I got into poetry, back in the 80's, through Ted Hughes and Bukowski. This led me on to Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Wordsworth, Blake, Shelly, etc...the point is ya gotta start somewhere to get anywhere.
I gained much understanding from reading Bloom's books - especially those genealogical family trees of authors he delineated. But for me his most endearing contribution will always be his enthusiasm for Shakespeare in 'The Invention of the Human' and his infectious appreciation for characters like the roguish Falstaff and Mistress Quickly, the nihilistic Richard III and Edmund [King Lear], the ephemeral Juliet [he points out how Romeo and Juliet is really Juliet's play more than Romeo's] and much else in Shakespeare's plays. You mentioned the prolific Marjorie Garber in another video; it can be illuminating to read her opus, 'Shakespeare, After All' after Bloom's 'Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human'. It gives me the impression that she has been persuaded by some of Bloom's arguments. One of my favorite things about reading literary criticism is watching how the best critics allow themselves to be persuaded by the insights of other critics. The question that Bloom really wrestled with is, does humanity have a universal set of timeless moral values [Shakespeare] or is reality an ever-changing flux of contingent meanings and particular ideological perspectives?
I’m reading Tolstoy’s ‘What is Art?’ right now - he is not a fan of any critics. Even to the point of saying that someone is a critic because they themselves are ‘incapable of feeling the infection of art’.
Thank you mr Adam for your wonderful literary cultural channel. We appreciate your great efforts as foreigners subscribers as overseas students and literature lovers too . I gathered main information about famous American figure biography you mentioned briefly here it’s Harold bloom ( 1930- 2019 ) he was American literary critic and sterling professor of humanities at Yale. In 1997 he was called “ probably most famous literary critic in English speaking world “. After publishing his first book in 1959 , he wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, one novel . He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for Chelsea house publishing firm . His books have been translated into more 40 languages . He was elected to American philosophical society in 1995. His notable work western canon ; and schools of ages , published in 1994 , is regarded as his magnum opus , 690 - page volume talks about 26 writers he considered to be most important in literary history. He have great advice reading can help us allievlate loneliness and get to know more people on intimate level than we could otherwise .
Yeah, the comments on Elizabeth Barrett Browning are so bizarre. He, at the very least, rightly commends A Musical Instrument, though. I have that anthology and like it as a resource -- but I don't consult his commentary any longer until I've spent a good amount of time with the poet in question. Your presentation here is excellent, Adam. Thank you!
Thoughtful and thorough perspectives on Bloom. I think a big part of what makes him important was his incredible capacity to read: he could get through entire novels or long works in a very short time, and this coupled with his critical intelligence, made his views worth listening to. Somewhere he says that when he read something he saw it in terms of a web of relations to other books, rather than just as an isolated work, giving rise to wonderful observations like Spenser as "the visionary left-wing of the Protestant movement." I know Bloom's canon pointed my reading in directions it definitely wouldn't have gone if I'd just followed my own inclinations and (what I thought were) my tastes: I doubt I would ever have picked up D.H. Lawrence's poetry for example. I don't think I would have given "A Voyage to Arcturus" a chance. Yet, he does make a lot of ex cathedra pronouncements whose ethos can be wearying. Maybe this was because his intuitive insights were so good that he wasn't always rigorous with some of the ideas that came to his mind especially later in life. Anyway, great discussion. Many thanks.
That's an excellent point, Geoffrey! Yeah, as an anthology, the selections are superb. As a commentary, it's incredibly insightful. As both an anthology and commentary, I think it's dangerous (for first-time readers).
I have never really liked anything i've read by Bloom except this passage from the introduction to Ursula le Guin's collected poetry. I honestly can't think of a better description. "Politically she was an anarchist, religiously a Taoist, socially a feminist beyond feminism and one of the most eloquent prophets against our despoliation of air, water, earth and its creatures, foliage, woodlands. Reading her I almost learn how it is to be a tree."
For me, what saves Bloom from himself are his insights on Shakespeare (mainly, that his characters change as they listen to themselves) and his theory of the canon. But not because he established an authoritative truth about those topics, but rather because of the way in which these contributions have sparked fruitful controversies and dialogues. I think today he is a rather mistreated and misunderstood figure in some circles due to some erroneous perceptions and prejudices against his work and thought, which in any case do not seem to present the actual criticism one could make against him: mainly, that he is exceedingly, even grotesquely Anglo-centric, even to the detriment of his own work and thought as a critic. Also, as you mentioned, he is too axiomatic regarding what he likes and what he does not. In any case, his work is not to be dismissed, but to be read critically.
Well said. I think Bloom's approach to teaching Shakespeare and Freud is a great example of that: not Freudian readings of Shakespeare. Shakespearean readings of Freud. Brilliant.
@@closereadingpoetry Definitely! That insight, that inversion alone, is so fruitful as to be an orchard. There are many more things we could say about Bloom, but I think we can leave them for another day. Cheers, Adam!
As a high school English teacher, and someone who tends to agree with Bloom you are spot on. I always love student's reactions to The Raven. Pound said "the French loved Poe because they couldn't understand a word of it" but that is because the music of Poe is undeniable, if a little boring, (try writing in that scheme yourself). Poe is a gateway drug into poetry because it is so accessible, I have seen it happen, reading Poe leads students to appreciate reading Eliot and Yeats and even Shakespeare for example.
I think yours is a good general assessment of Bloom, who, regardless of how one feels about him and his legacy, is definitely one of the major Anglophone critics of literature. I always enjoy reading Bloom's criticism, but do have some stumbling blocks of my own when confronting some of his ideas. I find him excessively adulatory of Shakespeare, for example, to the point where he positions the poet-playwright as more god than man, suggesting that modern human identity was forged in the crucible of Shakespeare's composition. I would certainly agree that Shakespeare remains the single greatest writer in the English language, but, while his works reflect superb insight into the human condition, he didn't actually invent any of it. He expresses enduring truths of the human experience, realities that long predated his own existence, in an English of consummate beauty and polish--it is this combined effect that elevates his art to such a high level. But he was a mere human being, and his achievement was an eminently human one. One failing of Bloom's estimable poetry anthology is his decision to omit any poets born after 1899, an editorial choice that omits some of the most vibrant and creative poetry penned in English in the twentieth century (Elizabeth Bishop comes immediately to mind). The book is still a valuable resource, especially for those who already have some familiarity with the authors and works included.
That was great. I feel like we just had a vigorous chat over beers at the campus pub. Well done. More of this please -- it suits you. For what its worth, I am not a Bloom Bro but do indeed possess a shelf-full of his books and am grateful to him for helping this aspiring semi-intelligent middlebrow canon reader with go-to criticism and appreciation especially in my much younger years. He's a kind of literary GPS (with a few bugs) for a universe that rhymes with mine but not entirely.
Love that: "Literary GPS". Totally agree. Lots of gratitude for Bloom all around; I wish there were a real campus pub where I could chat with my subscribers. And thank you for the feedback!
What a great video, Adam! You exposed your thoughts clearly enough to make impossible to any "author's bro" change them and use them as a source for literary hate speech - that is what I think many people do online.
Discovering The Raven (and then Poe's poetry) and close reading (with Brooks and Warren's Understanding Poetry) is precisely what really made me able to appreciate and love poetry
Anyone who asks or implies, "who are you to criticize __________________" needs to take a breath and remember that no mortal person is above scrutiny and critique, and that nobody has all the answers for all others or for time everlasting. It's fine to publicly disagree with any thinker, no matter how eminent, so long as one can present a cogent argument in respectful terms.
In general I liked your assessment of Harold Bloom’s work. However I think he portrayed the situation of literary studies in the Anglo-American world quite accurately and not unfairly. One of the clearest and fair analysis of this problem was made by John M. Ellis in his book, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, published in 1997. This book largely corroborated Bloom’s major criticisms of the academy. As a matter of fact, one of his students, Camille Paglia, wrote even harsher of the state of literary studies in the academy. As for reading different critics: well, I read and I immensely appreciate other critics that I knew firsthand via Bloom: some you mentioned like Abrams and Frye, but there are others like Bloom’s colleagues at Yale - Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller - or Sir Frank Kermode, Angus Fletcher and A.D. Nuttall or G. Wilson Knight, one of the earliest New Critics and recently William Giraldi. Camille Paglia, a great close reader, I got in contact with other great critics like Leslie Fiedler, Edward Said and the great editor of the Threepenny Review, Wendy Lesser.
Thank you for your insight. I love Bloom though frequently think he goes overboard. Some of the statements that he makes are so sweeping that it doesn’t take an expert to know that he can’t possibly be right about it. He will frequently write how a piece falls short, though that piece is hugely famous. But he is intriguing. For example, he wrote: “I myself, with each rereading, find Crime and Punishment an ordeal, dreadfully powerful but somewhat pernicious, almost as though it were Macbeth composed by Macbeth himself.” Such a great line though, much like literature, not all together clear.
I appreciate Harold Bloom. Because of his insights, I became aware of my poetic tradition. All the authors I admire share common qualities, yet I could not connect them. [T.L.D.R. According to Bloom, “…there are at least two main traditions of English poetry…” “… One line, and it is the central one, is Protestant, radical, and Miltonic-Romantic; the other is Catholic, conservative, and by its claims, classical. …” I favour the Miltonic-Romantic.] Bloom clarified the core in the following passage from The Visionary Company: “… Though it is a displaced Protestantism, or a Protestantism astonishingly transformed by different kinds of humanism or naturalism, the poetry of the English Romantics is a kind of religious poetry, and the religion is in the Protestant line, though Calvin or Luther would have been horrified to contemplate it. Indeed, the entire continuity of English poetry that T. S. Eliot and his followers attacked is a radical Protestant or displaced Protestant tradition. It is no accident that the poets deprecated by the New Criticism were Puritans, or Protestant individualists, or men of that sort breaking away from Christianity and attempting to formulate personal religions in their poetry. This Protestant grouping begins with aspects of Spenser and Milton, passes through the major Romantics and Victorians, and is clearly represented by Hardy and Lawrence in our century. It is also no accident that the poets brought into favor by the New Criticism were Catholics or High Church Anglicans Donne, Herbert, Dryden, Pope, Dr. Johnson, Hopkins in the Victorian period, Eliot and Auden in our own time. Not that literary critics have been engaged in a cultural-religious conspiracy, but there are at least two main traditions of English poetry, and what distinguishes them are not only aesthetic considerations but conscious differences in religion and politics. One line, and it is the central one, is Protestant, radical, and Miltonic-Romantic; the other is Catholic, conservative, and by its claims, classical. …”
Thank you!!!!!! My early schooling focused on Latin, Greek, and Russian Lit. So when I recently began studying English Lit and poetry, Bloom was often recommended to me. But the first thing I picked up by Bloom was (unfortunately) "How to Read and Why". By the 4th page I had to throw the book across the room in disgust - wondering why anyone I respect would recommend such a pompous windbag, offering page after page of statements that seemed obnoxious, unsubstantiated or just plain wrong. I began to question, even lose respect, for any who referred to Bloom's opinion on any text. Sad. --- So THANK YOU for letting me know I may find some value in his earlier work. And since I have already read Spencer, I will gladly check out the essay you've suggested. There is hope yet for this Bloom!😊
Seeing others compliment Bloom's good work regarding Shakespeare (my favorite) perhaps I should also check out some of his analysis of the Bard? What say you, good people?
@@kristinabaade2343 Bloom is worth reading for his Shakespeare commentary. Shakespeare is his favorite author, so he has _a lot_ to say. If you keep this mind, you can find genuine insight and profundity amongst the relentless adulation. Just roll with it and wait for the hidden gems of knowledge. I do appreciate Shakespeare more after reading Bloom. Yet what’s funny is that you can tell he does his best to hold back mawkish praise that keeps trying to come out. I’m not a Shakespeare fanboy, but Bloom is, and he brings value to his propositions.
excellent assessment adam. as a long ago student of reuben brower i have always had very mixed thoughts about bloom. sided with him mostly against de mann , hillis miller et al but grew weary of his self centered proclamations and assembly line approach to literature. btw, agony of influence is a direct steal from the four quartets by a poet he always dismissed. one of my biggest disappointments in college was harry levin's bradleyesque lectures on shakespeare which ignored a close reading but required it on exams. half of my class of 700 thought that falstaff"s speech mocking hal's father as that of henry himself !
Part of what drew me to Bloom was my frustration with the direction my college encouraged critique. There seemed to be a handful of acceptable lenses to read any work and any deviation from them was taboo. The works we were reading suddenly became less important than the lenses of analysis we analyzed them with. I was saddened with the department’s cynicism for the very thing we were supposed to be studying. It made me not want to further my education and I haven’t since graduating. I also saw the rhetoric and discourse as a desperate, retaliatory plea for relevancy as the academic landscape has overwhelmingly shifted its focus towards STEM over the last couple of decades. It seemed like the humanities were dying off and all that my professors wanted to do was step on the jugular in order to get tenure. Let me put it this way, I have a degree in English, from an American university, and I didn’t know what an enjambment was until after I graduated…that’s embarrassing. I’m genuinely embarrassed by that. It makes me feel like a fraud, like I got ripped off for paying for an education that was more preoccupied with tearing down the past than teaching it. So when I discovered Bloom, who predicted this resentment (100% accurate in my collegiate experience), who champions a canon (such a novelty, how quaint), and is brilliant, immensely learned, but foremost a LOVER of literature, I finally got excited to read again. He might’ve been elitist, or pretentious, or “masculine”(whatever that means) but I didn’t care about any of that. At least with Bloom I felt like I was learning the literature instead of preemptively deconstructing it based off of the identity and political affiliation of the author. I’m so thankful and happy to hear you teach and focus on close reading and form. I also liked your point about influence as appreciation rather than merely competition or the agon. I never thought of it like that. When you say there might be a critical shift in academia back to form and “post critique” or “new, new criticism” it makes me want to go back to school. Thank you for your efforts!
I'm sorry that was your experience. I've also been discouraged by what I've heard is going on in English departments across the US. Glad the department wasn't able to extinguish your love for literature and that you've kept it burning! Bloom, I agree, is good for that with his infectious love for his subject!
Great talk! Unfortunately, went I went to university (though only took one class of English lit) no one said anything about "literary criticism"....and you would think being at McMaster University there would have been some mention of Fry in at least one of the sessions! Anyway, where would one start investigating or reading the critics, or is that question too general? Maybe, I should ask why would I read the critics? Maybe to get different perspective or analysis?
Great video, Adam! Thanks for sharing your view. I agree with you. As a beginner reader of classics and poems, I found Bloom’s comments and critics not super helpful for me to gain a deeper appreciation of the literature works. Maybe I could appreciate his views more later on.
the mention of Frye has me very interested - in your experience, does he remain underread? I mean underread with particular reference to the last of his four big books, Words with Power (the other three big books being The Great Code, Anatomy of Criticism, and Fearful Symmetry).
Very good. I had a kind of instinct about this even in my teens. Reading anthologies, I would cover the name of the poet on a first reading because I didn't want to be influenced by reputation. Poe is a great poet.
This was fantastic. I was going into this ready to disagree but ended up agreeing with you 🤣 You made great points and articulated your opinion clearly. Thank for the new perspective.
A very good appraisal. Bloom is defintiely more into the big picture. I appreciate his criticism, but I had formed my literary tastes and a opinions to a considerable degree before I discovered him. So I do prefer that he just comes out and shares his judgments, where so many critics are so neutral and qualified you never have a clue what they actually think about anything, or on the other end its just ideology imported to the text from elsewhere.
So, when you get the contract to redo that anthology, put your essays after the poet. And start each wrap-up with "so ... what did you think?" Bloom is always "anxious" personally, which is why it is his key analytical insight.
Great thoughts on bloom! I agree with you on his fixation with ideology in the field. I've been reading his Shakespeare and the essay on the tempest is great, but he dedicates too much time criticizing all of the racialized and political interpretations of Caliban. I completely agreed with his argument, but I badly wanted him to move on to the actual analysis.
I’ve read a lot of Blooms writing on Shakespeare and I had noticed myself that he does expect you to take a lot of what he says as fact without him providing enough evidence. For example in Hamlet he says that ‘To be or not to be’ is absolutely not a contemplation of self slaughter, maybe so but he doesn’t really give his reasons for thinking so. He says thay Hamlet is totally incapable of love, he doesn’t love his father or Horatio or Ophelia. again maybe so but he just says it and moves on. He also totally dismisses the notion of a oedipus complex because of Hamlets last words to his mother. I think it certainly can confuse and distract a reader if they take these things as gospel and let it influence their own conclusions too much.
Generally I like Bloom's work especially concerning Shakespeare, but I don't really appreciate his "great authorial weight" as you said. Just this week I was reading his essay on Walt Whitman in the Western Canon and he said so many things that, in my view, are completely subjective as if it was fact. I kept thinking that if I was a "new" reader with no context on who Bloom was and what tradition he comes from, I could be completely misguided. The video is great Adam, I totally share your view (and the Bloom Bros are scary lol I know a few)
I write poems and i think a poem as i essentially think of any art, an emotional and sensorial experience and a poem written with a obscure language make this experience mostly impossible.
I love Bloom, but people who only read Bloom to understand Literature is like internet cinephiles who only read Robert Mckee's _Story_ to understand Cinema and treat it as some kind of a Bible to be used in our judgment of Cinema as an artistic language.
I agree with Blooms School of resentment. I do not think it is neccessary to first consider a work in regard to outward aspects and instead begin with the work itself and then move to the outer aspects. As much as I appreciate bloom, however, his later stage casting off and disregarding of what he calls 'Feminist' aspects of the 'School of resentment' i think slightly veils his failure to acknowledge as many female writers as he potentially should.
You say that Bloom casts himself as the sole literary prophet amongst his peers. I do not see this as an issue. Granted, I am biased on Bloom's side, but this quality, especially the "pretension" he takes in his writing, is what in fact draws me to him. He never comes across to me as someone who has a fickle grip on his subject matter. Bloom comes across to me as someone who has a cosmic understanding of literature, an understanding that penetrates as far as man's mind can into his beloved subject. I think that in the search of truth all great scholars must believe they are righteous, otherwise their efforts would be futile. As Emerson would put it, they must have self trust. How else can this manifest but in a form that seems pretentious, or self aggrandizing? Bloom perhaps had to develop a prophet's personality in order to contend with the detractors of his heyday, of which there was no shortage even in his late life. Nonetheless I find Bloom's work fascinating. I accept he had his flaws, but I take them on the whole with the man himself as a figure who has helped me discover that through deep study of art and poetry and literature I may obtain some semblance of enlightening.
I mean, it's only an issue because he really isn't the sole prophet who hasn't bent the knee to ideological critique. It seems disingenuous when there are plenty of other critics taking similar stands.
Actually, Bloom praises as many critics as he pans-- Sharon Cameron, Helen Vendler, J. Hillis Miller, Ernst Curtius (his favorite critic), A. C. Bradley, G. Wilson Knight, etc., regularly get/got good marks, as do a score of others. So? You're horribly off here. He's just equally effusive with respect to what he likes as he is to what he does not like 'in that way' and, for the sake of convenience perhaps, you just choose to focus on the negative (in this respect). Also, Bloom was a big propounder (and practitioner) of Oscar Wilde's notion of 'the critic as artist' so felt himself 'competing' not just with other critics and ideologues but with some contemporary poets as well so far as the variable notion (or feel) of 'what is American in the strong tradition anyway?' were/are concerned. Opine about this anyway you will, the fact stands nonetheless that many poets did in fact address his (poetic) ideas concerning this *within* *their* *poetry* , John Ashbery coming first to mind.
@@closereadingpoetry well, yeah, his 'Emersonianism' is perhaps a little too 'overstated' or pronounced; great critic and appreciator, though, if a little awkward before the cameras
Yea but your conflating entertainment with artistic merit. The raven is a really entertaining poem but it's not some great piece of art. An analogy would be like saying I really like the fast and furious 10 movie so therefore it's a great piece of cinema.
@@Laocoon283 Of course, the two categories of art and entertainment are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I think the art most likely to be canonized and endure through the generations is that art which is also pleasurable.
@laocoon283 (As I said last time you said this 3 months ago) I agree with some qualifications. I would evaluate a work of literature according to the rules of its own genre and form. Fast and Furious 10 is successful because it operates according to the rules of its particular genre and art form, a form that maximizes enjoyment at the lowest cost of intellectual exertion possible. There is a time and place for art like this. Measured by the rules of its own genre, FF10 does have artistic merit. It correctly follows the rules and patterns of its form and meets the aesthetic expectations of its viewers. So I actually would consider FF10 as a quality piece of a certain type of cinema. I grant that, compared to a film by Alfred Hitchcock, FF10 may not be as thoughtful, enduringly valuable, or aesthetically considered. But it’s not trying to meet the highest standards of cinema, so to measure it by that criterion seems unfair. For me, the test of great literature is not only how it compares with other high and enduring art forms but whether (1) it rewards close reading and (2) rewards repeated perusal. Readers shouldn’t think Poe’s “The Raven” is good just because it’s enjoyable, true; but they also shouldn’t believe it’s poor merely on the authority of critics.
I can't stand when people bash Poe. Not only did he pave the way for American writers, but he was so talented. So much of his stuff, he even says was written on the brink of poverty, he churned out stuff just to eat. Pretty remarkable considering his work. Not to mention his philosophy and ability to write prose. Anyone who would bash Poe, is pretentious.
He didn't "pave the way for american writers" lol. That doesn't even make sense. What would something lile that even mean? It's an empty catch phrase that people say when they can't point out anything specific.
@@Laocoon283 From Romanticism in general (taking in consideration that Romanticism is not the same in each culture), there are in my opinion three major visionaries: Novalis (German Romanticism), Blake (English Romanticism), and Poe (American Romanticism). Poe's work anticipates many literary trends that were only seen many decades or even a whole century after Poe's death. For example, he anticipates Sci-Fi (Julio Verne, H.G. Wells, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Herbert), modern horror (Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Blackwood, Robert E. Howard), modern crime fiction - whether it's the golden age (Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers) or the hardboiled (James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald, James Ellroy). Not only that, Poe was a _poète maudit_ , a _l'enfant terrible_ , he is the main source for French Decadents - the pre-decadents (Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé) and the decadents of the _Belle Époque_ (Valéry, Jarry, Huysmans, Bloy, Gourmont) - alongside Schopenhauer and Baudelaire himself. We see in Poe, just as much as we see in Novalis and Blake, the roots for Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism (Breton, Aragon, Soupault, Artaud) and the Beat generation (Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Kerouac etc) - literary and artistic movements from the 20th century, many decades after Poe's death. Poe's short stories would become the model for all the great short story writers in modern literature (Maupassant, Borges, Machado de Assis etc). I love Bloom, he is an excellent critic and essayist, and I understand the reasons for not liking Poe and preferring something done by one of his literary successors, but dismissing Poe as a minor author in the context of the literary canon is pretty wild.
@@Zorak_97 lol no. See this is exactly what I'm talking about. Just because you say something like "he anticipated" certain movements doesn't make it true. Again it's just one of those empty platitudes that people assign to someone just to elevate him. This type of stuff seems particularly to occur most often in reference to American writers and I believe the reason for that is, being a new country, there was an insecurity about the lack of culture in America as compared to the old world so they just shoe horned american authors in as "great". Hemingway, Poe, Dickinson, Fitzgerald are all so so overrated for no other reason than America desperately wanted to elevate it's cultural standing.
“Bloom Bros” I FEEL VERY ATTACKED! 😂😂😂 I think understanding that his arrogance showed in his writing is part of appreciating him. I absolutely adore his books
