Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Author - Harold Bloom ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Riverhead Trade was reviewed on 3-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. The used copy of SHAKESPEARE,The invention of the Human/Harold Bloom was received promptly, and in excellent condition. It was hard to believe it was USED.¤

2) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. Bloom is at his best when he dissects many of Shakespeare´s most wonderful dialogues and speeches. His analysis of Iago´s soliloquys or of the pastoral section of The Winter´s Tale are unforgettable. He is also quite convincing in demolishing various modern critical attempts to put Shakespeare in one box or another -- feminist, Freudian, anti-colonialist, or whatever suits the day´s fancy.

He also makes no effort to hide his "bardolatry," i.e. his worship of Shakespeare. At age 13, I was given a Complete Works and started to read it. I can be assured that if I made something of Macbeth, I made nothing of Love´s Labour´s Lost. Yet the poetry rang true for me and always has rung true. Bloom brings back that sense of Shakespeare as unequalled genius of poem and character.

However, I grew tired of the constant litany of "Hamlet, Lear, Rosalind, Cleopatra, Iago," and others -- the names that Bloom constantly invokes in every chapter. These are Shakespeare´s greatest creations; we know that. Bloom should not belabor the point. It only detracts from the power of a major work of criticism.¤

3) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. THIS book is like having an excellent professor guiding you through the labyrinth that Shakespeare can be...and Harold Bloom blows away the doors of perception!¤

4) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. Bloom is the great literary critic of our day, the master reader of our greatest literature. Shakespeare has always been for him the central figure of our literary tradition, the one who by far created the most. In his play by play analysis of Shakespeare Bloom argues that Shakespeare invented our present day conception of the human. He is the one who allowed our own inner minds to speak on the page. He is the one who created characters of flexibility and breadth beyond those we had known before. Bloom writes with inspiration as he exalts Rosalind, Falstaff, Hamlet, his major favorites and hosts of others. Bloom does what a great critic is supposed to do he gives us a far richer and greater sense of the work than we had before. He makes us eager to know it more.¤

5) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. I have to admit up front that I like reading Harold Bloom. I don´t always agree with him and I often find his pronouncements on this, that and the other quite arrogant and short-sighted. On the other hand, his opinions often challenge me to consider my own and I respect his decades of grappling with the Bard and the history of Shakespearean criticism. As a fellow sufferer of Bardolatry, I feel I can sympathize with the man.

And what of this book? Well, it is quite the tome. Containing analysis of each of Shakespeare´s plays, it´s a test of endurance. Anyone who isn´t familiar with the vast majority of Shakespeare´s plays would be advised, perhaps, to read the introductory essays and dip into those chapters on the plays he knows.

As for myself, having read and seen most of the plays in the canon, I read the book through. In every chapter I found something valuable and I wouldn´t have missed reading it for the world. When he feels a character is interesting or important--Iago, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Lear to name a few--he can wax practically poetic in his insight. The things that don´t interest him he dismisses out of hand with a cutting remark or ignores entirely.

Still, to be frank, reading too much of this at once can be tiresome. In large doses it is like listening to the grumblings of an old man who feels his time is past and he doesn´t get the respect he deserves anymore. He hasn´t seen a performance of Shakespeare he´s liked in thirty or more years. He rejects all modern forms of criticism and interpretation. His obsession with Hamlet and, in particular, Falstaff, finds its way into the discussion of practically every play. I love Hamlet almost as much as Bloom but even I got tired of him as he appeared time and again. As for Falstaff: there can be no doubt he is a great character; however I think it takes a man of Bloom´s age to rate him so far above many of the other Shakespearean characters.

And as for Bloom´s assertion that Shakespeare invented the human as we know it? Well, that may be pushing it a bit far for my taste but I take his point. The introspective nature and universality of Shakespeare´s greatest characters was revolutionary. Certainly many important thinkers after him have found in Shakespeare the inspiration for ideas that have impacted our world. Our world--and most definitely our theater--would be different had Shakespeare never written. Still, would the nature of human beings be so very different? I remain unconvinced.

Ah, but Bloom makes it easy to argue with him. He invites it. And I enjoy the debate. If one can ignore the provocative prose and rake for the gems, these are pages worth mining. I, for one, am glad I did.¤

6) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. The New York Times bestseller from Harold Bloom...

A National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Publishers Weekly best book of the year.

"The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer."--Geoffrey O´Brien, New York Review of Books

A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. Preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist´s plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships--that Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.

* A New York Times bestseller
* A National Book Award Finalist
* A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
* A New York Times Notable Book
* One of Publishers Weekly´s Best Books of the Year
* A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club
* An ALA Booklist Editors Choice for 1998
* The culmination of Bloom´s celebrated career--a long-awaited, complete assessment of his most beloved subject
* Includes in-depth readings of every Shakespeare play
* An essential reference volume for every home and school library

"A huge cloak-bag of ideas...It is a feast."--Wall Street Journal

"An enraptured, incantatory epic...dazzling...You could hardly ask for a more capacious and beneficent work than Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human."--The New Yorker

"A fiercely argued exegesis of Shakespeare´s plays in the tradition of Samuel Johnson, Hazlitt, and A.C. Bradley, a study that is as passionate as it is erudite." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Bloom has given us the crowning achievement of his career...If any piece of literary criticism can have a practical effect--on our stage and imaginations--this is the one."--Salon

"Should this be the one book you read if you´re going to read one book about Shakespeare? Yes."--The New York Observer

"Bloom...is a master entertainer." --Newsweek

"Very nearly perfect."--Kirkus¤

7) Paperback Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Riverhead Trade. "Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare´s greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." So Harold Bloom opines in his outrageously ambitious Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. This is a titanic claim. But then this is a titanic book, wrought by a latter-day critical colossus--and before Bloom is done with us, he has made us wonder whether his vision of Shakespeare´s influence on the whole of our lives might not be simply the sober truth. Shakespeare is a feast of arguments and insights, written with engaging frankness and affecting immediacy. Bloom ranges through the Bard´s plays in the probable order of their composition, relating play to play and character to character, maintaining all the while a shrewd grasp of Shakespeare´s own burgeoning sensibility.

It is a long and fascinating itinerary, and one littered with thousands of sharp insights. Listen to Bloom on Romeo and Juliet: "The Nurse and Mercutio, both of them audience favorites, are nevertheless bad news, in different but complementary ways." On The Merchant of Venice: "To reduce him to contemporary theatrical terms, Shylock would be an Arthur Miller protagonist displaced into a Cole Porter musical, Willy Loman wandering about in Kiss Me Kate." On As You Like It: "Rosalind is unique in Shakespeare, perhaps indeed in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share." Bloom even offers some belated vocational counseling to Falstaff, identifying him as an Elizabethan Mr. Chips: "Falstaff is more than skeptical, but he is too much of a teacher (his true vocation, more than highwayman) to follow skepticism out to its nihilistic borders, as Hamlet does."

In the end, it doesn´t matter very much whether we agree with all or any of these ideas. What does matter is that Bloom´s capacious book sends us hurrying back to some of the central texts of our civilization. "The ultimate use of Shakespeare," the author asserts, "is to let him teach you to think too well, to whatever truth you can sustain without perishing." Bloom himself has made excellent use of his hero´s instruction, and now he teaches us all to do the same. --Daniel Hintzsche¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 1-Dec-2008, 157322751X9781573227513, 410-910-760-410-421-1X1-4MB-8

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