Misplaced Pages

#674325

82-521: In his Western Canon of 1994, American literary critic Harold Bloom lists Woodcutters as Bernhard’s masterpiece. It’s 11:30 at night in an aristocratic Viennese home in the 1980s. A group of people are awaiting the arrival of a famous dramatic actor from the Burgtheater , the guest of honor, who is coming from a performance of Ibsen ’s The Wild Duck . The place is that of the Auersbergers,

164-508: A God , who could be all-powerful and all-knowing and would allow the Nazi death camps and schizophrenia ." Influenced by his reading, he began a series of books that focused on the way in which poets struggle to create their individual poetic visions without being overcome by the influence of the poets who inspired them to write. The first of these books, Yeats , challenged the conventional critical view of William Butler Yeats 's poetic career. In

246-489: A 1998 New York Times article called him "one of the most gifted of contemporary critics". James Wood wrote: "Vatic, repetitious, imprecisely reverential, though never without a peculiar charm of his own – a kind of campiness, in fact – Bloom as a literary critic in the last few years has been largely unimportant." Bloom responded to questions about Wood in an interview by saying: "There are period pieces in criticism as there are period pieces in

328-561: A 2005 interview, Jeanne said that she and Harold were both atheists , which he denied: "No, no, I'm not an atheist. It's no fun being an atheist." Bloom was the subject of a 1990 article in GQ titled "Bloom in Love", which accused him of having affairs with female graduate students. He called the article a "disgusting piece of character assassination". Bloom's friend and colleague the biographer R. W. B. Lewis said in 1994 that Bloom's "wandering, I gather

410-611: A Poem (WW Norton, 2012), Bloom indicated the influence Abrams had upon him in his years at Cornell. Bloom's theory of poetic influence regards the development of Western literature as a process of borrowing and misreading. Writers find their creative inspiration in previous writers and begin by imitating them, but must make their own work different from their precursors'. As a result, Bloom argues, authors of real power must inevitably "misread" their precursors to make room for fresh imaginings. Observers often identified Bloom with deconstruction , but he never admitted to sharing more than

492-691: A bi-national basis; each country has entered into an agreement with the U.S. government. The first countries to sign agreements were China in 1947 and Burma, the Philippines, and Greece in 1948. In March 2024, the Russian government declared the Institute of International Education (IIE) and Cultural Vistas as "undesirable" in Russia. This decision effectively ended the Fulbright Program, which had been established in

574-500: A book under the working title Living Labyrinth , centering on Shakespeare and Walt Whitman , which was published as The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (2011). In July 2011, after the publication of The Anatomy of Influence and after finishing work on The Shadow of a Great Rock , Bloom was working on three further projects: In 1986, Bloom credited Northrop Frye as his nearest precursor. He told Imre Salusinszky in 1986: "In terms of my own theorizations ...

656-571: A common endeavor, including short-term seminars, curriculum development, group research or study, or advanced intensive language programs. Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad provides individual U.S. educators and administrators opportunities to go abroad as part of a group in the summer to participate in immersive educational and cultural activities and thereby improve their understanding of the peoples and cultures of other countries. Based on their seminar experiences, participants develop cross-cultural curricula for their home educational contexts. The program

738-419: A few ideas with deconstructionists. He told Robert Moynihan in 1983, "What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology  ... There is no escape, there is simply the given, and there is nothing that we can do." Bloom's association with

820-456: A handful of living writers in English can equal him as a stylist, and most of them are poets ... only Philip Roth consistently writes on Crowley's level". Bloom called Crowley's Little, Big "a neglected masterpiece" and "the most enchanting twentieth-century book I know". He wrote the afterword to a 40th-anniversary edition of the novel. Shortly before his death, Bloom expressed admiration for

902-499: A list – noted by the general public with widespread interest – of the Western works from antiquity to the present that Bloom considered either permanent members of the canon of literary classics, or candidates for that status. Bloom said that he made the list off the top of his head at his editor's request, and that he did not stand by it. Bloom had a deep appreciation for William Shakespeare , considering him

SECTION 10

#1732869856675

984-512: A married couple whom the narrator hasn’t seen for twenty years: she’s a singer, he’s a "composer in the Webern tradition". While sitting in an arm-chair, and later at the dinner table when the actor arrives, the narrator observes the crowd around him, reliving the last two decades, his connections and ties with the various guests, and particularly his relationship with a woman, Joana, who had committed suicide and been buried earlier that day. Eventually,

1066-429: A non-degree program of academic study and gain professional experience. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program sends American scholars and professionals abroad to lecture or conduct research for up to a year. The Fulbright Specialist Program sends U.S. faculty and professionals to serve as expert consultants on curriculum, faculty development, institutional planning, and related subjects at overseas academic institutions for

1148-415: A period of two to six weeks. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study abroad for one academic year. The Program also includes an English Teaching Assistant component. The Fulbright Foreign Student Program enables graduate students, young professionals and artists from abroad to conduct research and study in

1230-531: A small number of post-secondary institutions. The Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program sends teachers abroad for a semester to pursue individual projects, conduct research, and lead master classes or seminars. The Hubert H. Humphrey Program brings outstanding mid-career professionals from the developing world and societies in transition to the United States for one year. Fellows participate in

1312-451: A social purpose in their work. Bloom asserted that the goals of reading must be solitary aesthetic pleasure and self-insight rather than the goal of improving one's society held by "forces of resentment". He cast the latter as absurd, writing: "The idea that you benefit the insulted and injured by reading someone of their own origins rather than reading Shakespeare is one of the oddest illusions ever promoted by or in our schools." His position

1394-512: A survey of the major literary works of Europe and the Americas since the 14th century, focuses on 26 works Bloom considers sublime and representative of their nations and of the Western canon . Besides analyses of the canon's various representative works, Bloom's major concern in the volume was to reclaim literature from what he called the " School of Resentment ", the mostly academic critics who espoused

1476-528: Is a list of current commissions. The J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding is awarded by the Fulbright Association to recognize individuals or organisations which have made extraordinary contributions toward bringing peoples, cultures, or nations to greater understanding of others. Established in 1993, the prize was first awarded to Nelson Mandela . Fulbright alumni have occupied key roles in government, academia, and industry. Of

1558-440: Is a thing of the past. I hate to say it, but he rather bragged about it, so that wasn't very secret for a number of years." In a 2004 article for New York magazine, Naomi Wolf wrote that while she was an undergraduate student at Yale University in 1983, Bloom attended a dinner with her, saying he would discuss her writing. Instead, she claims that he came on to her, placing his hand on her inner thigh. Bloom "vigorously denied"

1640-606: Is administered by cooperating organizations such as the Institute of International Education and operates in over 160 countries around the world. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State sponsors the Fulbright Program and receives funding from the United States Congress via annual appropriation bills . Additional direct and in-kind support comes from partner governments, foundations, corporations, and host institutions both in and outside

1722-585: Is an amendment to Shakespeare: Invention of the Human written after Bloom decided the chapter on Hamlet in the earlier book had been too focused on the textual question of the Ur-Hamlet to cover his most central thoughts on the play itself. Some elements of religious criticism were combined with his secular criticism in Where Shall Wisdom Be Found (2004), and a more complete return to religious criticism

SECTION 20

#1732869856675

1804-528: Is coordinated by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State under policy guidelines established by the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FSB), with the help of 50 bi-national Fulbright commissions, U.S. embassies, and cooperating organizations in the U.S. The United States Department of State is responsible for managing, coordinating and overseeing

1886-552: Is the death of art." When Doris Lessing received the Nobel Prize in Literature , he bemoaned the "pure political correctness" of the award to an author of "fourth-rate science fiction", while conceding his appreciation of Lessing's earlier work. MormonVoices, a group associated with Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research , included Bloom on its Top Ten Anti-Mormon Statements of 2011 list for saying, "The current head of

1968-403: Is to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship. In 1945, Senator J. William Fulbright proposed a bill to use the proceeds from selling surplus U.S. government war property to fund international exchange between the U.S. and other countries. With

2050-481: Is today Belarus . Harold had three older sisters and an older brother. He was the last living sibling. As a boy, Bloom read Hart Crane 's Collected Poems , a collection that inspired his lifelong fascination with poetry. Bloom went to the Bronx High School of Science , where his grades were poor but his standardized-test scores were high. In 1951 he received a B.A. degree in classics from Cornell, where he

2132-672: The Fulbright–Hays Program , is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations , cultural diplomacy , and intercultural competence between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. Via the program, competitively-selected American citizens including students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists, and artists may receive scholarships or grants to study, conduct research, teach, or exercise their talents abroad; and citizens of other countries may qualify to do

2214-618: The Institute of International Education was created to catalyze educational exchange. In 1946, the U.S. Department of State invited IIE to administer the graduate student component and CIES to administer the faculty component of the Fulbright Program—IIE's largest program to date. The Council for International Exchange of Scholars is a division of IIE that administers the Fulbright Scholar Program. AMIDEAST administers Fulbright Foreign Student grants for grantees from

2296-509: The Western canon provoked a substantial interest in his opinion of the relative importance of contemporary writers. In the late 1980s, Bloom told an interviewer: "Probably the most powerful living Western writer is Samuel Beckett . He's certainly the most authentic." Of British writers, Bloom said: " Geoffrey Hill is the strongest British poet now active" and "no other contemporary British novelist seems to me to be of Iris Murdoch 's eminence". After Murdoch died, Bloom expressed admiration for

2378-442: The actor begins an aggressive rant at one of the guests, Billroth, a self-styled " Virginia Woolf " of Vienna and the narrator's fierce literary rival. He then becomes sad and reflective and laments that he often believes he would have been better off to have lived a rural life and to have been a woodcutter. When the actor lashes out at Billroth, the narrator momentarily turns from derogatory to sympathetic, having previously condemned

2460-510: The "twentieth-century American Sublime", the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th century. Playwright Tony Kushner sees Bloom as an important influence on his work. Bloom's work has drawn polarized responses, even among established literary scholars. Bloom was called "probably the most celebrated literary critic in the United States" and "America's best-known man of letters". A 1994 New York Times article said that many younger critics see Bloom as an "outdated oddity", whereas

2542-520: The Burgtheater actor as vapid and self-centered. The novel ends as the guests disperse, with the narrator leaving the dinner and deciding to write about it. The epigraph of the novel is a quote from Voltaire : Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University . In 2017, Bloom

Woodcutters (novel) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-744: The Caribbean. World Learning administers the Fulbright Specialist Program. American Councils for International Education (ACTR/ACCELS) administers the Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP), a special academic exchange for grantees from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Southeast Europe. The Academy for Educational Development administers the Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange Program and

2706-503: The Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program. The Fulbright Association is an organization independent of the Fulbright Program and not associated with the U.S. Department of State. The Fulbright Association was established on February 27, 1977, as a private nonprofit, membership organization with over 9,000 members. The late Arthur Power Dudden was its founding president. He wanted alumni to educate members of

2788-607: The Fulbright Program in what became the largest education exchange program in history. The program was expanded by the Mutual Educational And Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 , known as Fulbright-Hays Act. It made possible participation in international fairs and expositions, including trade and industrial fairs; translations; funding for American studies programs; funds to promote medical, scientific, cultural, and educational research and development; and modern foreign language training. The program operates on

2870-587: The Fulbright program. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is the bureau in the Department of State that has primary responsibility for the administration of the program. The United States Department of Education is responsible for managing, coordinating and overseeing the Fulbright-Hays program. The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board is a twelve-member board of educational and public leaders appointed by

2952-546: The High Romantics against neo-Christian critics influenced by such writers as T. S. Eliot , who became a recurring intellectual foil. Bloom had a contentious approach: his first book, Shelley's Myth-making , charged many contemporary critics with sheer carelessness in their reading of the poet. After a personal crisis during the late 1960s, Bloom became deeply interested in Ralph Waldo Emerson , Sigmund Freud , and

3034-963: The Human (1998), Bloom provided an analysis of each of Shakespeare's 38 plays, "twenty-four of which are masterpieces". Written as a companion to the general reader and theater-goer, Bloom declared that bardolatry "ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is". He also contended in the work that Shakespeare "invented" humanity, in that he prescribed the now-common practice of "overhearing" ourselves, which drives our changes. The two paragons of his theory were Sir John Falstaff of Henry IV and Hamlet , whom Bloom saw as representing self-satisfaction and self-loathing, respectively. These two characters, Iago , and Cleopatra Bloom believed (citing A. C. Bradley ) are "the four Shakespearean characters most inexhaustible to meditation". Throughout Shakespeare , characters from disparate plays are imagined alongside and interacting with each other. Contemporary academics and critics decried this as harking back to

3116-571: The Middle East and North Africa, excluding Israel. LASPAU: Affiliated with Harvard University LASPAU brings together a valuable network of individuals, institutions, leaders and organizations devoted to building knowledge-based societies across the Americas. Among other functions, LASPAU administers the Junior Faculty Development Program, a part of the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, for grantees from Central and South America and

3198-457: The Mormon Church, Thomas S. Monson , known to his followers as 'prophet, seer and revelator', is indistinguishable from the secular plutocratic oligarchs who exercise power in our supposed democracy." This was despite Bloom's sympathy for Joseph Smith , the founding prophet of Mormonism , whom he called a "religious genius". Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program , including

3280-740: The President of the United States that determines general policy and direction for the Fulbright Program and approves all candidates nominated for Fulbright Scholarships. Bi-national Fulbright commissions and foundations, most of which are funded jointly by the U.S. and partner governments, develop priorities for the program, including the numbers and categories of grants. More specifically, they plan and implement educational exchanges, recruit and nominate candidates for fellowships; designate qualified local educational institutions to host Fulbrighters; fundraise; engage alumni; support incoming U.S. Fulbrighters; and, in many countries, operate an information service for

3362-557: The Style of our Age" and that "each has composed canonical works", he identified them as Thomas Pynchon , Philip Roth , Cormac McCarthy , and Don DeLillo . He named their respective masterpieces as The Crying of Lot 49 , Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon ; Sabbath's Theater and American Pastoral ; Blood Meridian ; and Underworld . He added to this estimate the work of John Crowley , with special interest in his Aegypt Sequence and novel Little, Big , saying, "only

Woodcutters (novel) - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-509: The U.S. In 49 countries, a bi-national Fulbright Commission administers and oversees the Fulbright Program. In countries that have an active program but no Fulbright Commission, the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. embassy oversees the Fulbright Program. More than 370,000 people have participated in the program since it began; 62 Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes ; 88 have won Pulitzer Prizes . The Fulbright Program's mission

3526-476: The U.S. Congress and the public about the benefits of advancing increased mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those of other countries. In addition to the Fulbright Association in the U.S., independent Fulbright Alumni associations exist in over 75 countries around the world. The Fulbright Academy is an organization independent of the Fulbright Program and not associated with

3608-469: The U.S. Department of State. A non-partisan, non-profit organization with members worldwide, the Fulbright Academy focuses on the professional advancement and collaboration needs among the 100,000+ Fulbright alumni in science, technology, and related fields. The Fulbright Academy works with individual and institutional members, Fulbright alumni associations and other organizations interested in leveraging

3690-540: The U.S. Student Program, U.S. Scholar Program, Teacher Exchange Program, and others, and enables foreign nationals to visit the United States in programs such as the Foreign Student Program, Visiting Scholar Program, Teacher Exchange Program. Candidates recommended for Fulbright grants have high academic achievement, a compelling project proposal or statement of purpose, demonstrated leadership potential, and flexibility and adaptability to interact successfully with

3772-453: The USSR during the 1973-74 academic year. Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations. The Fulbright Program exchanges scholars and students with numerous countries in bilateral partnerships managed by commissions for each country. It provides funding for U.S. persons to visit other countries in

3854-1571: The United States. Some scholarships are renewed after the initial year of study. The Fulbright–Hays Program is a component of the Fulbright Program funded by a congressional appropriation to the United States Department of Education. It awards grants to individual U.S. K through 14 pre-teachers, teachers and administrators, pre-doctoral students, and post-doctoral faculty, as well as to U.S. institutions and organizations. Funding supports research and training efforts overseas, which focus on non-western foreign languages and area studies. Four Fulbright-Hays grants currently make awards: Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad, Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad, Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad and Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad. Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowships provide grants to U.S. colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students who conduct research in other countries, in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of 6-12 months. Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad fellowships provide grants to U.S. colleges and universities to fund individual faculty who conduct research in other countries, in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of 3-12 months. Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad provides grants to support overseas projects in training, research, and curriculum development in modern foreign languages and area studies for teachers, students, and faculty engaged in

3936-678: The Yale English Department from 1955 to 2019, teaching his final class four days before his death. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1985. From 1988 to 2004, Bloom was Berg Professor of English at New York University while maintaining his position at Yale. In 2010, he became a founding patron of Ralston College , a new institution in Savannah, Georgia , that focuses on primary texts. Fond of endearments , Bloom addressed both male and female students and friends as "my dear". Bloom married Jeanne Gould in 1958. They had two children. In

4018-781: The allegation. Bloom never retired from teaching, swearing that he would need to be removed from the classroom "in a great big body bag". He had open heart surgery in 2002 and broke his back after a fall in 2008. He died at a hospital in New Haven, Connecticut , on October 14, 2019. He was 89 years old. Bloom began his career with a sequence of highly regarded monographs on Percy Bysshe Shelley ( Shelley's Myth-making , Yale University Press , originally Bloom's doctoral dissertation), William Blake ( Blake's Apocalypse , Doubleday ), W. B. Yeats ( Yeats , Oxford University Press ), and Wallace Stevens ( Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate , Cornell University Press ). In these, he defended

4100-403: The ancient mystic traditions of Gnosticism , Kabbalah , and Hermeticism . In a 2003 interview with Bloom, Michael Pakenham , the book editor for The Baltimore Sun , noted that Bloom had long called himself a "Jewish Gnostic". Bloom responded: "I am using 'Gnostic' in a very broad way. I am nothing if not Jewish... I really am a product of Yiddish culture. But I can't understand a Yahweh , or

4182-461: The biblical Bathsheba . In Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2004), he revisits some of the territory covered in The Book of J in discussing the significance of Yahweh and Jesus of Nazareth as literary characters, while casting a critical eye on historical approaches and asserting the fundamental incompatibility of Christianity and Judaism . In The American Religion (1992), Bloom surveyed

SECTION 50

#1732869856675

4264-519: The course of their careers. A Map of Misreading picks up where The Anxiety of Influence left off, making several adjustments to Bloom's system of revisionary ratios. Kabbalah and Criticism attempts to invoke the esoteric interpretive system of the Lurianic Kabbalah , as explicated by scholar Gershom Scholem , as an alternate system of mapping the path of poetic influence. Figures of Capable Imagination collected odd pieces Bloom had written in

4346-708: The crucial timing of the aftermath of the Second World War and with the pressing establishment of the United Nations, the Fulbright Program was an attempt to promote peace and understanding through educational exchange. The bill devised a plan to forgo the debts foreign countries amassed during the war in return for funding an international educational program. It was through the belief that this program would be an essential vehicle to promote peace and mutual understanding between individuals, institutions and future leaders wherever they may be. In August 1946, Congress created

4428-527: The generation following those three. He expressed great admiration for the Canadian poets Anne Carson , particularly her verse novel Autobiography of Red , and A. F. Moritz , whom Bloom called "a true poet". Bloom also listed Jay Wright as one of only a handful of major living poets and the best living American poet after Ashbery's death. Bloom's introduction to Modern Critical Interpretations: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1986) features his canon of

4510-420: The host community. Fulbright grants are awarded in almost all academic disciplines, except clinical medical research involving patient contact. Fulbright grantees' fields of study span the fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics, natural and physical sciences, and professional and applied sciences. The Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program supports one-to-one exchanges of teachers from K–12 schools and

4592-494: The introduction to this volume, Bloom set out the basic principles of his new approach to criticism: "Poetic influence, as I conceive it, is a variety of melancholy or the anxiety-principle." New poets become inspired to write because they have read and admired previous poets, but this admiration turns into resentment when the new poets discover that the poets they idolized have already said everything they wish to say. The poets become disappointed because they "cannot be Adam early in

4674-595: The major varieties of Protestant and post-Protestant religious faiths that originated in the United States and argued that, in terms of their psychological hold on their adherents, most had more in common with gnosticism than with historical Christianity. The exception was the Jehovah's Witnesses , whom Bloom regards as non-Gnostic. He elsewhere predicted that the Mormon and Pentecostal strains of American Christianity would overtake mainstream Protestant divisions in popularity in

4756-411: The morning. There have been too many Adams, and they have named everything." In order to evade this psychological obstacle, according to Bloom, poets must be convinced that earlier poets have gone wrong somewhere and failed in their vision, thus leaving open the possibility that they have something to add to the tradition. Poets' love for their heroes turns into antagonism toward them: "Initial love for

4838-525: The next few decades. In Omens of Millennium (1996), Bloom identifies these American religious elements as on the periphery of an old – and not inherently Christian – gnostic, religious tradition that invokes a complex of ideas and experiences concerning angelology , interpretation of dreams as prophecy , near-death experiences , and millennialism . In his essay in The Gospel of Thomas , Bloom writes that none of Thomas's Aramaic sayings have survived in

4920-429: The novel and in poetry. The wind blows and they will go away... There's nothing to the man... I don't want to talk about him". In the early 21st century, Bloom often found himself at the center of literary controversy after criticizing popular writers such as Adrienne Rich , Maya Angelou , and David Foster Wallace . In the pages of The Paris Review , he criticized the populist -leaning poetry slam , saying: "It

5002-539: The novelists Peter Ackroyd , Will Self , John Banville , and A. S. Byatt . In Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2003), he called the Portuguese writer José Saramago "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and "one of the last titans of an expiring literary genre". Of American novelists, Bloom said in 2003, "there are four living American novelists I know of who are still at work and who deserve our praise". Saying that "they write

SECTION 60

#1732869856675

5084-606: The original language. Marvin Meyer generally agreed and further confirmed that the earlier versions of that text were likely written in either Aramaic or Greek. Meyer ends his introduction with an endorsement of much of Bloom's essay. Bloom notes the otherworldliness of the Jesus in Thomas's sayings by making reference to "the paradox also of the American Jesus". The Western Canon (1994),

5166-475: The out-of-fashion character criticism of Bradley (and others), who are explicitly praised in the book. As in The Western Canon , Bloom criticizes what he calls the "School of Resentment" for its failure to live up to the challenge of Shakespeare's universality and for balkanizing the study of literature through multicultural and historicist departments. Asserting Shakespeare's singular popularity throughout

5248-686: The patience to read anything by Frye" and nominated Angus Fletcher among his living contemporaries as his "critical guide and conscience". Elsewhere that year, he recommended Fletcher's Colors of the Mind and M. H. Abrams 's The Mirror and the Lamp . In this late phase, Bloom also emphasized the tradition of earlier critics such as William Hazlitt , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Walter Pater , A. C. Bradley , and Samuel Johnson , describing Johnson in The Western Canon as "unmatched by any critic in any nation before or after him". In his 2012 foreword to The Fourth Dimension of

5330-582: The precursor proper has to be Northrop Frye. I purchased and read Fearful Symmetry a week or two after it had come out and reached the bookstore in Ithaca, New York. It ravished my heart away. I have tried to find an alternative father in Mr. Kenneth Burke , who is a charming fellow and a very powerful critic, but I don't come from Burke, I come out of Frye." But in Anatomy of Influence (2011), Bloom wrote, "I no longer have

5412-563: The precursor's poetry is transformed rapidly enough into revisionary strife, without which individuation is not possible." The book that followed Yeats , The Anxiety of Influence , which Bloom started writing in 1967, drew upon the example of Walter Jackson Bate 's The Burden of the Past and The English Poet and recast in systematic psychoanalytic form Bate's historicized account of the despair 17th- and 18th-century poets felt about their inability to equal their predecessors. Bloom attempted to trace

5494-399: The process of composing his "influence" books. Bloom continued to write about influence theory throughout the 1970s and '80s, and penned little thereafter that did not invoke his ideas about influence. Bloom's fascination with David Lindsay 's fantasy novel A Voyage to Arcturus led him to take a brief break from criticism to compose a sequel to it. This novel, The Flight to Lucifer ,

5576-425: The psychological process by which poets broke free from their precursors to achieve their own poetic visions. He drew a sharp distinction between "strong poets", who perform "strong misreadings" of their precursors, and "weak poets", who merely repeat their precursors' ideas as though following a kind of doctrine. He described this process in terms of a sequence of "revisionary ratios", through which strong poets pass in

5658-420: The public on educational opportunities in the United States. In a country active in the program without a Fulbright commission, the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy administers the Fulbright Program, including recruiting and nominating candidates for grants to the U.S., overseeing U.S. Fulbrighters on their grant in the country, and engaging alumni. Established in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I,

5740-477: The same in the United States. The program was founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 and has been considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the United States. The program provides approximately 8,000 grants annually, comprising roughly 1,600 grants to U.S. students, 1,200 to U.S. scholars, 4,000 to foreign students, 900 to foreign visiting scholars, and several hundred to teachers and professionals. The Fulbright Program

5822-520: The supreme center of the Western canon. The first edition of The Anxiety of Influence almost completely avoided Shakespeare, whom Bloom then considered barely touched by the psychological drama of anxiety. The second edition, published in 1997, added a long preface that mostly expounded Shakespeare's debt to Ovid and Chaucer , and his agon with Christopher Marlowe , who set the stage for him by breaking free of ecclesiastical and moralizing overtones. In his later survey, Shakespeare: The Invention of

5904-614: The unique knowledge and skills of Fulbright alumni. The Fulbright Program has commissions in 49 of the over 160 countries with which it has bilateral partnerships. These foundations are funded jointly by the U.S. and partner governments. The role of the Fulbright Commissions is to plan and implement educational exchanges; recruit and nominate candidates, both domestic and foreign, for fellowships; designate qualified local educational institutions to host Fulbrighters; and support incoming U.S. Fulbrighters while engaging with alumni. Below

5986-477: The work of a great literary artist who had no intention of composing a dogmatically religious work (see Jahwist ). They envisaged this anonymous writer as a woman attached to the court of the successors of the Israelite kings David and Solomon  – a piece of speculation that drew much attention. Later, Bloom said that the speculations did not go far enough, and perhaps he should have identified J with

6068-401: The works of Joshua Cohen , William Giraldi , and Nell Freudenberger . In Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Bloom identified Robert Penn Warren , James Merrill , John Ashbery , and Elizabeth Bishop as the most important living American poets. By the 1990s, he regularly named A. R. Ammons along with Ashbery and Merrill, and he later identified Henri Cole as the crucial American poet of

6150-483: The world, Bloom proclaims him the only truly multicultural author. Repudiating the "social energies" to which historicists ascribed Shakespeare's authorship, Bloom pronounced his modern academic foes – and all of society – to be but "a parody of Shakespearean energies". Bloom consolidated his work on the Western canon with the publication of How to Read and Why (2000) and Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2003). Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (also 2003)

6232-591: Was Bloom's only work of fiction. Bloom then entered a phase of what he called "religious criticism", beginning with Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present (1989). In The Book of J (1990), he and David Rosenberg (who translated the biblical texts) portrayed one of the posited ancient documents that formed the basis of the first five books of the Bible (see documentary hypothesis ) as

6314-403: Was a student of English literary critic M. H. Abrams , and in 1955 a Ph.D. from Yale. In 1954–55 Bloom was a Fulbright Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge . Bloom was a standout student at Yale, where he clashed with the faculty of New Critics , including William K. Wimsatt . Several years later Bloom dedicated his book The Anxiety of Influence to Wimsatt . Bloom was a member of

6396-564: Was born in New York City on July 11, 1930, to Paula (née Lev) and William Bloom. He lived in the Bronx at 1410 Grand Concourse . He was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a Yiddish -speaking household, where he learned literary Hebrew ; he learned English at the age of six. Bloom's father, a garment worker, was born in Odesa and his Lithuanian Jewish mother, a homemaker, near Brest Litovsk in what

6478-571: Was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism , several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He

6560-533: Was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the " School of Resentment " (which included multiculturalism , feminism , Marxism , and other ideologies). He was educated at Yale University , the University of Cambridge , and Cornell University . Bloom

6642-524: Was marked by the publication of Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). Throughout the decade he also compiled, edited and introduced several major anthologies of poetry. Bloom took part in Paul Festa 's 2006 documentary Apparition of the Eternal Church . It centers on people's reactions to hearing for the first time Olivier Messiaen 's organ piece Apparition de l'église éternelle . Bloom began

6724-424: Was that politics had no place in literary criticism: that a feminist or Marxist reading of Hamlet would tell us something about feminism and Marxism but probably nothing about Hamlet . In addition to considering how much influence a writer had had on later writers, Bloom proposed the concept of "canonical strangeness" (cf. uncanny ) as a benchmark of a literary work's merit. The Western Canon also included

#674325