But it took a singular thinker to point out the possibility. We all deem ourselves unique.īut are we, really? Maybe we’re all just descendants of a writer’s imagination - and, for the record, I do not think it has to be Shakespeare. Full Book Name:Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human Author Name:Harold Bloom Book Genre:Biography, Classics, Criticism, Drama, History, Literary Criticism, Literature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Reference ISBN 9781573227513 Edition Language:English Date of Publication:1998 PDF File Name:Shakespeare-HaroldBloom.pdf PDF File Size: 6. But he also seems to use the word to mean something like aesthetic power, where strong just means. You can find elements of what Bloom is referring to (a complex. We’re very impressed with what we have created. Bloom uses it Freudianly, to mean a writer’s ability to wrestle with the father figure. This is the golden age of self-importance, after all. He claimed that we all think we’ve invented ourselves through our own decisions and as a consequence of our particular circumstance. These days, enormous energy is being expanded to undermine Shakespeare’s singularity, not deify the dude.īloom was, of course, unfazed by all of that.

And his world-view - white, male, generally unwilling to rock the establishment boat - reflected a set of circumstances that you or I most likely don’t share.

I only read Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet. First, in the Christopher Columbus sense of first?Īnd was not Shakespeare but one writer among many in his milieu and, to use the most charitable of the available words, also an enthusiastic collaborator. Even Blooms favorite Shakespearean character, John Falstaff, was someone I never encountered when I was younger.

Bloom shakespeare