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 13
... suffering , my suffering ! How I writhe ! Oh , the walls of my heart ! My heart moans within me , I cannot be silent ; For I hear the blare of horns , Alarms of war . Disaster overtakes disaster , For all the land has been ravaged ...
... suffering , my suffering ! How I writhe ! Oh , the walls of my heart ! My heart moans within me , I cannot be silent ; For I hear the blare of horns , Alarms of war . Disaster overtakes disaster , For all the land has been ravaged ...
Page 19
... suffering becoming a door of approach to Him , as is already clear for the life of Jeremiah where the way of martyrdom leads to an ever purer and deeper fellowship with Yahweh . " Some Christians will hear the incep- tion of the Yahweh ...
... suffering becoming a door of approach to Him , as is already clear for the life of Jeremiah where the way of martyrdom leads to an ever purer and deeper fellowship with Yahweh . " Some Christians will hear the incep- tion of the Yahweh ...
Page 70
... sufferings ( which he greatly magnifies ) , or in his relationship to the divine . It is an- other indication of Shakespeare's strong originality that he persuades us of the Jobean dignity and grandeur of Lear's first sufferings , even ...
... sufferings ( which he greatly magnifies ) , or in his relationship to the divine . It is an- other indication of Shakespeare's strong originality that he persuades us of the Jobean dignity and grandeur of Lear's first sufferings , even ...
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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