Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present

by Harold Bloom

Overview

Harold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or J) writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Iliad, the Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake’s Milton, Wordsworth’s Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett. In so doing, he uncovers the truth that all our attempts to call any strong work more sacred than another are merely political and social formulations. This is criticism at its best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674252547
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1991
Series:	The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	214
File size:	807 KB

About the Author

One of our most popular, respected, and controversial literary critics, Yale University professor Harold Bloom's books -- about, variously, Shakespeare, the Bible, and the classic literature -- are as erudite as they are accessible.

Hometown:

New York, New York and New Haven, Connecticut

Date of Birth:

July 11, 1930

Date of Death:

October 14, 2019

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.A., Cornell University, 1951; Ph.D., Yale University, 1955

Table of Contents

1. The Hebrew Bible

2. From Homer to Dante

3. Shakespeare

4. Milton

5. Enlightenment and Romanticism

6. Freud and Beyond

Editorial Reviews

Taking Oscar Wilde's premise that criticism is ``the only civilized form of autobiography,'' Bloom uses the 1987-88 Norton Lectures to present his personal encounter with Western authors from the author of the Hebrew Bible to Freud and Beckett. Specifically, Bloom considers the poet's struggle with the boundaries of meaning and truth to represent God. He denies, however, that poetry can represent belief. It is instead, he argues, an attempt to represent the unrepresentablethat is, the sublime. The discussion also reexamines Bloom's earlier preoccupation with influence as well as favorite authors such as Blake and Stevens. The result is often provoking, but always stimulating. T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.

Library Journal

In some ways the wildest of the wild men (and women), in some ways the most traditional of the traditionalists, Harold Bloom remains serene amid the turbulence—much of it caused by him. He stands dauntless, a party of one, as thrilling to behold up on the high wire as he is (at times) throttling to read on the page… From this strong critic dealing with these strong poets comes a potent mix of insight.

Boston Globe - Mark Feeney

Bloom’s puissance is not entirely his own; for some of it, he is indebted to Nietzsche, Freud, Schopenhauer, Gershom Scholem, and other masters. But enough of it is his own to constitute a distinctive form of splendor.

New York Review of Books - Denis Donoghue

The wit, the eclecticism and the gripping paradoxes…the force of [Bloom’s] intellect carries the reader from pinnacle to pinnacle, showing a new spiritual landscape from each.

Washington Times - Roger Scruton

In some ways the wildest of the wild men (and women), in some ways the most traditional of the traditionalists, Harold Bloom remains serene amid the turbulence--much of it caused by him. He stands dauntless, a party of one, as thrilling to behold up on the high wire as he is (at times) throttling to read on the page...From this strong critic dealing with these strong poets comes a potent mix of insight.
— Mark Feeney

Boston Globe

The wit, the eclecticism and the gripping paradoxes...the force of [Bloom's] intellect carries the reader from pinnacle to pinnacle, showing a new spiritual landscape from each.
— Roger Scruton

Washington Times

Bloom's puissance is not entirely his own; for some of it, he is indebted to Nietzsche, Freud, Schopenhauer, Gershom Scholem, and other masters. But enough of it is his own to constitute a distinctive form of splendor.
— Denis Donoghue

New York Review of Books