Harold Bloom

From Grokipedia

Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic, author of over forty books, and Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, where he taught from 1955 until his death. Born in the Bronx to Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents, Bloom earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1955 and became a leading voice in literary studies through his emphasis on aesthetic value and the struggles of poetic creation.

Bloom's most influential work, The Anxiety of Influence (1973), proposed that strong poets achieve originality by swerving from or misreading their predecessors in a process driven by psychic rivalry, outlining six "revisionary ratios" that describe this agonistic dynamic. In The Western Canon (1994), he robustly defended the enduring value of works by authors like Shakespeare, Dante, and Chaucer against what he termed the "School of Resentment"—critiques rooted in gender, race, or Marxism that prioritize ideology over literary strength. His Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998) argued that Shakespeare's characters pioneered inwardness and personality, shaping modern consciousness more profoundly than any other writer.

A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 1985, Bloom transformed debates on canon formation and influenced generations of readers and scholars by insisting on literature's capacity to convey wisdom rather than mere information or propaganda. Though criticized for perceived elitism and resistance to diversifying the canon beyond aesthetic merit, his commitment to "difficult pleasures" of reading countered trends toward politicized interpretation prevalent in late-20th-century academia. Bloom continued teaching demanding seminars, such as "Shakespeare and the Canon," into his final days, embodying a lifelong passion for the transformative power of great literature.

In brief

Harold Bloom grew up in the Bronx, Yiddish in the ear, and discovered Blake and Hart Crane as if they were relatives who had been waiting. Yale became his long address. He read as if the dead were still talking and might be wrong.

The Anxiety of Influence (1973) argued that strong poets misread their predecessors in order to live. Later he fought curricular wars with a zest that made him famous and, to some, impossible. The Western Canon is a list and a love letter and a provocation.

He was a Jewish critic who claimed Shakespeare as a secular scripture and the Hebrew Bible as a literary fact. The combination annoyed almost everyone at least once. That is one measure of a critic.

The accomplishment is a style of reading: passionate, combative, grateful. A kid from the Bronx taught a country that books are not decorations.