Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human | 
| Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  99 reviews
Sales Rank: 77509
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 768
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 2.1
ISBN: 157322751X
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.33
EAN: 9781573227513
ASIN: 157322751X
Publication Date: September 1, 1999
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Amazon.com
"Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare's greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." So Harold Bloom opines in his outrageously ambitious Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. This is a titanic claim. But then this is a titanic book, wrought by a latter-day critical colossus--and before Bloom is done with us, he has made us wonder whether his vision of Shakespeare's influence on the whole of our lives might not be simply the sober truth. Shakespeare is a feast of arguments and insights, written with engaging frankness and affecting immediacy. Bloom ranges through the Bard's plays in the probable order of their composition, relating play to play and character to character, maintaining all the while a shrewd grasp of Shakespeare's own burgeoning sensibility. It is a long and fascinating itinerary, and one littered with thousands of sharp insights. Listen to Bloom on Romeo and Juliet: "The Nurse and Mercutio, both of them audience favorites, are nevertheless bad news, in different but complementary ways." On The Merchant of Venice: "To reduce him to contemporary theatrical terms, Shylock would be an Arthur Miller protagonist displaced into a Cole Porter musical, Willy Loman wandering about in Kiss Me Kate." On As You Like It: "Rosalind is unique in Shakespeare, perhaps indeed in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share." Bloom even offers some belated vocational counseling to Falstaff, identifying him as an Elizabethan Mr. Chips: "Falstaff is more than skeptical, but he is too much of a teacher (his true vocation, more than highwayman) to follow skepticism out to its nihilistic borders, as Hamlet does." In the end, it doesn't matter very much whether we agree with all or any of these ideas. What does matter is that Bloom's capacious book sends us hurrying back to some of the central texts of our civilization. "The ultimate use of Shakespeare," the author asserts, "is to let him teach you to think too well, to whatever truth you can sustain without perishing." Bloom himself has made excellent use of his hero's instruction, and now he teaches us all to do the same. --Daniel Hintzsche
Book Description
The New York Times bestseller from Harold Bloom...
A National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Publishers Weekly best book of the year.
"The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer."--Geoffrey O'Brien, New York Review of Books
A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. Preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships--that Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.
* A New York Times bestseller
* A National Book Award Finalist
* A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
* A New York Times Notable Book
* One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year
* A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club
* An ALA Booklist Editors Choice for 1998
* The culmination of Bloom's celebrated career--a long-awaited, complete assessment of his most beloved subject
* Includes in-depth readings of every Shakespeare play
* An essential reference volume for every home and school library
"A huge cloak-bag of ideas...It is a feast."--Wall Street Journal
"An enraptured, incantatory epic...dazzling...You could hardly ask for a more capacious and beneficent work than Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human."--The New Yorker
"A fiercely argued exegesis of Shakespeare's plays in the tradition of Samuel Johnson, Hazlitt, and A.C. Bradley, a study that is as passionate as it is erudite." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Bloom has given us the crowning achievement of his career...If any piece of literary criticism can have a practical effect--on our stage and imaginations--this is the one."--Salon
"Should this be the one book you read if you're going to read one book about Shakespeare? Yes."--The New York Observer
"Bloom...is a master entertainer." --Newsweek
"Very nearly perfect."--Kirkus
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| Customer Reviews: Read 94 more reviews...
 A MUST for writers June 22, 2008
THIS book is like having an excellent professor guiding you through the labyrinth that Shakespeare can be...and Harold Bloom blows away the doors of perception!
Inspiring .He teaches us the love of great literature August 8, 2007
Bloom is the great literary critic of our day, the master reader of our greatest literature. Shakespeare has always been for him the central figure of our literary tradition, the one who by far created the most. In his play by play analysis of Shakespeare Bloom argues that Shakespeare invented our present day conception of the human. He is the one who allowed our own inner minds to speak on the page. He is the one who created characters of flexibility and breadth beyond those we had known before. Bloom writes with inspiration as he exalts Rosalind, Falstaff, Hamlet, his major favorites and hosts of others. Bloom does what a great critic is supposed to do he gives us a far richer and greater sense of the work than we had before. He makes us eager to know it more.
 Ah, Professor Bloom... January 29, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I have to admit up front that I like reading Harold Bloom. I don't always agree with him and I often find his pronouncements on this, that and the other quite arrogant and short-sighted. On the other hand, his opinions often challenge me to consider my own and I respect his decades of grappling with the Bard and the history of Shakespearean criticism. As a fellow sufferer of Bardolatry, I feel I can sympathize with the man.
And what of this book? Well, it is quite the tome. Containing analysis of each of Shakespeare's plays, it's a test of endurance. Anyone who isn't familiar with the vast majority of Shakespeare's plays would be advised, perhaps, to read the introductory essays and dip into those chapters on the plays he knows.
As for myself, having read and seen most of the plays in the canon, I read the book through. In every chapter I found something valuable and I wouldn't have missed reading it for the world. When he feels a character is interesting or important--Iago, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Lear to name a few--he can wax practically poetic in his insight. The things that don't interest him he dismisses out of hand with a cutting remark or ignores entirely.
Still, to be frank, reading too much of this at once can be tiresome. In large doses it is like listening to the grumblings of an old man who feels his time is past and he doesn't get the respect he deserves anymore. He hasn't seen a performance of Shakespeare he's liked in thirty or more years. He rejects all modern forms of criticism and interpretation. His obsession with Hamlet and, in particular, Falstaff, finds its way into the discussion of practically every play. I love Hamlet almost as much as Bloom but even I got tired of him as he appeared time and again. As for Falstaff: there can be no doubt he is a great character; however I think it takes a man of Bloom's age to rate him so far above many of the other Shakespearean characters.
And as for Bloom's assertion that Shakespeare invented the human as we know it? Well, that may be pushing it a bit far for my taste but I take his point. The introspective nature and universality of Shakespeare's greatest characters was revolutionary. Certainly many important thinkers after him have found in Shakespeare the inspiration for ideas that have impacted our world. Our world--and most definitely our theater--would be different had Shakespeare never written. Still, would the nature of human beings be so very different? I remain unconvinced.
Ah, but Bloom makes it easy to argue with him. He invites it. And I enjoy the debate. If one can ignore the provocative prose and rake for the gems, these are pages worth mining. I, for one, am glad I did.
great, but not your only book on Shakespeare December 16, 2006
16 out of 21 found this review helpful
I teach Shakespeare despite not having studied literature or English in college. I find several books very useful to me, this one among them. If you're reading Shakespeare for pleasure, you've almost got to use this as a companion to the plays. Bloom is a critic and commentator you should not miss, perhaps destined to be remembered in the same class as Samuel Johnson. His take on the plays is generally idiosyncratic and always thought-provoking and insightful.
On the other hand, this should not be your only companion to Shakespeare. If you're only going to have one--and why would you?--I think you'd have to choose Marjorie Garber's "Shakespeare After All." I always consult that one before Bloom, because she offers a more fundamental analysis, while Bloom jumps right into his opinions. It is almost true to say that Bloom's book is as much about Bloom as it is about Shakespeare, and if that sounds critical, then for the record Bloom is one who can pull that off.
If you are an undergraduate and especially if you are a high school student, you won't go wrong with Garber, though Bloom alone might lead you astray. If you can read both, great; if not, Garber. I also commend Cliffs Notes to any student who struggles with line-by-line comprehension. (I know that other teachers don't do that, and I think they're really just being snobs. Really, Shakespeare is great fun if you understand, and if not, then you've got to do something, haven't you?)
Finally, if you want a deeper discussion of various issues (history, religion, interpretation, staging etc...), the Cambridge Companions are excellent.
Incidently, the subtitle is misleading. Bloom's "invention" thesis is hardly the subject matter of the book. He spends maybe 3 pages on it, not doing the historical analysis such a thesis would require, but merely heaping hyperbole upon hyperbole in praise of Shakespeare. We don't read Shakespeare, Shakespeare reads us... and so on. It's simply an excuse, as if he needed one, to publish his thoughts on all of Shakespeare's plays.
Erudite and satisfying December 7, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
For what it's worth, I love this book. It's my first choice for another point of view of the Bard. As a burgeoning Bardolator, it's wonderful to hear such an enthusiastic perspective on any and every play. The book is ambitious, erudite, and satisfying. There are, of course, occasional moments of bombast, but this is an immense book--both in scope as well as subject. The pretentious title is explained in pieces throughout every essay, though never as succinctly as "Shakespeare invented the human because..." Still, I readily and heartily recommend this book for anyone who is interested in another view of Shakespeare. It is not a simple read, but it should fit in for any well informed reader or college student. I would only recommend it to highly ambitious high school aged kids who aren't afraid of looking up words in the dictioary (e.g. proleptic).
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