Reading, Writing and the Influence of Harold Bloom

Reading, writing and the influence of Harold Bloom takes the work of the worlds best-known living literary critic and discovers what it is like to read with, against and beyond his ideas. The editors, Alan Rawes and Jonathon Shears, introduce the collection by assessing the impact of Blooms brand of agonistic criticism on literary critics and its ongoing relevance to a discipline attempting to redefine and settle on its collective goals. Firmly grounded in, though not confined to, Blooms first specialism of Romantic Studies, the volume contains essays that examine Blooms debts to high Romanticism, his quarrels with feminism, his resistance to historicism, the tensions with the Yale School and his recent work on Shakespeare and genius. Crucially, chapters are also devoted to putting Blooms anxiety-themed ratios into practice on the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and D. H. Lawrence, amongst others. The Harold Bloom that emerges from this collection is by turns divisive and unifying, marginalised and central, radical and conservative. -- .