Shakespeare: Unlocking the Depths of the Human Psyche

Ibad Desmukh: Great book for an introduction to Shakespeare's plays. Page quality is good too.

United Kingdom on Sep 14, 2022

An Mak: This book is about a legend and it is written from a very important man. I totally recommend it to people who are interested in how Bloom evaluates Shakespeare's contribution to humanity

United Kingdom on Jun 23, 2021

Amazon Customer: Harold Bloom - Shakespeare

Canada on Jun 03, 2021

Patricia González: Es tal y como se describe y aparece la imagen en la web. Todo perfecto.

Spain on May 17, 2021

Pseudo D: The late critic Harold Bloom loved Shakespeare above all as the center of the western canon. He was
passionate about teaching literature as literature, not as psychology, politics, economics, theology or
other ideologies. The emphasis is not on the stories (the Bard mostly borrowed these from historians or
other writers) but the characters, personalities, and human nature. While Shakespeare was a dramatist,
he was even more a poet, and developed the personalities through this poetry. The sonnets were
certainly poems, but so were the plays.

Among the characters that Bloom emphasizes again and again are Hamlet, Falstaff, Cleopatra,
Macbeth, Iago, Rosalind, Edmund and Lear. He treats the characters as real people, because they
seem more real than a lot of the people in so-called real life. So for instance, in Poem Unlimited
Bloom offers speculation about what Hamlet did, going to England and Germany to learn drama
and other intellectual disciplines. Hamlet has actually surpassed his creator and become an
author in his own right. We quote Hamlet as if we're quoting Socrates or Jesus or Buddha.
These characters are traced through Shakespeare's...

United States on Sep 27, 2020

Vincenzo Valentini: L'autore a dispetto di tutte le riserve e aperte critiche di una certa parte del mondo letterario che non gli perdona alcune scelte o opinioni distanti dalla vulgata attuale spesso miseramente politically correct, è a mio avviso un grandissimo critico letterario, a quale sempre ispirarsi e attingere. Ho letto solo parzialmente tale testo, lo ammetto, ma mi è bastato per giudicarlo semplicemente straordinario. Non posso né riassumere né dare un giudizio critico perché Bloom è da sempre il modello a cui tendere. Purtroppo non sono imparziale a mio avviso è semplicemente una lettura imprescindibile sul Bardo e ogni suo intervento dedicato a ciascuna opera teatrale valutata individualmente è al contempo illuminante e stimolante. Harold Bloom ... who else?

Italy on May 01, 2019

Tony Daley: Tony Daley, Novelist, Scripter, Poet, Short Story Writer Weighs In: The idea of art is to enrich, expand, and enlighten while performing that most difficult of functions, to entertain the audience.
Harold Bloom, sprightly, cantankerous, and as rueful as he claimed was one of his finest protégé critics, Tom Disch, remains the effervescent, sallying knight. He could no more lay down the lance nor keep it from cracking against the bulwarks of ignorance, stupidity, and splintering the moon (to crib from Harry’s favorite, Shakespeare) than another of Bloom’s loved ones, Don Quixote, could abjure his paladin’s endeavors. Bloom, the perdurable cannon blasting at the canon for himself to gain the sort of canonization reserved for Dr. Johnson, understands, as did Oscar Wilde, that all “literary criticism” is founded on personal wealth of wisdom, grace, charity, pragmatism, and a sense of sublimity as regards aesthetics. Moreover, at the crux, is Harry the Harry always feting and following Falstaff, that supremely corpulent and cormorant individualist. One must therefore read into whatever Harry writes, the makings of informed opinion resting on specialized knowledge...

United States on Jan 05, 2014