From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time as well as a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a century, an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Falstaff—Shakespeare's greatest enduring and complex comedic character.Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays: Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads, him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him—some innocent, some cruel. Falstaff can be lewd, funny, careless of others, a bad creditor, an unreliable friend, and in the end, devastatingly reckless in his presumption of loyalty from the new King. Award-winning author and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal...

In arguably his most personal and lasting book, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than eighty texts by canonical authors— texts he has had by heart since childhood.Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts—an inward journey from childhood to ninety—Bloom argues elegiacally with nobody but Bloom, interested only in the influence of the mind upon itself when it absorbs the highest and most enduring imaginative literature. He offers more than eighty meditations on poems and prose that have haunted him since childhood and which he has possessed by memory: from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes to Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson; Spenser and Milton to Wordsworth and Keats; Whitman and Browning to Joyce and Proust; Tolstoy and Yeats to Delmore Schwartz and Amy Clampitt; Blake to Wallace Stevens—and so much more. And though he has written before about some of these authors, these...

From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, comes an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Cleopatra—one of the Bard's most riveting and memorable female characters.Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history—and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. She is lover of Marc Antony, defender of Egypt, and, perhaps most enduringly, a champion of life. Cleopatra is supremely vexing, tragic, and complex. She has fascinated readers and audiences for centuries and has been played by the greatest actresses of their time, from Elizabeth Taylor to Vivien Leigh to Janet Suzman to Judi Dench. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Cleopatra with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another...

Bloom's fascination with David Lindsay's philosophical fantasy led him to compose a sequel in 1979. The Flight to Lucifer, his only work of fiction. Tho reviews were positive, he disowned it. His self-conscious theoretical interest in the nature of fantasy literature weighed it down too heavily. He's said he'd remove every copy of the book from every library if he could. Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, supplied the concept of a voyage thru space to a planet created by a demiurge & other incidental features of the book. However, most of its content derives fairly directly from gnosticism. In Lindsay, the passionate giant Maskull & the thin, intense Nightspore, are taken from Earth to the planet Tormance by Krag, a mysterious figure who's a residue of the true godhead, Muspel, unassimilated by the false creations of Tormance's demiurge, Crystalman. Bloom's novel reproduces this formula with names drawn directly from gnostic history & cosmology. Maskull becomes Thomas Perscors, "thru fire", identified as an incarnation of Primal Man. Nightspore's correlate is Seth Valentinus, a reincarnation of the theologian. Their guide is an Aeon, Olam, an emanation of the true god. Lucifer is controlled by "Saklas", gnostic name for the false creator. Olam has brought Perscors to Lucifer to fight Saklas, & has brought Valentinus so he can remember his true self. This is also drawn from Lindsay. However, the details of their adventures differ & in the end Perscors cripples Saklas & changes the order of things on Lucifer, whereas Nightspore's victory is to escape Crystalman's clutches & see reality as it is, tho vowing to return to Earth to free others. **