Literary criticism Quote by Harold Bloom

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike - and I don't think there really is a distinction between the…

— Harold Bloom

I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.

— Harold Bloom

“Brecht was a cynical bohemian bogey of the middle classes, but also much more than a mere provocateur. He developed and dramatized his political…

— Harold Bloom

The morality of scholarship, as currently practiced, is to encourage everyone to replace difficult pleasures by pleasures universally accessible precisely because they are easier.

— Harold Bloom

Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements…

— Harold Bloom

“We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.”

— Harold Bloom

“You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock.”

— Harold Bloom

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

— Harold Bloom

The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

— Harold Bloom

If I were to sum up the negative reactions to my work, I think there are two primary causes: one is that if there…

— Harold Bloom

Aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts: in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in arguments within a society. Aesthetic value rises…

— Harold Bloom

Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we…

— Harold Bloom