I was at Yale in the summer of 1976.I was studying and reading French in preparation for the graduate record exams. Hearing that Professor Bloom was lecturing on Emily Dickinson I decided to sneak into his class. I did that, and was nervous that the embarrassment would too much to bear if I was found out. But Professor looked at me, knew I wasn’t supposed to be there and never said a word. A true gentleman and great teacher and his lectures gave me memories I shall never forget!
Love it - I’d love to listen to Bloom lecture on Dickinson as he makes poets (especially) so…real, so palpable. And Dickinson especially has such fine and sharp turns of phrase - that would have been a wonderful experience!!
SRD, I am happy that a professor like Bloom saved your life. I read his book, the Invention of the Human, when I was working on an original Shakespearean play. And the book is so easy to read and very insightful. What a brilliant thinker.
When you set a mind on fire, it doesn't always burn the same way. And Bloom's mind was, no matter what else, a fiery furnace of literary pleasures, wild encounters, deep dives. Wrong not a few times, for sure, but right more than his share. What he got right, for me, wasn't about the literary details of interpretation, but about the passion of intimate engagement with an imagination that is beautifully alive. What inspires and attracts in Bloom is just that: fiery passion.
A great loss to literary scholarship. His zeal for the aesthetic power of creative fiction and his staunch defence of the Western Canon is still much needed in an age where literature has become increasingly devalued. RIP Harold Bloom!
there are some who remain in the light amid grief...some who channel the bards wisely with heavy work and reading done...some who are simply very dear to us... God bless the late bloomer... even if he had no God... we miss you, Harold... peace in the history that spells merely biography
+Dex Quire I can't imagine being a student in his class. Personally, I would have been all at sea. I will check out Richard Blessing, thanks for the tip.
+Horatio Hornblower His reading of something just once is the equivalent of another person's struggling with it a thousand times so I forgive him the very human confusion.
+genki2genki I am NOT an intellectual! I am a poor reader! I have learning difficulties. My favourite writer is William McGonagall as I understand his poetry! My favourite piece of music is Venus by Holst. My favourite Beatles' album is Please, Please Me from 1963. I like Fish and Chips.
Wow. Just WOW. And now I’m going to go back and do that whole thing again. UNSTOPPABLY BRILLIANT. For posting this ‘I can no other answer make, but thanks, thank and ever thanks’
"A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate his genius for expanding consciousness from his own passion for theatricality" ~ 16:08
Matt Lin . The play Hamlet is a study in self consciousness ," To be or not to be " Hamlet wants to live ,but he is aware he has duty and passion to deal with within himself his passion for revenge and his own ego is theatrical "Needs to be displayed " That is how I see it
"Peace of mind is only attainable if your attempt to feel & do "anything and everything" is not wrecked by melodramatic horseshit. Stop being a fuckwit. I reckon that's pretty cool because a bunch of words this guy wrote are all about finding yourself and all that jazz". Oh shit, I just got an F on my essay.
the coughing is most likely the result of a stroke i have seen it before. to see him soldiering on and seeing him on stage for that amount of time considering this is saying a lot.
What a Brilliant thinker. I like that he was the son of immigrants to the U.S., like so many of our greatest Americans. Loved his most important books; wished he was a backyard neighbor. I know he was atheistically inclined. But, I would suggest such an intellect would see REINCARNATION as the appropriate metaphysical answer to the mysteries of life, and to those who read this...(LoL) All 7 of you. 😊
Excellent conference. Too bad we don't have Harold Bloom anymore. I was surprised to hear Bloom quoting Miguel de Unamuno, an intellectual born in Bilbao, Spain. The Basque nationalist government does not dare to have his bust in the street within the reach of the people for fear of being attacked (he was not a nationalist) and they have placed him on an obelisk that looks more like a pillory at five meters high!
"Then sayde God vnto Moses: I wilbe what I wilbe: ad he sayde, this shalt thou saye vnto the children of Israel: I wilbe dyd send me to you." Exodus 3 14 tyndale translation. This is what Harold was taking about.
I found more disagreements with Bloom critiques than agreements but I am nostalgic for the era where discussion around a work of literature revolved mainly around that work and its author instead of what' s happening in the real world.
It still deals with the real world especially if you're conferring poetic judgement instead of stylistic consideration. Telling your audience that the tale is the struggle for the expression pf authentic self is in itself referential use of language. If you can't avoid that traditional didactic manner of reading and you want to be faithful to the text, then just offer suggestions for possible interpretation by showing how the details of the text are united despite of its complexity. Bloom's style is very old-fashion, no different from German philological tradition..
@@czarquetzal8344 too many big words for me to understand your point. Let me be clear, I am not particularly enamored with Bloom's works, which often felt didatic in how to intrepret art. However, when he was more prominent, critical discussions of an artist works, tend to be how author present his or her arts to us, the readers. Now, the arts are lumped into the cultural climate whether or not it was applicable. Example recently, to the press it seem that it doesn't matter if Barbie is a good or bad comedy or satire, its merits or flaws came from feminism or antifeminism. JkkRowling being a terf, has no impact on the flaws or brilliance of HarryPotter or its games, yet it was getting mentioned anyway. Colleen Hoover may be a bad writer (Idk, I never read her), but the flaws of her writings is said to be inspiring abuse. When Bloom or most critics in the 2000s criticize the writers, they criticized the writings, not who they are or what they stand for. That the times I'm nostalgic for,
HB to me is a true teacher, a man whose mission it was to tell the truth and impart knowledge. However, to say certain writers of certain gospels could not have written them bc they did not possess the erudite Greek required, and clearly lacked the learning, and therefore there is just one glaring hole in biblical scholarship bc of what tradition claims and what scholarship continues to dismantle My idol HB loves all that, believes in it, wants it to continue...EXCEPT when the exact same process is applied to you-know-who...
@@Tom-rg2ex Yes, I'm a big fan of Richard Carrier and Robert M Price, two thoroughly researched and convincing mythicists. Still Carrier gives the possibility of a historical Jesus a 1 in 3 chance bc of his particular quite rigorous methodology, which, he grants, are still pretty decent odds. His talks are great if you're not familiar with him. He's funny though when he kind of very gently warns us scholarly amateurs of leading with the mythicist argument bc it tends to turn off and tune out a believing listener right off the bat. Rope them in, he suggests, with other textual inconsistencies and contradictions first, then slowly introduce, sort of slyly, the fundamentals of Paul's cosmic Jesus and other contextual evidence why no such real person existed. Just really a fascinating guy to listen to on the subject!
@@AAwildeone The author of William Shakespeare's plays is William Shakespeare. If you think his standing in history has as much authenticity or less than Jesus Christ, then I feel bad for you.
lol at Schiller being better than Goethe. He is not even in the central canon. Bloom's opinion > yours. Goethe is holy trinity along with Shakespeare and Dante.
29:00 well known edward/ahake spelare hated the thought of being barried in earth, where earth worms feed on the dead. He wanted a tomb: compounded with dust
Shakespeare has an END, not an Everyman, but a dear person on the level of any critic or writer or poet....THANK YOU EDWARD OXENFORD, (NOT an illiterate from Avon), but the man who had to hide his legacy!!!
What you are saying is a truly blasphemous thing to say. No, Shakespeare is the beginning and the end. Historicizing an author never deals with the art: only with everything else. There is no history, only biography. The biography of Shakespeare is a satire of literary criticism: if it was intended to be literary criticism, plainly.
Am I losing my mind, or is everything he's saying been said a million (more or less) times before? I was expecting fresh revelations. Not to say he's not intelligent nor well spoken, but ... is this the culmination of a lifetime of work on Shakespeare?
The Skull and Bones Rosicrucianism is really showing, from 46 minutes, as this actor reads out 'his' script. (This very familiar person has a female skull, hips, and digit ratio.) In my opinion. Always do your own research. Just saying. The voice is different. In my opinion. Read the plays, and don't be put off by lectures such as these.
When did Shakespeare live in a Castle? And in Denmark? And was killed in a swordfight? And lived loved his mother (that way?)? And hated his Stepfather because he married his mother??? The only thing in commong to "Hamlet", the play, is that they were both born once, and that they also died. Period.
It's too bad that Professor Bloom never figured out who really wrote the plays. His intuition about Falstaff's "authorial" presence remains spot on target.
In western canon there are three invincible works: Bible, Shakespeare and Homer. Dante comes in fourth place. I adore Shakespeare, but the Bible is still major than Shakespeare. I like Harold Bloom, but I disagree of him in this point.
Ryszard Dygas F I see your point - but the Bible is not authorial. It is cultural, epic, foundational. Shakespeare is the invention of the duality of humanness, In this video's examples - it would be a Prince of Denmark not knowing who he is, what he should do, and if he should seek revenge, even if his father has been murdered. Or, the Queen of Egypt, the symbol of beauty, sad and alone at the end. And finally, Falstaff, a Knight in old age, battling age, and tired of the seeking of honor, in fact making fun of honor itself, which he relies upon.
Dan Verdick I respect your point of view, but, in my opinion, it not proceeds. What is the problem in the Bible to be epic and foundational? Beyond the Holy Bible to be classified as a work of Theological era, there are many elements in the Bible that speaks about the human nature and human condition. You also do not speciefied your argument, if you can to write more about it, I want to read. best wishes!
Ryszard Dygas F That's a bit unfair. The bible has multiple authors and spans centuries on top of being the basis for most western ethics. We can't even assume Shakespeares works could've been made coherent without it. You'd have to compare, perhaps arguably but certainly a much harder case, someone like Paul... unless the haredi's are right and Moses wrote the oldtestament which would make him by far the most invincible.
Joe Ruf I agree, I think. In ancient world there are many coletive works, specialy Holy Bible and Homer, but it is not very important when we are speaking about the excelence grade of the works of western cannon. Few import that the Bible has many authors, the most important is the literary excelence of these works. I want remember newly that I adore Shakespeare and I adore Harold Bloom too. But I disagree with him in this point only. best wishes for all.
Since I read what he makes of Marcus Brutus, I could not tolerate nor a word nor a thought that comes out of Harold Bloom.. His understanding of the text of Julius Caesar and its characters ruined all his works for me.. Bloom is a typical cynical nihilistic intelligentsia member who comments on life from the shadows without engaging in it the least, thinking it is the smartest and most profound course of actions is having no actions at all, and pathologically relishing utter impartiality and relativistic sophistry.. He IS a Hamlet.. a secular Hamlet..
That does sound far-fetched, I agree. My debt to Bloom has to do with the insight he allowed me to have into the manner of the influence of Shakespeare through his claim to the effect that he has shaped the identities of individuals in our modern world.
I adore this 'most vital man', but I do not agree that an amazing idiot from Straford wrote all Shakespearean verse...he is simply wrong, and refuses to acknowledge modern scholarship...As much as I would like to claim the Bard as part of my own class and commony, he is simply not anyone else than an INSIDER and a great learned man...he is the Earl of Oxford
+randomjuggler2010 I have read the most recent reverential biographies out of Yale and Cambridge, ALL of which runs into a wall when it comes to a provenance of FACT....Anderson's book confronts such fact HEAD-ON whereas (unfortunately) Bloom and fellow(s) relies on sentimentality, per assessment... Granted the "theories" are hypotheses dodgeballed against accepted fact, but so was Copernicus and so was Einstein, who proved we need to let OLD things go and, perhaps, make way for a different set of facts than those simply handed down. And NO, I am neither a member of the flat-earth society, nor do I think Queen Victoria wrote Alice in Wonderland!!!
+Soren Aleksander What foolishness you spout. To question shakespeare's authorship against the word of his "fellows" ( Ben Jonson, and the editors of the first folio among others that knew the man. ) is simply deliberate ignorance of the highest order. There has been no "modern" or any other kind of legitimate scholarship that counters that simple fact.
Soren, I don't believe the wilder conspiracy theories about Bacon and Marlowe being "the real Shakesdpeare", but theatre has always been a collaborative process, including script writing in Elizabethan times was a collaborative process. EVERYBODY to varying degrees had a hand in revising each others scripts (including actors) and there is plenty of evidence for that. Bit like writing for television. So, if you and Harold Bloom think Bill Shakespeare just sat down and wrote every single play by himself, out of his own imagination, signed the first draft and NO-ONE every changed a single word then you are very very naive. And that does not even take into account the many many examples of Bill stealing from the work of other wirters ie Marlowe. Have you ever worked in the theatre or written a play? I have.
I get tired of Bloom's preposterous deification of Shakespeare. It's irritating. Shakespeare was a great writer but he had some serious flaw, too, and he was not a god, he did not create any of us. His digressions into Hebrew etymology is irrelevant and pretentious. Hamlet is a fascinating fictional character, an enigma. But to call him "amoral" and unable to love is nonsense. The deification of Shakespeare requires a high priest and Bloom plays that role to the hilt. This is not literary criticism, it's merely idolatry.
I strongly agree. He did not provide evidence for such judgement. Yes, Shakespeare is a " great writer" able to articulate what's in the bible, an example of allusion. But to say tbe enigmatic phrase without telling the audience it gains unique cutrency of meaning and how such meaning substantiates other details in the creation of a " great" piece is a mete intellectual pretention. They are the universal subject of dead cliches, not even the heir of the Elizabethan England To say that Shakespeare is the invention means what in the intertextual details. Unless you have a theory of literature or you have specific set of criteria and your aesthetic taste, which is subjective is shared by me, I won't accept Bloom"s pedestrianism.
i have to say that this one was not so interesting. his presentation is this time too flat, and i have a sense he's rushing through that material with the damocles sword over the head
Stuntplick Sq I think, Shakespeare created human life so great, like no other poet, with the exception of Homer. Goethe interpreted human life so deep, like no other poet, with the exception of Dante. For most of the world was or is Shakespeare more central than Goethe, but for the German speaking world was and is more Goethe central as poet.
Peter Faust Well, agreed that Goethe is more central for German, but Shakespeare is universal, in France he is most performed than Moliere, Racine or Corneille, in Russia Shakespeare is considered the great father of Pushkin, for America Shakespeare is the author, the most studied, analysed, read and saled, even in Brazil (my country) Shakespeare made history, Shakespeare is the great poet for Germans along Goethe and Schiller, Shakespeare is studied in China, Philipines and Africa. Shakespeare is more universal than any other writer, its a fact.
Stuntplick Sq Shakespeare is probably the greatest poet of all time. But the 4 greatest poetical works for me, in the Western tradition, are the Odyssee and Ilias of Homer, the Divine Comedy of Dante, and the Faust of Goethe. The greatest work of theatre for me is the Ring of the Nibelungs by Richard Wagner.
One of the reasons Shakespeare is so uncanny is because he was an actor and, on the evidence of his plays, a really good actor who knew theatre, so really he entered into his characters as he wrote them. It is like he went out of body and literally became them. He also deliberately wrote the plays for everybody, all the classes and orders of his age, as was the style of Elizabethan theatre. He seems to have embraced traditional story-telling with no pretension or condescension whatsoever. Apart from that, he was a poetic genius. So a lot of things came together with Shakespeare to make him so ridiculously popular. It is not that he is the best poet or playwright but he wrote in a form and manner that somehow makes his work interminably appealing and interesting.
Boring choices; read Kundera, Kafka, Musil, Gombrowicz, or even Houllebecq; They're more, how should I put it, Interesting!; And if your brain is a tabula rasa start with the Bible. Why did he skip Rabelais in his Western Canon? He's more fun than Cervantes, or Dante;
I was at Yale in the summer of 1976.I was studying and reading French in preparation for the graduate record exams. Hearing that Professor Bloom was lecturing on Emily Dickinson I decided to sneak into his class. I did that, and was nervous that the embarrassment would too much to bear if I was found out. But Professor looked at me, knew I wasn’t supposed to be there and never said a word. A true gentleman and great teacher and his lectures gave me memories I shall never forget!
Love it - I’d love to listen to Bloom lecture on Dickinson as he makes poets (especially) so…real, so palpable. And Dickinson especially has such fine and sharp turns of phrase - that would have been a wonderful experience!!
I had the good fortune to study with him at Yale. He helped saving me from suicide. The only teacher who loved to be corrected by his students.
SRD lovely to hear😊
Wao amazing! What did you study at Yale??? It's would be great see this conference with traduction because i don't underStand. Regard!
@dontzenyourselfout Go fuck yourself.
SRD,
I am happy that a professor like Bloom saved your life. I read his book, the Invention of the Human, when I was working on an original Shakespearean play. And the book is so easy to read and very insightful. What a brilliant thinker.
wow what an amazing admission - thanks - and hope you are OK these days
The immense heart and piercing sight of this tender, gentle, wise man are so deeply missed. Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting.
Professor Bloom died in October 2019 @age 89. A memorial service will be held for him at Yale University on Jan. 8, 2020.
When you set a mind on fire, it doesn't always burn the same way. And Bloom's mind was, no matter what else, a fiery furnace of literary pleasures, wild encounters, deep dives. Wrong not a few times, for sure, but right more than his share. What he got right, for me, wasn't about the literary details of interpretation, but about the passion of intimate engagement with an imagination that is beautifully alive. What inspires and attracts in Bloom is just that: fiery passion.
A great loss to literary scholarship. His zeal for the aesthetic power of creative fiction and his staunch defence of the Western Canon is still much needed in an age where literature has become increasingly devalued. RIP Harold Bloom!
there are some who remain in the light amid grief...some who channel the bards wisely with heavy work and reading done...some who are simply very dear to us... God bless the late bloomer... even if he had no God... we miss you, Harold... peace in the history that spells merely biography
I have never pretended to "get" Bloom, yet I find myself drawn to his writings and lectures again and again.
+Dex Quire I can't imagine being a student in his class. Personally, I would have been all at sea. I will check out Richard Blessing, thanks for the tip.
+Horatio Hornblower His reading of something just once is the equivalent of another person's struggling with it a thousand times so I forgive him the very human confusion.
+genki2genki I am NOT an intellectual! I am a poor reader! I have learning difficulties. My favourite writer is William McGonagall as I understand his poetry! My favourite piece of music is Venus by Holst. My favourite Beatles' album is Please, Please Me from 1963. I like Fish and Chips.
the "getting" thing probably obstructs your ability to think and appreciate
@@genki2genki Maybe more clever to have said, "...I would have been adrift on 'a sea of troubles.' "
2:05 The Essence of Poetry is Invention
3:24 Knowledge Brought Into Mankind
What a brilliant man and so erudite , It shows a lifetime of learning .
No cap
Cap. He was overrated.
The man had terrible insight in some of Shakespeare's most important plays.
@@zacharyzapata8559 um yeah sure. Also, list your publications please?
@@4Mr.Crowley2 I read Shakesspeare, I love Shakespeare and I've got a brain. Eff your publications, slave.
What's that cult worship?
Wow. Just WOW. And now I’m going to go back and do that whole thing again. UNSTOPPABLY BRILLIANT. For posting this ‘I can no other answer make, but thanks, thank and ever thanks’
an epic comment above- it slightly grieves me to see how so many great voices go unheeded on these comment pages
"A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate his genius for expanding consciousness from his own passion for theatricality" ~ 16:08
Yeah do that
Matt Lin . The play Hamlet is a study in self consciousness ," To be or not to be " Hamlet wants to live ,but he is aware he has duty and passion to deal with within himself his passion for revenge and his own ego is theatrical "Needs to be displayed " That is how I see it
"Peace of mind is only attainable if your attempt to feel & do "anything and everything" is not wrecked by melodramatic horseshit. Stop being a fuckwit. I reckon that's pretty cool because a bunch of words this guy wrote are all about finding yourself and all that jazz".
Oh shit, I just got an F on my essay.
MsOal mm
That's why the true genius lives in solitude
"...exasperation at high concept directors who assume they can think beyond him." 20:00
Thank you so much, Professor...
the coughing is most likely the result of a stroke i have seen it before. to see him soldiering on and seeing him on stage for that amount of time considering this is saying a lot.
Shakespeare was only okay and could not possibly hope to compete with the genius of our modern creative minds like Lil Pump and Frankie Muniz.
Frankie Muniz is still around?!?!
Idiot…
What a Brilliant thinker. I like that he was the son of immigrants to the U.S., like so many of our greatest Americans. Loved his most important books; wished he was a backyard neighbor. I know he was atheistically inclined. But, I would suggest such an intellect would see REINCARNATION as the appropriate metaphysical answer to the mysteries of life, and to those who read this...(LoL) All 7 of you. 😊
13:00 Bible studies - gets the biggest laugh of the evening.
I read "The Book of J" it was very enjoyable.
Thank you! Your lecture inspires further study of Shakespeare.
Good luck, if they're all like this one.
for me it goes like this: Dr Johnson, Dr Kenner, Dr Bloom. BOOM!
I appreciate that you put our boy Dr Johnson first
Where can we get the hard copy of this talk? Every word is a gem!
Hi @rajpal, did you ever get some pointer to the transcript of this lecture?
Good afternoon & evening Mr. Bloom.
Derick Yollis.
Excellent conference. Too bad we don't have Harold Bloom anymore. I was surprised to hear Bloom quoting Miguel de Unamuno, an intellectual born in Bilbao, Spain. The Basque nationalist government does not dare to have his bust in the street within the reach of the people for fear of being attacked (he was not a nationalist) and they have placed him on an obelisk that looks more like a pillory at five meters high!
An excellent lecture.
Trust, goodwill and Money
"Then sayde God vnto Moses: I wilbe what I wilbe: ad he sayde, this shalt thou saye vnto the children of Israel: I wilbe dyd send me to you." Exodus 3 14 tyndale translation. This is what Harold was taking about.
I found more disagreements with Bloom critiques than agreements but I am nostalgic for the era where discussion around a work of literature revolved mainly around that work and its author instead of what' s happening in the real world.
It still deals with the real world especially if you're conferring poetic judgement instead of stylistic consideration. Telling your audience that the tale is the struggle for the expression pf authentic self is in itself referential use of language. If you can't avoid that traditional didactic manner of reading and you want to be faithful to the text, then just offer suggestions for possible interpretation by showing how the details of the text are united despite of its complexity.
Bloom's style is very old-fashion, no different from German philological tradition..
@@czarquetzal8344 too many big words for me to understand your point. Let me be clear, I am not particularly enamored with Bloom's works, which often felt didatic in how to intrepret art. However, when he was more prominent, critical discussions of an artist works, tend to be how author present his or her arts to us, the readers. Now, the arts are lumped into the cultural climate whether or not it was applicable.
Example recently, to the press it seem that it doesn't matter if Barbie is a good or bad comedy or satire, its merits or flaws came from feminism or antifeminism. JkkRowling being a terf, has no impact on the flaws or brilliance of HarryPotter or its games, yet it was getting mentioned anyway. Colleen Hoover may be a bad writer (Idk, I never read her), but the flaws of her writings is said to be inspiring abuse.
When Bloom or most critics in the 2000s criticize the writers, they criticized the writings, not who they are or what they stand for. That the times I'm nostalgic for,
Is it possible to read this conference in french ? If anyone know(s?) please tell me.I will be very gratefull to The !
Frederick Douglass also seems like a prototypical free artist of himself.
You're absolutely right, Professor, you are NOT an actor, and should not take upon a mantle too heavy for your shoulders!
Intrigued. Thanks for sharing
Does anyone know where this written lecture is published?
24:30 Agenbite of inwit, Ayenbite of Inwyt, again-biting of inner wit. Lovely
fun fact: inwitness is an older form. the witness within.
HB to me is a true teacher, a man whose mission it was to tell the truth and impart knowledge. However, to say certain writers of certain gospels could not have written them bc they did not possess the erudite Greek required, and clearly lacked the learning, and therefore there is just one glaring hole in biblical scholarship bc of what tradition claims and what scholarship continues to dismantle
My idol HB loves all that, believes in it, wants it to continue...EXCEPT when the exact same process is applied to you-know-who...
The biggest hole in biblical scholarship I can think of is the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person in history.
@@Tom-rg2ex Yes, I'm a big fan of Richard Carrier and Robert M Price, two thoroughly researched and convincing mythicists. Still Carrier gives the possibility of a historical Jesus a 1 in 3 chance bc of his particular quite rigorous methodology, which, he grants, are still pretty decent odds. His talks are great if you're not familiar with him. He's funny though when he kind of very gently warns us scholarly amateurs of leading with the mythicist argument bc it tends to turn off and tune out a believing listener right off the bat. Rope them in, he suggests, with other textual inconsistencies and contradictions first, then slowly introduce, sort of slyly, the fundamentals of Paul's cosmic Jesus and other contextual evidence why no such real person existed. Just really a fascinating guy to listen to on the subject!
My last sentence has to do though with the mysteries and inconsistencies I've come to believe surround the identity of the Swan of Avon
@@AAwildeone The author of William Shakespeare's plays is William Shakespeare. If you think his standing in history has as much authenticity or less than Jesus Christ, then I feel bad for you.
Our Will learned more in elementary school than is taught now in college. Clearly
Listen to or read Harold Bloom and you will inevitably come across the phrase "before or since".
Uh, man of cliches and " eternal return"
Yo, Bloom, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Goethe is the greatest writer of all time!
lol at Schiller being better than Goethe. He is not even in the central canon. Bloom's opinion > yours. Goethe is holy trinity along with Shakespeare and Dante.
Naa. Cervantes is the GOAT
How can we get a copy of this great lecture....?
Harold BOOM!
Thanks and thanks.
What's the name of the man who introduced him
Thank you for this.
29:00 well known edward/ahake spelare hated the thought of being barried in earth, where earth worms feed on the dead. He wanted a tomb: compounded with dust
Is it just me, or is the sound non-existent?
Peter Smale Pardon?
SuperRickSantorum This is getting kind of existential. However, I returned and viola! The sound was there. Go figure.
So nice .
Read Miles Mathis on Walt Whitman.
Dedicate Time to Shakespeare is great, but a Life: signifying Nothing...see u tomorrow, to morrow etcetera
Shakespeare has an END, not an Everyman, but a dear person on the level of any critic or writer or poet....THANK YOU EDWARD OXENFORD, (NOT an illiterate from Avon), but the man who had to hide his legacy!!!
What you are saying is a truly blasphemous thing to say. No, Shakespeare is the beginning and the end. Historicizing an author never deals with the art: only with everything else. There is no history, only biography. The biography of Shakespeare is a satire of literary criticism: if it was intended to be literary criticism, plainly.
Am I losing my mind, or is everything he's saying been said a million (more or less) times before? I was expecting fresh revelations. Not to say he's not intelligent nor well spoken, but ... is this the culmination of a lifetime of work on Shakespeare?
The Skull and Bones Rosicrucianism is really showing, from 46 minutes, as this actor reads out 'his' script. (This very familiar person has a female skull, hips, and digit ratio.) In my opinion. Always do your own research. Just saying. The voice is different. In my opinion.
Read the plays, and don't be put off by lectures such as these.
♡
For Bloom Shakespear is above everyone else. A prejudiced critic, I am afraid...
24:30 What Joyce so splendidly called what? agonbydivinwit? Google has failed please help
Agenbite of Inwit
A real snoozer!
Would probably help if you'd read the plays he's talking about.
So who's this then?
35:10
Hamlet among all is an AUTOBIOGRAPHY....how can an amazing critic of consciousness like Doctor Bloom NOT see this....???
When did Shakespeare live in a Castle? And in Denmark? And was killed in a swordfight? And lived loved his mother (that way?)? And hated his Stepfather because he married his mother??? The only thing in commong to "Hamlet", the play, is that they were both born once, and that they also died. Period.
YIKES....are you for real?
Yes
Hi Soren, I think you misunderstand the meaning of Autobiography, but I'd like to hear more from you. Care to explain?
" Intentional Fallacy"
It's too bad that Professor Bloom never figured out who really wrote the plays. His intuition about Falstaff's "authorial" presence remains spot on target.
You're a tiny little group of nutters, yet you manage to spread your stink far and wide. Kudos!
In western canon there are three invincible works: Bible, Shakespeare and Homer. Dante comes in fourth place.
I adore Shakespeare, but the Bible is still major than Shakespeare.
I like Harold Bloom, but I disagree of him in this point.
Ryszard Dygas F I see your point - but the Bible is not authorial. It is cultural, epic, foundational. Shakespeare is the invention of the duality of humanness, In this video's examples - it would be a Prince of Denmark not knowing who he is, what he should do, and if he should seek revenge, even if his father has been murdered. Or, the Queen of Egypt, the symbol of beauty, sad and alone at the end. And finally, Falstaff, a Knight in old age, battling age, and tired of the seeking of honor, in fact making fun of honor itself, which he relies upon.
Dan Verdick I respect your point of view, but, in my opinion, it not proceeds. What is the problem in the Bible to be epic and foundational? Beyond the Holy Bible to be classified as a work of Theological era, there are many elements in the Bible that speaks about the human nature and human condition. You also do not speciefied your argument, if you can to write more about it, I want to read. best wishes!
Ryszard Dygas F That's a bit unfair. The bible has multiple authors and spans centuries on top of being the basis for most western ethics. We can't even assume Shakespeares works could've been made coherent without it. You'd have to compare, perhaps arguably but certainly a much harder case, someone like Paul... unless the haredi's are right and Moses wrote the oldtestament which would make him by far the most invincible.
Joe Ruf I agree, I think. In ancient world there are many coletive works, specialy Holy Bible and Homer, but it is not very important when we are speaking about the excelence grade of the works of western cannon. Few import that the Bible has many authors, the most important is the literary excelence of these works. I want remember newly that I adore Shakespeare and I adore Harold Bloom too. But I disagree with him in this point only. best wishes for all.
Ryszard Dygas F excuse, but, Cervantes??? I would put the Bible, even not in the top 10.
Since I read what he makes of Marcus Brutus, I could not tolerate nor a word nor a thought that comes out of Harold Bloom.. His understanding of the text of Julius Caesar and its characters ruined all his works for me.. Bloom is a typical cynical nihilistic intelligentsia member who comments on life from the shadows without engaging in it the least, thinking it is the smartest and most profound course of actions is having no actions at all, and pathologically relishing utter impartiality and relativistic sophistry.. He IS a Hamlet.. a secular Hamlet..
What did Bloom write about Brutus that you find so disagreeable, Mahmood Ismael? I am curious to learn.
@@mandanabank2081 You will have to read it in his book.. but briefly, he wanted to go to bed with the tyrant.. very very reactionary..
That does sound far-fetched, I agree. My debt to Bloom has to do with the insight he allowed me to have into the manner of the influence of Shakespeare through his claim to the effect that he has shaped the identities of individuals in our modern world.
Although Hamlet was nominally Christian, he was also basically a secular Hamlet.
I adore this 'most vital man', but I do not agree that an amazing idiot from Straford wrote all Shakespearean verse...he is simply wrong, and refuses to acknowledge modern scholarship...As much as I would like to claim the Bard as part of my own class and commony, he is simply not anyone else than an INSIDER and a great learned man...he is the Earl of Oxford
+Soren Aleksander Modern scholarship suggests that Shakespeare was indeed an 'amazing idiot from Stratford'
+randomjuggler2010 I have read the most recent reverential biographies out of Yale and Cambridge, ALL of which runs into a wall when it comes to a provenance of FACT....Anderson's book confronts such fact HEAD-ON whereas (unfortunately) Bloom and fellow(s) relies on sentimentality, per assessment... Granted the "theories" are hypotheses dodgeballed against accepted fact, but so was Copernicus and so was Einstein, who proved we need to let OLD things go and, perhaps, make way for a different set of facts than those simply handed down. And NO, I am neither a member of the flat-earth society, nor do I think Queen Victoria wrote Alice in Wonderland!!!
+Soren Aleksander What foolishness you spout. To question shakespeare's authorship against the word of his "fellows" ( Ben Jonson, and the editors of the first folio among others that knew the man. ) is simply deliberate ignorance of the highest order. There has been no "modern" or any other kind of legitimate scholarship that counters that simple fact.
+grex The question says more about how class obsessed the English are than anything else.
Soren, I don't believe the wilder conspiracy theories about Bacon and Marlowe being "the real Shakesdpeare", but theatre has always been a collaborative process, including script writing in Elizabethan times was a collaborative process. EVERYBODY to varying degrees had a hand in revising each others scripts (including actors) and there is plenty of evidence for that. Bit like writing for television. So, if you and Harold Bloom think Bill Shakespeare just sat down and wrote every single play by himself, out of his own imagination, signed the first draft and NO-ONE every changed a single word then you are very very naive. And that does not even take into account the many many examples of Bill stealing from the work of other wirters ie Marlowe. Have you ever worked in the theatre or written a play? I have.
Shakespeare would laugh at Bloom's ramblings.
I get tired of Bloom's preposterous deification of Shakespeare. It's irritating. Shakespeare was a great writer but he had some serious flaw, too, and he was not a god, he did not create any of us. His digressions into Hebrew etymology is irrelevant and pretentious. Hamlet is a fascinating fictional character, an enigma. But to call him "amoral" and unable to love is nonsense. The deification of Shakespeare requires a high priest and Bloom plays that role to the hilt. This is not literary criticism, it's merely idolatry.
I strongly agree. He did not provide evidence for such judgement. Yes, Shakespeare is a " great writer" able to articulate what's in the bible, an example of allusion. But to say tbe enigmatic phrase without telling the audience it gains unique cutrency of meaning and how such meaning substantiates other details in the creation of a " great" piece is a mete intellectual pretention. They are the universal subject of dead cliches, not even the heir of the Elizabethan England To say that Shakespeare is the invention means what in the intertextual details. Unless you have a theory of literature or you have specific set of criteria and your aesthetic taste, which is subjective is shared by me, I won't accept Bloom"s pedestrianism.
i have to say that this one was not so interesting. his presentation is this time too flat, and i have a sense he's rushing through that material with the damocles sword over the head
Harold Bloom overrated Shakespeare, English speaking Literature, Cervantes and Montesquieu.
He underestimated Goethe and German literature.
Shakespeare is more central than Goethe, own Goethe reckonized Shakespeare as your superior.
Stuntplick Sq
I think, Shakespeare created human life so great, like no other poet, with the exception of Homer.
Goethe interpreted human life so deep, like no other poet, with the exception of Dante.
For most of the world was or is Shakespeare more central than Goethe, but for the German speaking world was and is more Goethe central as poet.
Peter Faust Well, agreed that Goethe is more central for German, but Shakespeare is universal, in France he is most performed than Moliere, Racine or Corneille, in Russia Shakespeare is considered the great father of Pushkin, for America Shakespeare is the author, the most studied, analysed, read and saled, even in Brazil (my country) Shakespeare made history, Shakespeare is the great poet for Germans along Goethe and Schiller, Shakespeare is studied in China, Philipines and Africa. Shakespeare is more universal than any other writer, its a fact.
Stuntplick Sq
Shakespeare is probably the greatest poet of all time.
But the 4 greatest poetical works for me, in the Western tradition, are the Odyssee and Ilias of Homer, the Divine Comedy of Dante, and the Faust of Goethe.
The greatest work of theatre for me is the Ring of the Nibelungs by Richard Wagner.
One of the reasons Shakespeare is so uncanny is because he was an actor and, on the evidence of his plays, a really good actor who knew theatre, so really he entered into his characters as he wrote them. It is like he went out of body and literally became them. He also deliberately wrote the plays for everybody, all the classes and orders of his age, as was the style of Elizabethan theatre. He seems to have embraced traditional story-telling with no pretension or condescension whatsoever. Apart from that, he was a poetic genius. So a lot of things came together with Shakespeare to make him so ridiculously popular. It is not that he is the best poet or playwright but he wrote in a form and manner that somehow makes his work interminably appealing and interesting.
A trained actor can play the part of an untrained actor.
Paradox without further resolution.
Boring choices; read Kundera, Kafka, Musil, Gombrowicz, or even Houllebecq; They're more, how should I put it, Interesting!; And if your brain is a tabula rasa start with the Bible. Why did he skip Rabelais in his Western Canon? He's more fun than Cervantes, or Dante;
Ha ha. This really is abject nonsense, you know. Watch Paul Cantor instead.
Harold bloom doesn't look as good as Dick Hebrige or Johnny Depp...
You're right. He's hotter 😍
Thank you so much, Professor...