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 101
... passion is always stronger in Milton than reason . " Watkins referred to this as " Milton's agonizing ambivalence towards passion , ” but “ am- bivalence " seems to me a misleading term in that context . Cognitively , Milton rejected a ...
... passion is always stronger in Milton than reason . " Watkins referred to this as " Milton's agonizing ambivalence towards passion , ” but “ am- bivalence " seems to me a misleading term in that context . Cognitively , Milton rejected a ...
Page 135
... passion , I bowed low To God who thus corrected my desires . God is not very frequently mentioned in The Prelude , and He may not be altogether identical with the poem's unnamed third presence that , in moments of crisis , subsumes both ...
... passion , I bowed low To God who thus corrected my desires . God is not very frequently mentioned in The Prelude , and He may not be altogether identical with the poem's unnamed third presence that , in moments of crisis , subsumes both ...
Page 136
... passion " is reserved for the mystery of the ever - increasing inner self . That passion is adumbrated in the passage follow- ing , which would have been the conclusion of a five - book Pre- lude that Wordsworth contemplated in March ...
... passion " is reserved for the mystery of the ever - increasing inner self . That passion is adumbrated in the passage follow- ing , which would have been the conclusion of a five - book Pre- lude that Wordsworth contemplated in March ...
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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