Inventing the Human: Brontosaurus Bloom and “the Shakespeare in us”

Wright, Laurence

Title: Inventing the Human: Brontosaurus Bloom and “the Shakespeare in us”
Creator: Wright, Laurence
Date Issued: 2008
Date: 2008
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: vital:7045
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007387
Identifier: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351963534/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315264264-15
Description: preprint
Description: This essay was occasioned by the casual reading of a book called Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare (2002), a collection of responses, pro, ante and puzzled, to Bloom’s Shakespearean magnum opus. The more I browsed in the assembled essays, some of them originally reviews and conference papers, others specially commissioned responses, the more curious I became. On the whole, the contributors seemed not to understand Bloom, at least not to understand him adequately, which is a devastating handicap when the task in hand is to pass judgment. The problem seems to be that few academic commentators take Bloom seriously, accepting that he means what he says; more accurately, they find it hard to entertain with full seriousness matters Bloom intends should be taken entirely seriously. Shakespeareans, locked into their various ways of understanding the world and critical activity, generally try to find Shakespeare (or “Shakespeare”) through reading Bloom, whereas he wants us to find ourselves through reading Shakespeare: to uncover what Emerson called ‘the Shakespeare in us’ (‘Shakespeare, or The Poet’, 256). The difference is stupendous. We ought first to ask in regard to Bloom’s blockbuster the question Bloom tells us he learned from Kenneth Burke, ‘What is the author trying to do for himself or herself by writing this work?’ (Shakespeare, 412).
Format: 26 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Shakespeare in Southern Africa
Relation: Wright, L.S. (2008) Inventing the human: Brontosaurus Bloom and the Shakespeare in us. In: The Shakespearean International Yearbook. Volume 8: Special section, European Shakespeares. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 238-260
Relation: Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 8 number 1 238 260 2008 type="isbn">9781351963534
Rights: Wright, Laurence
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of The Shakespearean International Yearbook Self-archiving Policy

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