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POETRY AND REPRESSION

Name: POETRY AND REPRESSION
Author: Harold Bloom
ISBN: 0300026048

REVISIONISM FROM BLAKE TO STEVENS

by Harold Bloom ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 21, 1975

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This is the concluding volume to the tetralogy that Yale professor Harold Bloom initiated in The Anxiety of Influence, his 1973 manifesto for so-called "antithetical criticism." Kabbalah and Criticism and A Map of Misreading, which demonstrated the theory's critical application, were published in 1975. This book is his reinterpretation of our literary tradition, surveying post-Enlightenment English and American poetry as it developed from "the severe father of the Sublime mode," John Milton, through close readings of poems by Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Yeats and Stevens. According to Bloom, each of these "strong" poets has literally rewritten, via a creative misreading, the work of a greater predecessor. He carries the genealogy of influences linked by "misprision" to this extreme endpoint: "I suspect that Tintern Abbey is the modern poem proper, and that most good poems written in English since Tintern Abbey inescapably repeat, rewrite or revise it." Bloom's own philosophical mentors include Freud, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Vico, Emerson and Isaac Luria, a 16th century Jewish Kabbalist. His concept of repression is a revisioning of Freud which refers not to a sexual but to a tutelary primal scene, "the Scene of Instruction": "It is only by repressing creative 'freedom,' through the initial fixation of influence, that a person can be reborn as a poet." As you may imagine this maze of intellectual underpinnings plus a rhetoric which sometimes begins to sound like a language system unto itself, is something to try the soul of any but the strongest of "strong" readers. Taken together, Bloom's theoretical works have been hailed as a major contribution to 20th century literary criticism. He's as radical as he is erudite, and has a great deal to teach us about poetics, the canon, and the art of reading.

Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1975

ISBN: 0300026048

Page Count: 293

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1975

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BRIGHT BOOK OF LIFE
by Harold Bloom

- BOOK REVIEW
TAKE ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES
by Harold Bloom

- BOOK REVIEW
THE AMERICAN CANON
by Harold Bloom ; edited by David Mikics

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.