Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloomis an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Since the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. He has 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth11 July 1930
CountryUnited States of America
Harold Bloom quotes about
I saw the Oxford English Dictionary there for the first time.
I'm talking in the millions. I can't tell you one, two, three or 10. I'm just saying that it's in the millions.
I think that's not reading because there's nothing there to be read,
I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike -- and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two -- are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.
All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.
I am not unique in my elegiac sadness at watching reading die, in the era that celebrates Stephen King and J.K. Rowling rather than Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.
There is no method except yourself.
At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.
To be a poet did not occur to me. It was indeed a threshold guarded by demons.
Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails.
No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean.
Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.
Shakespeare is universal.