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Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
Binding: Paperback
Author: Harold Bloom
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Features:
Average Rating: 3.5
Total Customer Reviews: 107
List Price: $22.00
Our Price: $14.96
Sales Rank: 77306
Product Description
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
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Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: Powerful but uneven This book on Shakespeare's plays, focusing on the characters, is fascinating but uneven. His analysis of the motivation of Prince Hal and of Iago are the best I've read and are rooted in the texts; on the other hand, his section on Hamlet is tiresome, devoted to his own theory that Shakespeare rather than Kyd wrote the crude, original Hamlet (Bloom gives no evidence to support his assertion). Nor am I convinced by his theory that his favorite characters (Hamlet, Falstaff, Rosalind) are Nietzschean supermen created centuries before Nietzsche. However, they are enough intriguing ideas to make it worth the read.
Product Review Summary: Bloated, awful and self-serving Having read Marjorie Garber's delightful and insightful "Shakespeare After All" after reading a little over half of Bloom's bloated and awful "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" (all I could stomach of that volume), I am pleased to no end that I found Garber's jewel of a book. She sets out to do - and accomplishes admirably - what I had (perhaps falsely) assumed was the task Bloom had set himself: to discuss and compare the plays in the canon, giving brief plot summaries, insights and analysis. For Bloom, the play "Hamlet" is all, and the character Falstaff is all. He very unevenly reviewed the plays, always commenting on each with too much about "Hamlet" and Falstaff. My favorite play ("A Midsummer Night's Dream," I am not too shy to say) merited only a few inadequate pages in Bloom. Garber, instead, has created a marvelous work that advances the cause of twenty-first Shakespeare scholarship while delighting the casual or studious reader. Many thanks to Professor Garber for providing what will be for decades to come one of the most important works on the Bard of Avon and his life's work! Avoid Bloom, read Garber, and to thine own self be true.
Product Review Summary: A " must read" for Shakespeare fans This book is a very insightful review of Shakespeare's plays. Even if one doesn't agree with every viewpoint of the author, one cannot help but appreciate a different perspective. I'd recommend it to anyone who has any appreciation of Shakespeare's genius.How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
Product Review Summary: The book's content aside . . . Although Mr. Rabkin (along with others, perhaps?) mentioned it in his review, I wanted to reiterate the fact that this book does not have an index. This is outrageous for any non-fiction work, let alone one with 700 pages. It becomes particularly maddening when one encounters a wide-ranging, unfounded claim of Mr. Bloom's and genuinely wishes to find an explanation of or justification for it elsewhere in the book. I hope this problem is remedied in future editions.
Product Review Summary: Harold and Will... There are certain things that come to mind when you say Harold Bloom; pretentious, annoying, egotistical and many others, but in this case he is right. The importance of Shakespeare cannot be overestimated no matter how many times it's overstated. His review of Shakespeare's works is a great read and with the exception of my fondness for Titus A, Bloom and I agree whole heatedly. I personally feel that Titus is Shakespeare's summer blockbuster. Yes it is a sellout made for the masses cause the man had to eat it; but that does not mean it cannot be appreciated within that context. If you think about it, Titus is Shakespeare's comic book movie, a give to the general population so that he could keep on with his real work. As far as sellouts go it could have been National Treasure, or National Treasure 2, or XXX (that horrible flick about the gangster spy), or Snakes on a Plane, need I go on? I didn't think so.
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