Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom (review)

Reviews Works Cited Garza, Thomas. "The Message is rhe Medium: Using Video Marerials ro Facilitate Foreign Language Performance." Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education 2 (1996): 1-18. Oxford, Rebecca. Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Shoubl Know. Bosron: Heinle and Heinle, 1990. Zhao, Y "Language Learning on rhe World Wide Web: Toward a Framework of Network Based CALL." CALICOJournal 14 (1996): 37-53. Harold Bloom. Shakespeare: The Invention ofthe Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. 745p. Donna R. Cheney Weber State University In The Western Canon (1994) Bloom argued that Shakespeare, along with Milton, was the center of Western thought. In The Invention ofthe Human he contends that Shakespeare is the center ofthe Universe. According to Bloom, Shakespeare "went beyond all precedents (even Chaucer) and invented the human as we continue to know it." The Bard is singularly responsible for creating our personalities , not just in the Western world, but in all cultures. FalstafTand Hamlet, the central characters ofBloom's discussions, are "the greatest ofcharismatics" and are "the inauguration ofpersonality as we have come to recognize it." It is small wonder that critics ofBloom's book bristle in the face ofsuch sweeping pronouncements. The general reaction is to resent Bloom's snide comments about what he terms the current critical "School ofResentment" which would turn modern readers away from "Bardolatry." Individual critical response seems to depend on the particular school ofcriticism the respondent adheres to, but most often the critics jump to an adhominem attack against Bloom himself. "Just who does Harold Bloom think he is?" thunders Anthony Lane in TheNew Yorker. Lane denigrates the arguments of the book, but finds the work important enough to give the review five full pages. The reviewers for Newsweek focus on Bloom's celebrity rather than on his contentions, but equally grant the importance of the author and his work. The Invention ofthe Human is comprised ofthree major critical discussions by Bloom combined with brief discussions of each of the 37 plays. He begins by addressing "To the Reader" the overwhelming awe he feels for the master writer SPRING 1999 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + 103 of the world who is able to create literary characters epitomizing the essential nature ofhumanity. This introduction concludes, "We need to exert ourselves and read Shakespeare as strenuously as we can, while knowing that his plays will read us more energetically still. They read us definitively." Just how a play reads a person is not clear, but die pitch to the common person is a major theme throughout the book: Shakespeare shapes all humanity, not just the elite literati. Shakespeare's influence seeps into everyone, everywhere. In the introductory essay, "Shakespeare's Universalism," Bloom dismisses dissenters as "gender-and-power freaks." He acknowledges that there were great, creative writers before Shakespeare; indeed, "The idea ofWestern character" defined as "the selfas a moral agent" came from many sources. But, he contends, die predecessors created "cartoons" and "ideograms" rather than developing personality. "Every other great writer may fall away, to be replaced by the anti-elitist swamp of Cultural Studies," but "Shakespeare will abide, even ifhe were to be expelled by the academics__" At this point Bloom turns to short individual synopses ofthe plays (the Henry VI plays are reviewed as a unit), with each review intended to support invention ofthe human. He often slips from this intention, however. Most ofthe individual play discussions take around seven pages, with die discussions ofHamletana Henry TVm more depth since Falstaffand Hamlet are Bloom's major focus as persons. His reviews are rife with long quotations from the plays themselves, but they are interesting to read and fairly self-contained. Shakespeare teachers will find Bloom's insights useful for work widi their own classes. Even here, however, Bloom is contentious. He suggests in his review of The Comedy ofErrors that "Perhaps all farce is metaphysical." In concluding Tamingof the Shrew, he pronounces, "Shakespeare, who clearly preferred his women characters to his men (always excepting Falstaffand Hamlet), enlarges the human, from the start, by subtly suggesting that women have the truer sense ofreality." He sets up his own order of composition of the plays, and in the final play review, The Two Noble Kinsmen...