Harold Bloom

"Harold Bloom, named "The indispensible critic" by the New York Review of Books, returns with a definitive yet personal book on twelve American writers upon whose work he believes the American canon is built. While his references to American writers are wide-ranging, he focuses on twelve: Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, William...

"In his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction, America's most original and controversial literary critic and legendary Yale professor writes trenchantly about fifty-two masterworks spanning the Western tradition"-- Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works of fiction that span the Western canon. While considering each novels' strengths and shortcomings, he also explains where and why he differs with other critics' assessments....

The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.

There is very little evidence of the historical Jesus--who he was, what he said. As Bloom writes, "There is not a sentence concerning Jesus in the entire New Testament composed by anyone who ever had met the unwilling King of the Jews." Bloom has used his unsurpassed skills as a literary critic to examine the character of Jesus, noting the inconsistencies, contradictions, and logical flaws throughout the Gospels. He also examines the character of...

Includes a brief biography of Arthur Miller, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

A collection of critical essays on Dickens and his works.