Friday, April 20 at 4:00, Battell Chapel. The English Department and Shakespeare at Yale present: Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, has been called the “preeminent literary critic in the world.” Now 81, a grand old man of letters, still writing and teaching, Bloom is as mesmerizing and controversial as ever. His book, “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human,” published in 1998, is a sweeping compendium, the culmination of a life of reading and thinking about Shakespeare. In it he provides an analysis of each of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, in which he sees Shakespeare as having invented our sense of ourselves. Join Professor Bloom as he reads and explicates passages from plays crucial to his view of the Bard’s achievement.
To prepare, please review the following passages: “Henry IV, Part I:” Act IV, scene ii, lines 11-48, Act V scene iii, lines 30-39, Act V, scene iii, lines 58-61, Act V, scene iv, lines 111-129; “Hamlet:” Act II, scene ii, lines 550-605, Act III, scene i, lines 55-89; “Antony and Cleopatra:” Act V, scene iii, lines 236-298.
This event is part of Shakespeare at Yale, a semester of special events celebrating the Bard.