was educated at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, and
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
.
Early life
Bloom was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
on July 11, 1930,
the son of Paula (née Lev) and William Bloom. He lived in the
Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...
at 1410
Grand Concourse. He was raised as an
Orthodox Jew in a
Yiddish-speaking household, where he learned literary
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
;
he learned English at the age of six. Bloom's father, a garment worker, was born in
Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrat ...
and his
Lithuanian Jewish
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas ...
mother, a homemaker, near
Brest Litovsk in what is today
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...
.
Harold had three older sisters and an older brother; he was the last living sibling.
As a boy, Bloom read
Hart Crane
Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, ''The Bridge ...
's ''Collected Poems,'' a collection that inspired his lifelong fascination with poetry. Bloom went to the
Bronx High School of Science (where his grades were poor but his standardized-test scores were high), and subsequently received a B.A. degree in
Classics from
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teac ...
in 1951, where he was a student of English literary critic
M. H. Abrams, and a PhD from
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
in 1955. In 1954–55 Bloom was a
Fulbright Scholar at
Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Bloom was a standout student at Yale, where he clashed with the faculty of
New Critics
New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned ...
, including
William K. Wimsatt. Several years later Bloom dedicated his book ''
The Anxiety of Influence'' to Wimsatt''.''
Teaching career
Bloom was a member of the Yale English Department from 1955 to 2019, teaching his final class four days before his death.
He received a
MacArthur Fellowship in 1985. From 1988 to 2004, Bloom was Berg Professor of English at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, ...
while maintaining his position at Yale. In 2010, he became a founding patron of
Ralston College, a new institution in
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the British colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later t ...
, which focuses on primary texts. Fond of
endearments, Bloom would address both male and female students and friends as "my dear".
Personal life and death
Bloom married Jeanne Gould in 1958. They had two children.
In a 2005 interview Jeanne said that she and Harold were both
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
s, which he denied: "No, no I'm not an atheist. It's no fun being an atheist."
Bloom was the subject of a 1990 article in ''
GQ'' titled "Bloom in Love," which accused him of having affairs with female graduate students. Bloom described the article as a "disgusting piece of character assassination." Bloom's friend and colleague, the biographer
R. W. B. Lewis said in 1994 that "
loom'swandering, I gather is a thing of the past. I hate to say it, but he rather bragged about it, so that wasn't very secret for a number of years." In a 2004 article for ''
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
'' magazine,
Naomi Wolf accused Bloom of placing his hand on her inner thigh while she was an undergraduate student at Yale University in 1983.
Bloom "vigorously denied" the allegation.
Bloom taught well into his later years, swearing that he would need to be removed from the classroom "in a great big body bag." He had open heart surgery in 2002 and broke his back after experiencing a fall in 2008.
[ He died at a hospital in ]New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...
, on October 14, 2019. He was 89 years old.
Writing career
Defense of Romanticism
Bloom began his career with a sequence of highly regarded monographs on Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his ach ...
(''Shelley's Myth-making'', Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Univer ...
, originally Bloom's doctoral dissertation), William Blake (''Blake's Apocalypse,'' Doubleday), W. B. Yeats (''Yeats'', Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
), and Wallace Stevens (''Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate'', Cornell University Press
The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in ...
). In these, he defended the High Romantics against neo-Christian critics influenced by such writers as T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...
, who became a recurring intellectual foil. Bloom had a contentious approach: his first book, ''Shelley's Myth-making'', charged many contemporary critics with sheer carelessness in their reading of the poet.
Influence theory
After a personal crisis during the late 1960s, Bloom became deeply interested in Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a cham ...
, Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
, and the ancient mystic traditions of Gnosticism
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Judaism, Jewish and Early Christianity, early Christian sects. These ...
, Kabbalah
Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "receiver"). The de ...
, and Hermeticism
Hermeticism, or Hermetism, is a philosophical system that is primarily based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (a legendary Hellenistic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth). These teachings are containe ...
. In a 2003 interview with Bloom, Michael Pakenham
Sir Michael Aidan Pakenham (born 3 November 1943) is a British retired diplomat.
Background and education
Pakenham is the third son of Labour politician Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and Elizabeth Harman. He is the brother of Thomas ...
, the book editor for ''The Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries.
Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...
'', posited that Bloom had long referred to himself as a "Jewish Gnostic". Bloom explained: "I am using Gnostic in a very broad way. I am nothing if not Jewish... I really am a product of Yiddish culture. But I can't understand a Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately fr ...
, or a God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
, who could be all-powerful and all knowing and would allow the Nazi death camps and schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wi ...
." Influenced by his reading, he began a series of books that focused on the way in which poets struggled to create their own individual poetic visions without being overcome by the influence of the previous poets who inspired them to write.
The first of these books, ''Yeats'', challenged the conventional critical view of William Butler Yeats' poetic career. In the introduction to this volume, Bloom set out the basic principles of his new approach to criticism: "Poetic influence, as I conceive it, is a variety of melancholy or the anxiety-principle." New poets become inspired to write because they have read and admired the poetry of previous poets; but this admiration turns into resentment when the new poets discover that these poets whom they idolized have already said everything they wish to say. The poets become disappointed because they "cannot be Adam
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
early in the morning. There have been too many Adams, and they have named everything."
In order to evade this psychological obstacle, according to Bloom, new poets must be convinced that previous poets have gone wrong somewhere and failed in their vision, thus leaving open the possibility that they may have something to add to the tradition after all. The new poets' love for their heroes turns into antagonism towards them: "Initial love for the precursor's poetry is transformed rapidly enough into revisionary strife, without which individuation is not possible." The book that followed ''Yeats'', '' The Anxiety of Influence'', which Bloom had started writing in 1967, drew upon the example of Walter Jackson Bate's ''The Burden of the Past and The English Poet'' and recast in systematic psychoanalytic form Bate's historicized account of the despair felt by 17th and 18th-century poets about their ability to match the achievements of their predecessors. Bloom attempted to trace the psychological process by which poets broke free from their precursors to achieve their own poetic vision. He drew a sharp distinction between "strong poets" who perform "strong misreadings" of their precursors, and "weak poets" who simply repeat the ideas of their precursors as though following a kind of doctrine. He described this process in terms of a sequence of "revisionary ratios", through which each strong poet passes in the course of their career.
Addenda and developments of his theory
''A Map of Misreading'' picked up where ''The Anxiety of Influence'' left off, making several adjustments to Bloom's system of revisionary ratios. ''Kabbalah and Criticism'' attempted to invoke the esoteric interpretive system of the Lurianic Kabbalah, as explicated by scholar Gershom Scholem, as an alternate system of mapping the path of poetic influence. ''Figures of Capable Imagination'' collected odd pieces Bloom had written in the process of composing his "influence" books.
Bloom continued to write about influence theory throughout the 1970s and '80s, and penned little thereafter that did not invoke his ideas about influence.
Novel experiment
Bloom's fascination with the fantasy novel '' A Voyage to Arcturus'' by David Lindsay led him to take a brief break from criticism in order to compose a sequel to Lindsay's novel. This novel, ''The Flight to Lucifer
''The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy'' is a 1979 fantasy novel by American critic Harold Bloom, inspired by his reading of David Lindsay's fantasy novel ''A Voyage to Arcturus'' (1920). The plot, which adapts Lindsay's characters and narrat ...
'', was Bloom's only work of fiction.
Religious criticism
Bloom then entered a phase of what he called "religious criticism", beginning with ''Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present'' (1989).
In ''The Book of J'' (1990), he and David Rosenberg (who translated the Biblical texts) portrayed one of the posited ancient documents that formed the basis of the first five books of the Bible (see documentary hypothesis) as the work of a great literary artist who had no intention of composing a dogmatically religious work (see Jahwist). They further envisaged this anonymous writer as a woman attached to the court of the successors of the Israelite kings David
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
and Solomon—a piece of speculation which drew much attention. Later, Bloom said that the speculations did not go far enough, and perhaps he should have identified J with the Biblical Bathsheba. In ''Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine'' (2004), he revisits some of the territory he covered in ''The Book of J'' in discussing the significance of Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately fr ...
and Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...
as literary characters, while casting a critical eye on historical approaches and asserting the fundamental incompatibility of Christianity and Judaism
Christianity began as a movement within Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions gradually Split of early Christianity and Judaism, diverged over the first few centuries of the Christian Era. Differences of opinion vary between denominations ...
.
In '' The American Religion'' (1992), Bloom surveyed the major varieties of Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
and post-Protestant religious faiths that originated in the United States and argued that, in terms of their psychological hold on their adherents, most shared more in common with gnosticism
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Judaism, Jewish and Early Christianity, early Christian sects. These ...
than with historical Christianity. The exception was the Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved ...
, whom Bloom regards as non-Gnostic. He elsewhere predicted that the Mormon
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into seve ...
and Pentecostal
Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement strains of American Christianity would overtake mainstream Protestant divisions in popularity in the next few decades. In ''Omens of Millennium'' (1996), Bloom identifies these American religious elements as on the periphery of an old – and not inherently Christian – gnostic, religious tradition which invokes a complex of ideas and experiences concerning angelology, interpretation of dreams as prophecy
In religion, a prophecy is a message that has been communicated to a person (typically called a '' prophet'') by a supernatural entity. Prophecies are a feature of many cultures and belief systems and usually contain divine will or law, or pre ...
, near-death experience
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...
s, and millennialism.
In his essay in ''The Gospel of Thomas'', Bloom states that none of Thomas' Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
sayings have survived in the original language. Marvin Meyer generally agreed and further confirmed that the earlier versions of that text were likely written in either Aramaic or Greek. Meyer ends his introduction with an endorsement of much of Bloom's essay. Bloom notes the other-worldliness of the Jesus in the Thomas sayings by making reference to "the paradox also of the American Jesus."
''The Western Canon''
'' The Western Canon'' (1994), a survey of the major literary works of Europe and the Americas since the 14th century, focuses on 26 works he considered sublime and representative of their nations and of the Western canon
The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, ...
. Besides analyses of the canon's various representative works, Bloom's major concern in the volume was reclaiming literature from those he referred to as the " School of Resentment", the mostly academic critics who espoused a social purpose in reading. Bloom asserted that the goals of reading must be solitary aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
pleasure and self-insight rather than the goal of improving one's society held by "forces of resentment". He cast the latter as an absurd aim, writing: "The idea that you benefit the insulted and injured by reading someone of their own origins rather than reading Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
is one of the oddest illusions ever promoted by or in our schools." His position was that politics had no place in literary criticism, that a feminist or Marxist reading of ''Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depi ...
'' would tell us something about feminism and Marxism but probably nothing about ''Hamlet'' itself.
In addition to considering how much influence a writer had had on later writers, Bloom proposed the concept of "canonical strangeness" (cf. uncanny) as a benchmark of a literary work's merit. ''The Western Canon'' also included a list—which aroused more widespread interest than anything else in the volume—of all the Western works from antiquity to the present that Bloom considered either permanent members of the canon of literary classics, or (among more recent works) candidates for that status. Bloom said that he made the list off the top of his head at his editor's request, and that he did not stand by it.
Work on Shakespeare
Bloom had a deep appreciation for William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
and considered him to be the supreme center of the Western canon. The first edition of ''The Anxiety of Influence'' almost completely avoided Shakespeare, whom Bloom then considered barely touched by the psychological drama of anxiety. The second edition, published in 1997, added a long preface that mostly expounded Shakespeare's debt to Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the ...
and Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
, and his agon
Agon (Greek ) is a Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', ...
with contemporary Christopher Marlowe, who set the stage for him by breaking free of ecclesiastical and moralizing overtones.
In his later survey, ''Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human'' (1998), Bloom provided an analysis of each of Shakespeare's 38 plays, "twenty-four of which are masterpieces." Written as a companion to the general reader and theater-goer, Bloom declared that bardolatry "ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is." He also contended in the work (as in the title) that Shakespeare "invented" humanity, in that he prescribed the now-common practice of "overhearing" ourselves, which drives our changes. The two paragons of his theory were Sir John Falstaff of '' Henry IV'' and Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depi ...
, whom Bloom saw as representing self-satisfaction and self-loathing, respectively. These two characters, as well as Iago and Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. ...
, were believed by Bloom (citing A. C. Bradley) to be "the four Shakespearean characters most inexhaustible to meditation."
Throughout ''Shakespeare'', characters from disparate plays were imagined alongside and interacting with each other. This has been decried by numerous contemporary academics and critics as harking back to the out of fashion character criticism of Bradley (and others), who gathered explicit praise in the book. As in ''The Western Canon'', Bloom criticized what he called the "School of Resentment" for its failure to live up to the challenge of Shakespeare's universality and for balkanizing the study of literature through multicultural and historicist departments. Asserting Shakespeare's singular popularity throughout the world, Bloom proclaimed him the only truly multicultural author. Repudiating the "social energies" to which historicists ascribed Shakespeare's authorship, Bloom pronounced his modern academic foes – and indeed, all of society – to be but "a parody of Shakespearean energies."
2000s and 2010s
Bloom consolidated his work on the western canon with the publication of ''How to Read and Why'' (2000) and ''Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds'' (2003). ''Hamlet: Poem Unlimited'' (also 2003) is an amendment to ''Shakespeare: Invention of the Human'' written after he decided the chapter on ''Hamlet'' in that earlier book had been too focused on the textual question of the '' Ur-Hamlet'' to cover his most central thoughts on the play itself. Some elements of religious criticism were combined with his secular criticism in ''Where Shall Wisdom Be Found'' (2004), and a more complete return to religious criticism was marked by the publication of ''Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine'' (2005). Throughout the decade he also compiled, edited and introduced several major anthologies of poetry.
Bloom took part in the documentary, the ''Apparition of the Eternal Church
Apparition may refer to:
Supernatural
* Apparitional experience, an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience
* A vision, something seen in a dream, trance, or religious ecstasy
*Ghost, the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appea ...
'' (2006), made by Paul Festa. This documentary centered on many individuals' reactions to hearing, for the first time, Olivier Messiaen's organ piece ''Apparition de l'église éternelle
''Apparition de l'église éternelle'' (''Apparition of the eternal church'') is a work for organ, written by the French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1932.
The piece is in arch form, beginning in pianissimo () and building up to a fortississimo () ...
''.
Bloom began a book under the working title of ''Living Labyrinth'', centering on Shakespeare and Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
, which was published as ''The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life'' (2011).
In July 2011, after the publication of ''The Anatomy of Influence'' and after finishing work on ''The Shadow of a Great Rock'', Bloom was working on three further projects:
* ''Achievement in the Evening Land from Emerson to Faulkner'', a history of American literature following the canonical model, which ultimately developed into his book ''The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime'' (2015).
* ''The Hum of Thoughts Evaded in the Mind: A Literary Memoir'', which ultimately developed into his book ''Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism'' (2019) – Bloom's last book published during his lifetime.
* a play with the working title ''Walt Whitman: A Musical Pageant''. By November 2011, Bloom had changed the title of the play to ''To You Whoever You Are: A Pageant Celebrating Walt Whitman''. This final work is currently unpublished and it is unknown how much of it was finished.
Influence
In 1986, Bloom credited Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.
Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symm ...
as his nearest precursor. He told Imre Salusinszky in 1986: "In terms of my own theorizations ... the precursor proper has to be Northrop Frye. I purchased and read '' Fearful Symmetry'' a week or two after it had come out and reached the bookstore in Ithaca, New York. It ravished my heart away. I have tried to find an alternative father in Mr. Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Bur ...
, who is a charming fellow and a very powerful critic, but I don't come from Burke, I come out of Frye."
However, in ''Anatomy of Influence'' (2011), he wrote "I no longer have the patience to read anything by Frye" and nominated Angus Fletcher of the City University of New York among his living contemporaries as his "critical guide and conscience" and elsewhere that year recommended Fletcher's ''Colors of the Mind'' and ''The Mirror and the Lamp'' by M. H. Abrams. In this late phase of his career, Bloom also emphasized the tradition of earlier critics such as William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 – 30 July 1894) was an English essayist, art critic and literary critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His first and most often reprinted book, ''Studies in the History of the Re ...
, A. C. Bradley, and Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford D ...
, describing Johnson in ''The Western Canon'' as "unmatched by any critic in any nation before or after him". In his 2012 Foreword to the book ''The Fourth Dimension of a Poem'' (WW Norton, 2012), Bloom indicated the influence which M. H. Abrams had upon him in his years at Cornell University.
Bloom's theory of poetic influence regards the development of Western literature
Western literature, also known as European literature, is the literature written in the context of Western culture in the languages of Europe, as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque and Hungarian, a ...
as a process of borrowing and misreading. Writers find their creative inspiration in previous writers and begin by imitating those writers in order to develop a poetic voice of their own; however, they must make their own work different from that of their precursors. As a result, Bloom argues, authors of real power must inevitably "misread" their precursors' works in order to make room for fresh imaginings.
Observers often identified Bloom with deconstruction
The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essence ...
in the past, but he himself never admitted to sharing more than a few ideas with the deconstructionists. He told Robert Moynihan in 1983, "What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology ... There is no escape, there is simply the given, and there is nothing that we can do."
Bloom's association with the Western canon
The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, ...
provoked a substantial interest in his opinion concerning the relative importance of contemporary writers. In the late 1980s, Bloom told an interviewer: "Probably the most powerful living Western writer is Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic ex ...
. He's certainly the most authentic." After Beckett died in 1989, Bloom pointed towards other authors as the new main figures of the Western literary canon.
Concerning British writers: "Geoffrey Hill
Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to b ...
is the strongest British poet now active", and "no other contemporary British novelist seems to me to be of Iris Murdoch
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. He ...
's eminence". After Murdoch died, Bloom expressed admiration for novelists such as Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William ...
, Will Self, John Banville, and A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy ( Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt ( ), is an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been widely translated, into more than t ...
.
In ''Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds'' (2003), he named the Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today", and as "one of the last titans of an expiring literary genre".
Of American novelists, he declared in 2003 that "there are four living American novelists I know of who are still at work and who deserve our praise". He claimed that "they write the Style of our Age, each has composed canonical works," and he identified them as Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, Literary genre, genres and Theme (narrative), them ...
, Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...
, Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr., July 20, 1933) is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays and three short stories, spanning the Western fiction, Western and Apocalyptic and post-apocalypt ...
, and Don DeLillo
Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, perf ...
. He named their strongest works as, respectively, '' Gravity's Rainbow'', '' The Crying of Lot 49'' and ''Mason & Dixon
''Mason & Dixon'' is a postmodernist novel by American author Thomas Pynchon, published in 1997. It presents a fictionalized account of the collaboration between Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in their astronomical and surveying exploits i ...
''; ''American Pastoral
''American Pastoral'' is a Philip Roth novel published in 1997 concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a successful Jewish American businessman and former high school star athlete from Newark, New Jersey. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle cla ...
'' and '' Sabbath's Theater''; '' Blood Meridian''; and ''Underworld
The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld ...
''. He added to this estimate the work of John Crowley John Crowley may refer to:
*John Crowley (Irish revolutionary) (1891-1942), Irish revolutionary and hunger striker
*John Crowley (author) (born 1942), American author
*John Crowley (baseball) (1862–1896), American Major League catcher
*John Crowl ...
, with special interest in his Aegypt Sequence and novel '' Little, Big'' saying that "only a handful of living writers in English can equal him as a stylist, and most of them are poets ... only Philip Roth consistently writes on Crowley's level". Shortly before his death, he expressed admiration for the works of Joshua Cohen, William Giraldi and Nell Freudenberger.
In ''Kabbalah and Criticism'' (1975), Bloom identified Robert Penn Warren, James Merrill, John Ashbery, and Elizabeth Bishop as the most important living American poets. By the 1990s, he regularly named A. R. Ammons along with Ashbery and Merrill, and he later identified Henri Cole as the crucial American poet of the generation following those three. He expressed great admiration for the Canadian poets Anne Carson, particularly her verse novel
A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there will usually be a large cast, multiple voic ...
''Autobiography of Red,'' and A. F. Moritz, whom Bloom called "a true poet." Bloom also listed Jay Wright as one of only a handful of major living poets and the best living American poet after Ashbery's death.
Bloom's introduction to ''Modern Critical Interpretations: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow'' (1986) features his canon of the "twentieth-century American Sublime", the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th century. Playwright Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work '' Angels in America'' which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the tu ...
sees Bloom as an important influence on his work.
Reception
For many years, Bloom's writings have drawn polarized responses, even among established literary scholars. Bloom was called "probably the most celebrated literary critic in the United States" and "America's best-known man of letters". A ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' article in 1994 said that many younger critics understand Bloom as an "outdated oddity," whereas a 1998 ''New York Times'' article called him "one of the most gifted of contemporary critics."
James Wood described Bloom as "Vatic, repetitious, imprecisely reverential, though never without a peculiar charm of his own—a kind of campiness, in fact—Bloom as a literary critic in the last few years has been largely unimportant." Bloom responded to questions about Wood in an interview by saying: "There are period pieces in criticism as there are period pieces in the novel and in poetry. The wind blows and they will go away ... There's nothing to the man ... I don't want to talk about him".
In the early 21st century, Bloom often found himself at the center of literary controversy after criticizing popular writers such as Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou, and David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...
. In the pages of ''The Paris Review
''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phi ...
'', he criticized the populist-leaning poetry slam, saying: "It is the death of art." When Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901 ...
, he bemoaned the "pure political correctness" of the award to an author of "fourth-rate science fiction," although he conceded his appreciation of Lessing's earlier work.
MormonVoices, a group associated with Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research, included Bloom on its Top Ten Anti-Mormon Statements of 2011 list for stating "The current head of the Mormon Church, Thomas S. Monson, known to his followers as 'prophet, seer and revelator,' is indistinguishable from the secular plutocratic oligarchs who exercise power in our supposed democracy." This was despite Bloom's sympathy for Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, h ...
, the founding prophet
In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...
of Mormonism
Mormonism is the religious tradition and theology of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationism, Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to vari ...
, whom he called a "religious genius."
Selected bibliography
Books
* ''Shelley's Mythmaking.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.
* ''The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry.'' Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. Revised and enlarged edn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.
* ''Blake's Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument.'' Anchor Books: New York: Doubleday and Co., 1963.
* ''The Literary Criticism of John Ruskin.''; edited with introduction. New York: DoubleDay, 1965.
* ''Walter Pater: Marius the Epicurean''; edition with introduction. New York: New American Library, 1970.
* ''Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism.''; edited with introduction. New York: Norton, 1970.
* ''Yeats.'' New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
* ''The Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
* '' The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973; 2nd edn, 1997.
* ''The Selected Writings of Walter Pater''; edition with introduction and notes. New York: New American Library, 1974.
* ''A Map of Misreading.'' New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
* ''Kabbalah and Criticism.'' New York : Seabury Press, 1975.
* ''Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.
* ''Figures of Capable Imagination.'' New York: Seabury Press, 1976.
* ''Wallace Stevens: The Poems of our Climate.'' Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977.
* ''Deconstruction and Criticism.'' New York: Seabury Press, 1980.
* '' The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy.'' New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
* ''Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism.'' New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
* ''The Breaking of the Vessels.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
* ''The Poetics of Influence: New and Selected Criticism.'' New Haven: Henry R. Schwab, 1988.
* ''Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present.'' Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
* ''The Book of J: Translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg; Interpreted by Harold Bloom.'' New York: Grove Press, 1990
* ''The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus''; translation with introduction, critical edition of the Coptic text and notes by Marvin Meyer, with an interpretation by Harold Bloom. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
* '' The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation''; Touchstone Books; (1992; August 1993)
* '' The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages''. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
* ''Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection.'' New York: Riverhead Books, 1996.
* '' Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.'' New York: 1998.
* ''How to Read and Why.'' New York: 2000.
* ''Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages.'' New York: 2001.
* ''El futur de la imaginació (The Future of the Imagination).'' Barcelona: Anagrama / Empúries, 2002.
* '' Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds.'' New York: 2003.
* ''Hamlet: Poem Unlimited''. New York: 2003.
* ''The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Frost.'' New York: 2004.
* ''Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?'' New York: 2004.
* '' Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine''. 2005.
* ''American Religious Poems: An Anthology By Harold Bloom''. 2006.
* ''Fallen Angels'', illustrated by Mark Podwal. Yale University Press, 2007.
* ''Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems'' Harper, 2010.
* '' The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life''. Yale University Press, 2011.
* ''The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of The King James Bible''. Yale University Press, 2011.
* ''The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime''. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.
* ''Falstaff: Give Me Life''. Scribner, 2017.
* ''Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air''. Scribner, 2017.
* ''Lear: The Great Image of Authority''. Scribner, 2018.
* ''Iago: The Strategies of Evil''. Scribner, 2018.
* ''Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind''. Scribner, 2019.
* ''Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism''. Knopf, 2019.
* ''Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind Over a Universe of Death''. Yale, 2020.
* ''The Bright Book of Life: Novels to Read and Re-read''. Knopf, 2020.
Articles
"On Extended Wings"
Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems. By Helen Hennessy Vendler, (Review), ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', October 5, 1969.
* "Poets' meeting in the heyday of their youth; A Single Summer With Lord Byron", ''The New York Times'', February 15, 1970.
"An angel's spirit in a decaying (and active) body"
''The New York Times'', November 22, 1970.
''The New York Times'', November 12, 1975.
''The New York Times'', April 18, 1976.
''The New York Times'', August 4, 1977.
''The New York Times'', February 5, 1978.
''The New York Times'', July 22, 1979.
* "Straight Forth Out of Self", ''The New York Times'', June 22, 1980.
* "The Heavy Burden of the Past; Poets", ''The New York Times'', January 4, 1981.
* "The Pictures of the Poet; The Painting and Drawings of William Blake, by Martin Butlin. Vol. I, Text. Vol. II, Plates" (review), ''The New York Times'', January 3, 1982.
* "A Novelist's Bible; The Story of the Stories, The Chosen People and Its God. By Dan Jacobson" (review), ''The New York Times'', October 17, 1982.
* "Isaac Bashevis Singer's Jeremiad; The Penitent, By Isaac Bashevis Singer" (review), ''The New York Times'', September 25, 1983.
* "Domestic Derangements; A Late Divorce, By A. B. Yehoshua Translated by Hillel Halkin" (review), ''The New York Times'', February 19, 1984.
* "War Within the Walls; In the Freud Archives, By Janet Malcolm" (review), ''The New York Times'', May 27, 1984.
* "His Long Ordeal by Laughter; Zuckerman Bound, A Trilogy and Epilogue. By Philip Roth" (review), ''The New York Times'', May 19, 1985.
* "A Comedy of Worldly Salvation; The Good Apprentice, By Iris Murdoch" (review), ''The New York Times'', January 12, 1986.
* "Freud, the Greatest Modern Writer" (review), ''The New York Times'', March 23, 1986.
* "Passionate Beholder of America in Trouble; Look Homeward, A Life of Thomas Wolfe. By David Herbert Donald" (review), ''The New York Times'', February 8, 1987.
* "The Book of the Father; The Messiah of Stockholm, By Cynthia Ozick" (review), ''The New York Times'', March 22, 1987.
*
Still Haunted by Covenant"
(review), ''The New York Times'', January 31, 1988.
''The New York Times'', April 26, 1992.
* "A Jew Among the Cossacks; The first English translation of Isaac Babel's journal about his service with the Russian cavalry. 1920 Diary, By Isaac Babel" (review), ''The New York Times'', June 4, 1995.
* "Kaddish; By Leon Wieseltier" (review), ''The New York Times'', October 4, 1998.
* "View; On First Looking into Gates's Crichton", ''The New York Times'', June 4, 2000.
*
; The election, as Shakespeare might have seen it", ''The New York Times'', December 6, 2000.
* "Macbush" (play), ''Vanity Fair'', April 2004.
"The Lost Jewish Culture"
''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'' 54/11 (June 28, 2007) : 44–47 eviews ''The Dreams of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492'', translated, edited, and with an introduction by Peter Cole
"The Glories of Yiddish"
''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'' 55/17 (November 6, 2008) [reviews ''History of the Yiddish Language'', by Max Weinreich, edited by Paul Glasser, translated from the Yiddish by Shlomo Noble with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman]
*
Yahweh Meets R. Crumb
, ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', 56/19 (December 3, 2009) R. Crumb">Robert_Crumb.html" ;"title="eviews ''The Book of Genesis'', illustrated by Robert Crumb">R. Crumb
"Will This Election Be the Mormon Breakthrough?"
''The New York Times'', November 12, 2011.
"Richard III: Victim or Monster? Asks Harold Bloom"
''Newsweek'', February 11, 2013.
Introduction to ''The Invention of Influence'' by Peter Cole
''The Tablet'', January 21, 2014.
Reference Series
* Bloom's Bio Critiques Series, Bloom's Literary Criticism
Infobase Publishing is an American publisher of reference book titles and textbooks geared towards the North American library, secondary school, and university-level curriculum markets. Infobase operates a number of prominent imprints, includin ...
* Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations Series, Bloom's Literary Criticism
Infobase Publishing is an American publisher of reference book titles and textbooks geared towards the North American library, secondary school, and university-level curriculum markets. Infobase operates a number of prominent imprints, includin ...
* Bloom's Major Short Story Writers Series, Bloom's Literary Criticism
Infobase Publishing is an American publisher of reference book titles and textbooks geared towards the North American library, secondary school, and university-level curriculum markets. Infobase operates a number of prominent imprints, includin ...
See also
References
Further reading
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* His famous criticism of the Harry Potter
''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students a ...
series.
*
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* Burrow, Colin, "The Magic Bloomschtick" (review of Harold Bloom, ''The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon'', edited by David Mikics, Library of America, October 2019, 426 pp., ), ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review ...
'', vol. 41, no. 22 (21 November 2019), pp. 21–25. "Harold Bloom will be remembered as a great provoker – of thought, of laughter, and of resistance. He didn't permanently reconfigure the literary landscape, but the idiosyncratic path he tracked across it is one few could follow." (Final two sentences of Burrow's review, p. 25.)
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External links
* at Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
*
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Harold Bloom
at Stanford Presidential Lectures
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloom, Harold
1930 births
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