/lit/ - Literature

>>23023404
The anxiety of influence.

He's pretty much the only professional critic worth taking seriously, right? Especially compared to the ones of other mediums like Christgau or Ebert.

"Find Shakespeare, and then let him find you."

This. So much this. Shakespeare changed my life. Everything written after Shakespeare is a defense of him, and even if you haven't read Shakespeare, he's so universal you've practically read him anyway.

Now that he is dead, who are some good living critics to follow?

>>19634910
Wrong.

>At the end of the path of lost irony is a final inch, beyond which literary value will be irrecoverable. Irony is only a metaphor, and the irony of one literary age can rarely be the irony of another, yet without the renaissance of an ironic sense more than what we once called imaginative literature will be lost.
Bloom.

>>19629199
lookout, we got a free thinker over here, boys. don't make me sic my man Bloom on ya.

>>19227614
Even the marxist and feminist nonsense is bearable when you realize that it's 50% cope and 50% posing. What you need to understand is that 9 times out of 10, female professors who are really into deconstructing literature and School of Resentment style theory are BEGGING to get fucked by Big Canonical Cock. I am being serious. I am not being ironic. For my survey course of English lit from Beowulf to 1800, my professor fit this trope exactly; she was about 28, fairly cute (not an art hoe, but with shorter brown hair), and very into “fighting back” against traditional views of medieval literature. Queering Langland, "there were black people in the Middle Ages," all of that. On the first day, we discussed the concept of a literary canon, which she argued inherently favored those works produced by people in power. Needless to say, I disagreed. Because I happened to have a class in the next room right before her course, I was always the first to arrive, usually about 5 minutes before anyone else. We would have brief conversations, first about whatever material we were going to cover that day and then about random topics- other books and poems, little details of our lives, etc.

Slowly I began to realize she was dropping small hints of her sexual availability. Nothing too risqué. She would say things like "Old English poetry (she never said Anglo-Saxon because that was a 'white supremacist dogwhistle') is so elegiac, it always makes me lonely" or "anon, you might like this article on the York mystery plays, I found it very stimulating," etc. What's more, these hints always came after I said something to defend the canon or canonical authors and traditional interpretations. For example, one day I happened to namedrop Harold Bloom during a conversation about Shakespeare's use of the carnivalesque. She made a face, and I said "Love him or hate him, you have to admit Bloom presents a useful analysis of poetic influence across the history of English literature (or words to that effect)." She bit her lip, and for a second I wasn't sure if she was going to criticize our guy or what, but instead she mentioned that the Taming of the Shrew was playing at a local theater, subtly indicating she wished to go with me. We did end up going, and it was particularly fun to watch her watch Petruchio tame Katherine. She clearly loved it; I didn't bring it up, of course, but only a few days before she had said the play was irredeemably misogynistic. Needless to say, we had an enjoyable night.

When did you realize he was right.

Was this guy a fraud? Did he actually read all the books that he read?
Did he ever demonstrate real insight of the texts he talked about?

Bought an edition of The Analects recently and I noticed in the blurb Penguin decided to include a comment about the edition by Harold Bloom praising the commentary as 'Serene insight'
Considering everything I know about him, with his school of resentment I'm surprised that Harold Bloom would have even read it but I'll admit that I've only skimmed through The Western Canon so I am pretty ignorant of him

How respected was Harold Bloom? Ignoring The Flight to Lucifer

>the WESTERN canon
>puts the Quran in
defend this

How can we get people to read better literature and consume better art? Every single time this thread is made everyone is pessimistic and say it isn't possible and that the masses are doomed.

>I still stick with the notion that the crucial portions of Genesis, Exodus and numbers, that is to say the earliest part of the Hebrew Bible was undoubtedly written by a highly-placed woman at the court of Solomon. The attitude, the stance, the point of view is entirely that of a very highly placed and very sophisticated and very ironical woman indeed.
- Harold Bloom

Thoughts?

Apologise.

>The Western Canon
>Quran
defend this

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

>>16903419
She's very cute- just tell her your favorite author and ask her out, but make sure you say someone traditional. What you need to understand is that 9 times out of 10, female professors who are really into deconstructing literature and School of Resentment style theory are BEGGING to get fucked by Big Canonical Cock. I am being serious. I am not being ironic. For my survey course of English lit from Beowulf to 1800, my professor fit this trope exactly; she was about 28, fairly cute (not an art hoe, but with shorter brown hair), and very into “fighting back” against traditional views of medieval literature. Queering Langland, "there were black people in the Middle Ages," all of that. On the first day, we discussed the concept of a literary canon, which she argued inherently favored those works produced by people in power. Needless to say, I disagreed. Because I happened to have a class in the next room right before her course, I was always the first to arrive, usually about 5 minutes before anyone else. We would have brief conversations, first about whatever material we were going to cover that day and then about random topics- other books and poems, little details of our lives, etc.

Slowly I began to realize she was dropping small hints of her sexual availability. Nothing too risqué. She would say things like "Old English poetry (she never said Anglo-Saxon because that was a 'white supremacist dogwhistle') is so elegiac, it always makes me lonely" or "anon, you might like this article on the York mystery plays, I found it very stimulating," etc. What's more, these hints always came after I said something to defend the canon or canonical authors and traditional interpretations. For example, one day I happened to namedrop Harold Bloom during a conversation about Shakespeare's use of the carnivalesque. She made a face, and I said "Love him or hate him, you have to admit Bloom presents a useful analysis of poetic influence across the history of English literature (or words to that effect)." She bit her lip, and for a second I wasn't sure if she was going to criticize our guy or what, but instead she mentioned that the Taming of the Shrew was playing at a local theater, subtly indicating she wished to go with me. We did end up going, and it was particularly fun to watch her watch Petruchio tame Katherine. She clearly loved it; I didn't bring it up, of course, but only a few days before she had said the play was irredeemably misogynistic. Needless to say, we had an enjoyable night.

Are literary critics fraud?
If they know so much about what constitutes good literature, why don't they start producing? They just need to take the same pen they write critical pieces with and write stories.

I won't let you down, Professor Bloom. I'm reading Johnson's Lives of the Poets now, and I'm doing the best I can to carry on your legacy.

>>16804178
What do you think?

>>16762895
Am I a normie, anon?

Was going to read steinbeck, but Bloom savaged him so completely, i wonder if its still worth it