Harold Bloom's Shakespeare [Hardcover]

Harold Bloom's Shakespeare examines the sources and impact of Bloom's Shakespearean criticism. Through focused and sustained study of this writer and his best-selling book, this collection of essays addresses a wide range of issues pertinent to both general readers and university classes: the cultural role of Shakespeare and of a new secular humanism addressed to general readers and audiences; the author as literary origin; the persistence of character as a category of literary appreciation; and the influence of Shakespeare within the Anglo-American educational system. Together, the essays reflect on the ethics of literary theory and criticism.PART I: BARDOLATRY/ BARDOGRAPHY 'Harold Bloom's Shakespeare'; J.L. Halio 'Bloom With A View'; T. Hawkes 'The Case for Bardolatry: Harold Bloom Rescues Shakespeare from the Critics'; W.W. Kerrigan 'Bloom, Bardolatry, and Characterolatry'; R. Levin 'The Singularity of Shakespeare (and Middleton)'; G. Taylor PART II: READING AND WRITING SHAKESPEAREAN CHARACTER 'Inventing Us'; H. Kenner 'On the Value of Being a Cartoon, in Literature and in Life'; S. O'Dair 'The Play's The Thing': Shakespeare's Critique of Character (and Harold Bloom)'; W. R. Morse 'This Dotage of Our General's': Reading Bloom Reading Shakespeare'; M. Fahmi 'Peace, I Will Stop Your Mouth': Insights and Absences in Harold Bloom's Understanding of Shakespeare's Lovers'; H. Weil PART III: THE ANXIETIES OF INFLUENCE 'Romanticism and its Discontents'; E. Pechter 'Looking for Mr. Goodbard: Swinburne, Sodomy, and the Invention of Bloom'; R. Sawyer 'Bloom on Race and Ethnicity: Shakespeare and the Invention of the European'; J. R. Andreas, Sr. 'Shakespeare in a Different Place: Bloom and Contemporary Women's Writing'; C. Cakebread PART IV: SHAKESPEARE AS CULTURAL CAPITAL Harold Bloom as Shakespearean Pedagogue'; C. Desmet 'King Lear in their Time: On Bloom and Cavell on Shakespeare'; L.F. Rhu 'This Shakespeare Will Not Do': Harold Bloom and the Literary Canon'; D. M. SchilsĒ