Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University.[1] In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world".[2] After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books,[3] including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm.[4][5] Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.[6]
For the screenwriter, see Harold Jack Bloom.Teaching career[edit]
Bloom was a member of the Yale English Department from 1955 to 2019, teaching his final class four days before his death.[7] He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1985. From 1988 to 2004, Bloom was Berg Professor of English at New York University while maintaining his position at Yale. In 2010, he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new institution in Savannah, Georgia, that focuses on primary texts.[18][19] Fond of endearments, Bloom addressed both male and female students and friends as "my dear".[7]
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Early life and education[edit]
Bloom was born in New York City on July 11, 1930,[7] to Paula (née Lev) and William Bloom. He lived in the Bronx at 1410 Grand Concourse.[9][10] He was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a Yiddish-speaking household, where he learned literary Hebrew;[11] he learned English at the age of six.[12] Bloom's father, a garment worker, was born in Odesa and his Lithuanian Jewish mother, a homemaker, near Brest Litovsk in what is today Belarus.[11] Harold had three older sisters and an older brother. He was the last living sibling.[11]
As a boy, Bloom read Hart Crane's Collected Poems, a collection that inspired his lifelong fascination with poetry.[13] Bloom went to the Bronx High School of Science, where his grades were poor but his standardized-test scores were high.[14] In 1951 he received a B.A. degree in classics from Cornell, where he was a student of English literary critic M. H. Abrams, and in 1955 a PhD from Yale.[15] In 1954–55 Bloom was a Fulbright Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge.[16]
Bloom was a standout student at Yale, where he clashed with the faculty of New Critics, including William K. Wimsatt. Several years later Bloom dedicated his book The Anxiety of Influence to Wimsatt.[17]
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "School of Resentment" (which included multiculturalism, feminism, Marxism, and other ideologies).[7][8] He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
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Reception[edit]
Bloom's work has drawn polarized responses, even among established literary scholars. Bloom was called "probably the most celebrated literary critic in the United States"[64] and "America's best-known man of letters".[65] A 1994 New York Times article said that many younger critics see Bloom as an "outdated oddity",[5] whereas a 1998 New York Times article called him "one of the most gifted of contemporary critics".[66]
James Wood wrote: "Vatic, repetitious, imprecisely reverential, though never without a peculiar charm of his own – a kind of campiness, in fact – Bloom as a literary critic in the last few years has been largely unimportant."[65] Bloom responded to questions about Wood in an interview by saying: "There are period pieces in criticism as there are period pieces in the novel and in poetry. The wind blows and they will go away... There's nothing to the man... I don't want to talk about him".[42]
In the early 21st century, Bloom often found himself at the center of literary controversy after criticizing popular writers such as Adrienne Rich,[67] Maya Angelou,[68] and David Foster Wallace.[69] In the pages of The Paris Review, he criticized the populist-leaning poetry slam, saying: "It is the death of art."[70] When Doris Lessing received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he bemoaned the "pure political correctness" of the award to an author of "fourth-rate science fiction", while conceding his appreciation of Lessing's earlier work.[71]
MormonVoices, a group associated with Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research, included Bloom on its Top Ten Anti-Mormon Statements of 2011 list for saying, "The current head of the Mormon Church, Thomas S. Monson, known to his followers as 'prophet, seer and revelator', is indistinguishable from the secular plutocratic oligarchs who exercise power in our supposed democracy."[72] This was despite Bloom's sympathy for Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of Mormonism, whom he called a "religious genius".[73]
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Harold Bloom
July 11, 1930
New York City, U.S.
October 14, 2019 (aged 89)
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
- Literary critic
- writer
- professor