Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.

The strong word and stance issue only from a strict will, a will that dares the error of reading all of reality as a text, and all prior texts as openings for its own totalizing and unique interpretations. Strong poets present themselves as looking for truth in the world, searching in reality and in tradition, but such a stance, as Nietzsche said, remains under the mastery of desire, of instinctual drives. So, in effect, the strong poet wants pleasure and not (...) truth; he wants what Nietzsche named as "the belief in truth and the pleasurable effects of this belief." No strong poet can admit that Nietzsche was accurate in this insight, and no critic need fear that any strong poet will accept and so be hurt by demystification. The concern of this book, as of my earlier studies in poetic misprision, is only with strong poets, which in this series of chapters is exemplified by the major sequence of High Romantic British and American poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Emerson, Whitman, and Stevens, but also throughout by two of the strongest poets in the European Romantic tradition: Nietzsche and Freud. By "poet" I therefore do not mean only verse-writer, as the instance of Emerson also should make clear. Harold Bloom is DeVane Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. This article is the first chapter of his new book, Poetry and Repression, to be published by the Yale University Press. The book completes a tetralogy, of which the earlier volumes are The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, and Kabbalah and Criticism. See also: "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3; "The Poet as Elaborator: Analytical Psychology as a Critical Paradigm" by David D. Cooper in Vol. 6, No. 1. (shrink)

A collection of critical essays on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, arranged in chronological order of publication.

A discussion of influential New York Jewish intellectuals, including: Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe, Leslie Fiedler, Daniel Bell, Harold Rosenberg, Saul Bellow, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz.

Resenha do livro de Sellars, Roy, e Allen, Graham (Orgs.). The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom . Cambridge: Salt, 2007. 505 páginas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Oxymorons of AnxietyOr the Influence of Baba Ram Dass on Harold BloomRichard Klein (bio)A REVIEW OF Harold Bloom. The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).In 1974, when I initially submitted this article to diacritics, it was rejected, despite my being a member of the editorial board. I had previously agreed that the piece should first be sent to Harold Bloom for (...) his reaction; he was not pleased. The editor (and founder of diacritics) judged, I think correctly, that it was better to have Bloom well disposed toward the young journal than not. He had been very generous, since its inception, giving us articles and interviews, and lending his weight to this early attempt to translate French theory into America. I was naturally deflated by the rejection, but since I believe in institutions more than individuals, I acquiesced, gracefully I think. Perhaps I shouldn't have. It has been forty years and in that time Bloom has grown even more dismissive of major theoretical developments and contemptuous of efforts to expand the canon. In his latest work, his "virtual swan song," The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (2011), he evokes the critical developments long championed by this journal, which have evolved over forty years, and lumps them together as: "what I shall call the New Cynicism (a cluster of critical tendencies which are rooted in French theories of culture and encompass the New Historicism and its ilk)."1 Note the ilk: making alike, in a single cluster of cynicism, what he will not differentiate. Currently, he is motivated to return to his earlier work on influence, "galvanized in part by the New Cynicism's reductio of all literary relationships to base self-interest."2 In The Anatomy of Influence, Bloom returns to the Bloom of The Anxiety of Influence to find and redefine a canonical interpretation of literary relationships that depends from his immense erudition. Against the cynics, he is excited by a nobler, disinterested perspective—a view more universally shared than what might be found, for example, in the pages of diacritics.In any case, I always hoped this article, excerpted from a much longer chapter, would one day be published. I didn't think the moment would wait forty years and for my retirement. For allowing this to see the light and for their kind indulgence of my valedictory vanity, I especially want to thank my colleagues deeply, as well as the editors of the new diacritics.Harold Bloom brings bad news. Geoffrey Hartman calls him a kakangelist; he calls himself a necromancer.3 The news is the death of poetry—an event, as Bloom at moments seems to believe, that began with Milton. Since then, things have only gotten worse and are no way bound to improve. What Bloom is saying may well be no news at all, if poetry in fact and in principle has always been dying, if its death were simultaneous with its birth—its possibility permanently implicated in its impossibility. But, if not what the man is saying, surely the way he kakangelizes, raises the most surprising questions about the possibility of something he continues to want to call "literary criticism." Hartman's carefully poised review neglects to insist on the question of Bloom's style. His opening sentence, however, does proceed straight to enumerate—with no further comment—the unwonted diversity of elements that compose Bloom's short theory of poetry: "Six essays emerge from this dense, eloquent and experiential brooding, flanked by two prose poems, and accompanied by a synoptic introduction and an interchapter on 'Antithetical Criticism.'"4 Hartman pretends to take all this perfectly for granted, as if we were quite prepared to understand, with no explanation, the nature and necessity of something called a synoptic introduction, or the status of an interchapter, or the force of a notion like [End Page 7] antithetical criticism, and, as if we should hardly be surprised to discover, the whole thing quite naturally flanked by two prose poems! Hartman picks up the new style, but for reasons not clearly readable in his text, chooses not to dwell on this most surprising news of... (shrink)

Vico’s theory of poetic origins greatly influenced Harold Bloom’s theory of poetry, called “the anxiety of influence.” Neither simple acceptance nor rejection, the complex influence is explained at main stages of Bloom’s career. In Bloom’s early writings, Vico’s ideas are virtually ignored. Starting with The Anxiety of Influence, Vico’s influence is acknowledged to be strong but it is repressed; Vico’s ideas are mentioned in only a few brief passages and usually presented through those of other thinkers, (...) or are interpreted to be the same. In subsequent works, Bloom does discuss Vico’s ideas more. Finally, in Bloom’s Western Canon, Vico’s importance seems to be the greatest, since all the literature is categorized according to Vico’s idea of a cycle of three ages, although, once again, his ideas are not analyzed. (shrink)

Providing a model for the transformative work that is required going forward, The Crisis of US Hospice Care illustrates the potential of hospice for facilitating a new way of living our last days and for having the best death possible.

This paper presents a model-theoretic semantics for discourse "about" natural numbers, one that captures what I call "the mathematical-object picture", but avoids what I can "the mathematical-object theory".

Contrary to economics or history, for example, there does not exist an organized field dedicated to the philosophy of political science. Given that the philosophical issues raised by political science research are just as pressing and vibrant as those raised in these more organized fields, fostering a field that labels itself Philosophy of Political Science (PoPS) is important. PoPS is advanced here as a fruitful meeting place where both philosophers and practicing political scientists contribute and discuss—with philosophical discussions that are (...) close to and informed by actual developments in political science, making philosophy of science continuous with the sciences in line with contemporary naturalist philosophy of science. The topics scrutinized in the different chapters of the Handbook will figure prominently in PoPS, as we lay out in this chapter. (shrink)

This collected volume is inspired by the work of Edward Halper and is historically focused with contributions from leading scholars in Ancient and Medieval philosophy. Though its chapters cover a diverse range of topics in epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy, the collection is unified by the contributors’ consideration of these topics in terms of the fundamental questions of metaphysics. The first section of the volume, “Knowing and Being,” is dedicated to the connection between metaphysics and epistemology and includes chapters on (...) Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, and the Ancient Daoists. The second section, “Goodness as Knowing How to Be,” addresses ethics as an outgrowth of human metaphysical concerns and includes chapters on Plato, Aristotle, and Maimonides. Contributors include William H. F. Altman, Luc Brisson, Ronna Burger, Miriam Byrd, Owen Goldin, Lenn Goodman, Mitchell Miller, Richard Parry, Richard Patterson, Nastassja Pugliese, John Rist, May Sim, Roslyn Weiss, and Chad Wiener. (shrink)