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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 27
Page 7
... a brute contingency to all origins as such , and so the engendering of every tradition is absolutely arbitrary , including the Yahwistic , Shakespearean , and Freudian traditions of seeing the nature and destiny of THE HEBREW BIBLE 7.
... a brute contingency to all origins as such , and so the engendering of every tradition is absolutely arbitrary , including the Yahwistic , Shakespearean , and Freudian traditions of seeing the nature and destiny of THE HEBREW BIBLE 7.
Page 158
... traditional Jewish freedom . This once was called the freedom to move from the broken tablets to the free tablets ... tradition in the West . Freud obsessively collected classical artifacts , and yet toward the Greeks and the Romans ...
... traditional Jewish freedom . This once was called the freedom to move from the broken tablets to the free tablets ... tradition in the West . Freud obsessively collected classical artifacts , and yet toward the Greeks and the Romans ...
Page 183
... tradition is far from complete , " and that a kind of mes- sianic expectation is therefore necessary . This view , so comfortless as far as the present is concerned , is lightened only by the belief that a time will eventually come when ...
... tradition is far from complete , " and that a kind of mes- sianic expectation is therefore necessary . This view , so comfortless as far as the present is concerned , is lightened only by the belief that a time will eventually come when ...
Other editions - View all
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