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Shakespeare: Invention of the Human

Shakespeare: Invention of the Human

The Invention of the Human

Paperback

About the Book

"The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer." -Geoffrey O'Brien, New York Review of Books

A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author, this book is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare.

Preeminent literary critic-and ultimate authority on the western literary tradition, Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships: that Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.

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Praise for Shakespeare: Invention of the Human

"The most original literary critic in America." --The New York Times

"No critic in the English language since Samuel Johnson has been more prolific." --The Paris Review

"Bloom is all literature, (he) positively lives it." --Alfred Kazin
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About the Author

Harold Bloom
HAROLD BLOOM lived in New Haven and was a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Before that, he was Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than forty books include Possessed by Memory, The Anxiety of Influence, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, The Western Canon, The American Religion, and The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime. He was a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the Catalonia International Prize, and Mexico's Alfonso Reyes International Prize. He lived in New Haven until his death on October 14, 2019, at the age of eighty-nine. More by Harold Bloom
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