The Breaking of the Vessels

By Harold Bloom

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226060438
• ISBN13: 9780226060439
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 107 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The great reader explains why

Harold Bloom is arguably the greatest reader of literature literary criticism has known in the present generation. In this work he asserts ' reading' to be a life- action, an agon a process by which we assert our power. "Bloom's first chapter on critical and poetic language sums up his systematic procedures and attacks both traditionalist 'humanistic' criticism and recent Continental modes, including Deconstruction. His second chapter centers on the Book of Genesis and on Freud's theory of the origins of sexuality in order to establish three models for poetic originality. The third chapter, commenting on a range of poets from Milton through Stevens, gives a definitive account of the poetric process Bloom has called ' transumption' a technique by which poets come to terms with their forerunners." (From the back cover) This work precedes Bloom's blockbuster works on ' The Western Canon' and 'Genius' and seems more academically jargoned. Apparently the ' strong poet Bloom ' read this work contended with it and overcame it wish his richer and more poetically flowing later masterworks.