The Jarring Legacy of Harold Bloom!

   


  Today we are going to talk about a man who has been a towering influence upon the literary world as well as academia. Someone who has been called and I quote “a dinosaur”, “Donald Trump of Literary Studies”, “the most notorious literary critic in America”, “the imperious and convivial scholar and literary critic” and at the same time “a singular breed of scholar-teacher-critic-prose-poet-pamphleteer”. Harold Bloom.

             Harold Bloom, the 'Sterling Professor of Humanities' at Yale University, who passed away last week, has been a decisive figure and somewhat of a lone-warrior in the field of literary studies. His legacy is considered by many to be troublesome with his unapologetic call to depoliticize literary studies and promote orthodox aesthetic values. For example, when Harry Potter became popular in the early 2000s, it was he who famously dismissed it as a “string of cliches”. Could 35 million people be wrong about their choice? “Yes,” he said, with his signature magisterial infallibility.

          So who is Harold Bloom? Why have some of his writings become so controversial? What does he mean by calling critical theories, the School of Resentment? 

             Harold Bloom, born into a humble Orthodox Jewish family, joined Yale University for his postgraduate studies. He was employed later by Yale University and has continued to work there till last week when he delivered his last lecture.

             He has written profusely and has published over 40 books including his most famous The Western Canon and The Anxiety of Influence. The latter text contains one of his most influential idea, “the anxiety of influence” which is that new poets struggle to overcome the influence of older writers with original writings produced through a misreading or misinterpretation of the works of his/her past literary forbears.
Bloom’s further fame and infamy alike lies in his arguments regarding the Western Literary Canon and his idea of an ever-constant, non-subjective yardstick for aesthetic beauty, which can be used to measure the quality of writings and writers. His insistence of keeping literary studies away from all political considerations is perhaps what makes Bloom a peculiar, almost jarring figure amongst contemporary literary circles. Bloom believes that great literature cannot be evaluated within the frameworks of ethnicity, race, gender, etc. Bloom refuses to acknowledge social realities have anything to do with aesthetic pleasure. Hence, works such as that of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, or Maya Angelou shockingly does not fit into what Bloom sees as the Western Canon.

            Bloom’s audacious reference to Marxist-Feminist-African American readings, which began to dominate the literary and academic circles from the 1970s,  as The School of Resentment, had found many takers as well as haters. According to Bloom, it was this inclusive mode of study that overruled aesthetic sensibility and shifted the focus solely to the politics, race, and ethnicity of the writers instead. He fears that English studies in the future will be relegated to the status of Latin or Greek at present. He wrote in The Western Canon  What are now called ‘Departments of English’ will be renamed departments of ‘Cultural Studies, where Batman comics, Mormon theme parks, television, movies, and rock will replace Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Wallace Stevens”.

             Harold Bloom, saw himself, as one among the sole champions of ‘aesthetic value’ and ‘literary studies’, as a descendant of the likes of Samuel Johnson. Whether Bloom shall be judged as an anachronistic anomaly or as a lone champion, only time can tell. In the meantime, Bloom’s legacy shall live on albeit alongside Harry Potter, Batman, and Color Purple of course.

References and Recommended Readings


Obituaries and articles on Bloom

https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches/2019/10/16/struggling-with-the-legacy-of-harold-bloom-brilliant-but-deeply-flawed-critic-1930-2019/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/books/harold-bloom-appraisal.html

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/misreading-harold-bloom

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/books/harold-bloom-dead.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/the-immortal-harold-bloom-the-greatest-literary-critic-on-the-planet-a7681621.html

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/harold-blooms-tragic-confession/

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/16/harold-bloom-against-the-school-of-resentment/

 https://observer.com/2018/01/naomi-wolf-harold-bloom-yale-harassment/



Interviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ieF7LVbyI&t=112s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVWiwd0P0c0&t=163s


Bloom on Harry Potter

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB963270836801555352

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