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 30
... vision of man . The oral critics in particular have been guilty of a failure to see that their ideological preju- dices have a very long history indeed . A somewhat similar charge can be laid against " Homeric anthropologists " like Her ...
... vision of man . The oral critics in particular have been guilty of a failure to see that their ideological preju- dices have a very long history indeed . A somewhat similar charge can be laid against " Homeric anthropologists " like Her ...
Page 34
... vision of a new kind of man , almost a new Adam , the man whom Yahweh has decided to trust , and who will therefore receive Yahweh's covenant - love . The David image , though it will develop a mes- sianic aura later in the Jewish ...
... vision of a new kind of man , almost a new Adam , the man whom Yahweh has decided to trust , and who will therefore receive Yahweh's covenant - love . The David image , though it will develop a mes- sianic aura later in the Jewish ...
Page 38
... vision of the divine possibly can be . One can imagine the reactions of Virgil's precursor , Lucretius , to this not exactly Epicurean vision of the divine reality . If the gods of the Iliad , in their better aspect , compensate for ...
... vision of the divine possibly can be . One can imagine the reactions of Virgil's precursor , Lucretius , to this not exactly Epicurean vision of the divine reality . If the gods of the Iliad , in their better aspect , compensate for ...
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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