Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the PresentHarold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or J) writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Iliad, the Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake’s Milton, Wordsworth’s Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett. In so doing, he uncovers the truth that all our attempts to call any strong work more sacred than another are merely political and social formulations. This is criticism at its best. |
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Page 42
... Bible also become less significant and less real than the Comedy or the New Testa- ment . Indeed , the Aeneid and the Hebrew Bible are replaced . Instead of Virgil's Aeneid , the nightmare poem dominated by the sinister Juno and her ...
... Bible also become less significant and less real than the Comedy or the New Testa- ment . Indeed , the Aeneid and the Hebrew Bible are replaced . Instead of Virgil's Aeneid , the nightmare poem dominated by the sinister Juno and her ...
Page 53
... Bible had an ambiguous effect upon the writer who has been its only rival in forming the rhetoric and vision of all who came after in the language . Shakespeare's use of the Geneva and Bishops ' Bibles , and of the biblical portions of ...
... Bible had an ambiguous effect upon the writer who has been its only rival in forming the rhetoric and vision of all who came after in the language . Shakespeare's use of the Geneva and Bishops ' Bibles , and of the biblical portions of ...
Page 156
... biblical ambiguity , has a very complex sense of how the Bible might or might not give us back our lives , as in this meditation upon the life of Moses : " He is on the rack of Canaan all his life ; it is incredible that he should see ...
... biblical ambiguity , has a very complex sense of how the Bible might or might not give us back our lives , as in this meditation upon the life of Moses : " He is on the rack of Canaan all his life ; it is incredible that he should see ...
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Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present Harold Bloom Limited preview - 1991 |
Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present Harold Bloom Limited preview - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
Achilles Aeneid agonistic allegory ambivalence authority Beatrice Beckett believe biblical Blake bodily ego Book Book of Job C. S. Lewis called Christian cognitive critics crucial Dante Dante's death despite divine doorkeeper drive dualism Edmund everything Falstaff father fiction Fortinbras Freccero freedom Freud Freudian Gershom Scholem Gloucester Gnostic Gracchus Greek Hamlet heavens Hebrew Bible Hegelian hero Homer Horatio human Iago Iago's Iliad interpretation irony J's Yahweh Jeremiah Jewish Jewish memory Jews Judaism Kabbalah Kafka King Klamm Lear Lear's literary means Milton mode monism Moses negation negative never Nietzsche normative Odradek originality Othello parable Paradise Lost passion pathos perhaps poem poet poetic poetry precursor Prelude prophet represent representation rhetoric Satan Scholem seems sense Shakespeare speak spirit stance story strong sublime superego thou tion Torah tradition transcendence trope truth Turnus uncanny Virgil vision Weiskel word Wordsworth writer Yahweh Yahwist