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Loading... Shakespeare: The Invention of the Humanby Harold Bloom
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  millsge | Jun 24, 2009 |  Rating this book is difficult. On the one hand, it is full of some wonderful insight into Shakespeare's plays. On the other, it contains an equal amount of preposterous insight into Shakespeare's plays. It is well worth the read overall, but some of his "insight" must be taken with a grain of salt. (  ) jhale | May 27, 2009 | Most anything Bloom writes is worth reading. Occasionally he can be tiresome, occasionally he can be repetitive; occasionally he can be tiresomely repetitive (see the later chapters from his book "Jesus and Yahwah--the Names Divine"). But he, along with Jacob Neusner and Norman Cantor (all of them Jewish, coincidentally?--and Richard Posner), are the most genuinely educated writers we have in America. Anything Bloom writes has been well thought through. It doesn't matter if you agree with him on everything. It's merely enough that he gets one to think! Live long, Harold Bloom, and prosper. And keep writing! (  )1  Pianojazz | Aug 9, 2008 | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 > Characters/Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 > Knowledge >/Psychology/Characters and characteristics in literature/Drama > Psychological aspects/Personality in literature/Humanism in literature  Budz888 | May 31, 2008 | This book could have been subtitled, "Shakespeare for the Common Reader". Despite the fact that Hamlet and Falstaff intrude unexpectedly, and interesting characters are kept off-page, the book contains many interesting insights into the plays. And so Bloom inspires us to re-read Shakespeare. 1 RaviSankrit | Oct 15, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
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It is a long and fascinating itinerary, and one littered with thousands of sharp insights. Listen to Bloom on Romeo and Juliet: "The Nurse and Mercutio, both of them audience favorites, are nevertheless bad news, in different but complementary ways." On The Merchant of Venice: "To reduce him to contemporary theatrical terms, Shylock would be an Arthur Miller protagonist displaced into a Cole Porter musical, Willy Loman wandering about in Kiss Me Kate." On As You Like It: "Rosalind is unique in Shakespeare, perhaps indeed in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share." Bloom even offers some belated vocational counseling to Falstaff, identifying him as an Elizabethan Mr. Chips: "Falstaff is more than skeptical, but he is too much of a teacher (his true vocation, more than highwayman) to follow skepticism out to its nihilistic borders, as Hamlet does."
In the end, it doesn't matter very much whether we agree with all or any of these ideas. What does matter is that Bloom's capacious book sends us hurrying back to some of the central texts of our civilization. "The ultimate use of Shakespeare," the author asserts, "is to let him teach you to think too well, to whatever truth you can sustain without perishing." Bloom himself has made excellent use of his hero's instruction, and now he teaches us all to do the same. --Daniel Hintzsche
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:09 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English (6)
The book is worth much more than whatever was paid for it. If you love Shakespeare, read it; if you just kind of like Shakespeare, you really should read it; and if you do not like Shakespeare - you must read it. (