Harold Bloom's Shakespeare - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312239556 ISBN 13: 9780312239558

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

CHRISTY DESMET teaches Shakespeare, Rhetoric, and early modern literature at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Reading Shakepeare's Characters: Rhetoric, Ethics, and Identity (University of Massachusetts Press, 1992). With Robert Sawyer, she has edited Shakespeare and Appropriation (Routledge, 1999).

ROBERT SAWYER is a Robert E. Park Fellow at the University of Georgia where he teaches Victorian literature and Shakespeare. He is co-editor with Christy Desmet of Shakespeare and Appropriation (Routledge, 1999) and he has published recently on Shakespearean representations in folk art.

From Library Journal

Bloom's exhaustive examination of all of Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, was published in 1998 to great critical acclaim and became a best seller, a rarity for a literary study. Bloom's veneration of the Bard and his dismissal of most contemporary Shakespearean criticism, however, has made him a target for scholars who do not share his opinions. This collection of 18 essays, which came about at a 2000 conference in Toronto of the Shakespeare Association of America, examines Bloom and his theories. Three of the articles praise Bloom's book, ten are opposed to most aspects of his work, and five are mixed. The essays run the gamut of present-day critical studies, ranging from historical and character perspectives to criticism with feminist or racial slants on individual plays or themes. Primarily for scholars who are fascinated by literary controversies, this book is recommended for graduate-level collections in academic libraries. Morris Hounion, New York City Technical Coll. Lib., Brooklyn
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About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312239556
• ISBN 13: 9780312239558
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306
• Editor: Desmet C., Sawyer Robert