Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human

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

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

Has its five stars as it is an excellent volume for the general reader to consult before seeing a play, to refresh memories of a play, to get some ideas etc. Plus it contains some great observations, and there is a very sharp intelligence at work, which deserves to grandstand a little. An idiosyncratic companion to the plays, worth more than many more strictly academic introductions. Very good value, too.

A comprehensive and intriguing critique on the relevance of Shakespeare's characterisation to our understanding of ourselves. Fascinating!

good

amazing work, recommended to everyone who wants to know Shakespeare`s plays better

The most popular critic on Shakespeare... you need to read it in order to have a view... best title ever to define William Shakespeare...

You will like this book if you are willing to read one man's own point of view! It is a valid.and very particular, point of view. What it will not do is give you an overview of the plays,so it probably has a limited readership. Personally i like it a lot. I like anything about Shakespeare which builds on my knowledge of him, and the era he lived in

A reverência de Bloom por Shakespeare nos contagia. Aprendemos a amar as obras e as apreciar como uma escritura secular. Fundamental para compreender esse pilar da consciência humana, que é William Shakespeare.

The late critic Harold Bloom loved Shakespeare above all as the center of the western canon. He waspassionate about teaching literature as literature, not as psychology, politics, economics, theology orother ideologies. The emphasis is not on the stories (the Bard mostly borrowed these from historians orother 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 werecertainly 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 theyseem more real than a lot of the people in so-called real life. So for instance, in Poem UnlimitedBloom offers speculation about what Hamlet did, going to England and Germany to learn dramaand other intellectual disciplines. Hamlet has actually surpassed his creator and become anauthor in his own right. We quote Hamlet as if we're quoting Socrates or Jesus or Buddha.These characters are traced through Shakespeare's career development with the comedies,histories, tragedies and romances (a term that Bloom dislikes for the final plays such asthe Tempest). When it comes to the genres, Shakespeare is beyond genre, as Poloniusshowed with his "history-comedy-tragedy" etc. and all the combinations including poemunlimited.Besides Hamlet, Bloom's favorite is Falstaff, from Henry IV part I and II. Even though he'sa raunchy big old guy, he is almost as smart as Hamlet and teaches us about joie de vivreand humor. The apotheosis or death of Cleopatra was the end of an era, as she had beenthe lover of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony etc. Octavius went on to great politicalaccomplishments but was not as interesting as the previous generation. But Cleopatra'sdeath was also the end of Shakespeare's high tragedies.Bloom shows Shakespeare's development in relation to Chaucer, Marlowe who camebefore him, Ben Jonson who was a contemporary, Fletcher who came along towardthe end, and the successor John Milton. Bloom also relates Shakespeare's charactersto others in the western canon such as Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,Austen, Coleridge, Melville, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Proust.How does Bloom understand himself? He is a critic in the romantic tradition, alongwith Dr. Johnson, AC Bradley, Hazlitt, Swinburne and Goddard. He is passionate aboutteaching Shakespeare as literature and not through Freud or Marx. In fact he interpretsFreud through Shakespeare (!) rather than vice versa. This is a very long book but joyfullyquick.

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

A scholarly, yet accessible read, with the most appropriate material selected from each play. What amounts to annotation is interesting. If you're willing to do a bit of work in exchange for great rewards, this book is for you. dgp

Nice