Add Prime to get Fast, Free delivery

Hardcover
$25.95

Paperback
$17.69

$17.69 with 45 percent savings

List Price: $32.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Sunday, December 29 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Saturday, December 28. Order within 9 hrs 51 mins

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or text message.

Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).

$$17.69 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

Payment

Secure transaction

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$9.67

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Monday, December 30 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Sunday, December 29. Order within 9 hrs 51 mins

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or text message.

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$17.69 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Goodwill Good Skills and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (124) from $2.32

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Harold Bloom

Follow

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human Paperback – September 1, 1999

by Harold Bloom (Author)

4.7 393 ratings

See all formats and editions

Save 50% on 1 when you buy 2 Shop items

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$17.69","priceAmount":17.69,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"69","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DP2MtFaPuDLukuHfV3sSsxyYJ4Ts5jsF5xVCTTvsLCCdq00qAJJYd29cZ0hL1gzLhWB2OQGzrCXNrzKzm33EBRQO%2BCeXQiwEsteDu1mt%2FwUwtQyy%2BUdJjOA3R54ZFSTVBIuRAEzTb5c%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.67","priceAmount":9.67,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"67","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DP2MtFaPuDLukuHfV3sSsxyYJ4Ts5jsFep9t8fv7Xx7hT9h9wV3iNG15C7HNHMVyCJ3vHaufeM%2FS%2F87i5qXthciK3FyD%2FfTqmTU%2FzJVyQqb2zPTEB2Uh89XNqQkU%2BXT9PZuUlwRKiHosPomvTW8Mv%2FP2%2BMUhRDpXJVJOhqMigjY5iJ9ATgvJNl2tHLA4Mvix","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

"The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer." -Geoffrey O'Brien, New York Review of Books

A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author, this book is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare.

Preeminent literary critic-and ultimate authority on the western literary tradition, Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships: that Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most original literary critic in America." --The New York Times

"No critic in the English language since Samuel Johnson has been more prolific." --The Paris Review

"Bloom is all literature, (he) positively lives it." --Alfred Kazin

From the Back Cover

A landmark achievement -- expansive, erudite, and passionate -- Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. Preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit, and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarship -- that Shakespeare not only reinvented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books (September 1, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 768 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 157322751X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1573227513
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.17 x 1.9 x 9.16 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #68,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Shakespeare Literary Criticism
- #116 in Literary Criticism & Theory
- #240 in Author Biographies

Customer Reviews:
4.7 393 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Harold Bloom

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Harold Bloom is a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than thirty books include The Best Poems of the English Language, The Art of Reading Poetry, and The Book of J. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, including the Academy's Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the International Prize of Catalonia, and the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico.

Customer reviews

393 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book enjoyable and insightful. They describe it as a unique literary journey with a delightful writing style. The author's style celebrates Shakespeare's works while pointing out the author's typical Bloom style. The book explores language as a uniquely human attribute and develops personalities through poetry.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

Readability Insight Writing quality Bloom style Personality

23 customers mention "Readability"23 positive0 negative

Customers find the book enjoyable and engaging. They praise it as a great work by one of the greatest writers of all time. The book provides insights that enrich their enjoyment of the play.

"...But even being so, the result is amazing, not a single critic since A. C. Bradley has thrown so much light to Shakespeare...." Read more

"...This book is frequently insightful, well-written, and useful, but it could have been much better, especially in view of the general audience for..." Read more

"I have read most of Mr. Bloom's books, well worth the effort in shedding light on the Western Canon...." Read more

"...Highly recommended! The book is excellent, too. Also five stars." Read more

21 customers mention "Insight"21 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and well-written. They say it's a must-read for Shakespeare fans. The analyses inspire and educate, with an in-depth treatment of the plays. However, some readers feel the opinions are pointless or outdated.

"...that Shakespeare created personality as we know it and changed forever our modes of cognition; giving birth to characters that do not only change by..." Read more

"...Each play is considered and their contribution to our incremental evolution of the internalized self-object unfolds...." Read more

"...This book is frequently insightful, well-written, and useful, but it could have been much better, especially in view of the general audience for..." Read more

"...Because Bloom does such a wonderful job of dissecting the plays that one gets lost in the nuances that he brings out...." Read more

12 customers mention "Writing quality"12 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality engaging and insightful. They describe it as a unique literary journey with an excellent summary of Shakespeare's major works. The book is described as scholarly but a bit windy at times. Readers mention it's a must-read if you are human, and an imaginative analysis of the play in a very inventive way.

"This book is a compilation of essays written by Harold Bloom plus an introduction and a "coda" treating Shakespeare's plays generally...." Read more

"...This book is frequently insightful, well-written, and useful, but it could have been much better, especially in view of the general audience for..." Read more

"...His critical analyses of the plays are insightful and provocative...." Read more

"I’m a great fan of the bard and am reasonably well read but just couldn’t follow much of the text in this book...." Read more

7 customers mention "Bloom style"7 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's Bloom style. They find it an imposing tome, but they find it refreshing to read. The book is described as beautiful and erudite.

"...the same direction: analyzing the play in a very inventive and imaginative fashion...." Read more

"Excellent summation of the major Shakespeare plays. Typical Bloom style that celebrates Shakespeare's works while pointing out varying style and..." Read more

"...An imposing tome appearance wise, one easily plunges into its depths feeling refreshed and renewed." Read more

"Beautiful edition of book. I hope to learn more about the writings of Shakespeare. Harold Bloom is one of my favorite authors of non-fiction...." Read more

4 customers mention "Personality"4 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's personality. They find it interesting that language is considered a uniquely human attribute and that Shakespeare developed personalities through poetry. The central theory is that Shakespeare invented personality and meaning to experience, creating the human.

"...he was even more a poet, and developed the personalities through this poetry. The sonnets were..." Read more

"...and attribute meaning to experience and in so doing the Human is invented...." Read more

"...It's about language as a uniquely human attribute...." Read more

"...His shocking central theory is: Shakespeare INVENTED personality. Not simply how we look at personality - he created it as a concept." Read more

Reviews with images

See all photos

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Amazon Customer
The best companion to Shakespeare available
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2017
Verified Purchase
This book is a compilation of essays written by Harold Bloom plus an introduction and a "coda" treating Shakespeare's plays generally. There is an essay for each one of Shakespeare's plays considered cannonical twenty years ago. Every essay goes in the same direction: analyzing the play in a very inventive and imaginative fashion. Of course, this method ends up making the lenght and complexity of the various essays extremely variable. Plays like "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" or "The Comedy of Errors" are discussed in very few -but always clever- pages; minor plays like the ones just mentioned or simply those that Bloom finds not very attractive receive this treatment. Most plays are analyzed in similar lenght and complexity, although, Bloom's language and literary references often obscure their reading. This is especially true in the essays about the plays Harold loves the most. The essays about "King Lear" or "Henry IV" are filled with references to a wide range of authors or critics, even excepts from their works. But even being so, the result is amazing, not a single critic since A. C. Bradley has thrown so much light to Shakespeare.
The criticism follows mainly two points: the inwardness and the irony. This two themes, especially the second one, are part of the "creation of the human", characteristic that Bloom assigns to Shakespeare. In fact, all the essays try to proof that Shakespeare created personality as we know it and changed forever our modes of cognition; giving birth to characters that do not only change by hearing others, but by overhearing their own singular and unique voices and this way being able to separate themselves from the roles they play and achieving ever-growing inwardness and freedom. It may sound, indeed, as if Bloom were worshipping a god. But at this he responds "Why not?".

Read more

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Pseudo D
Bardolatry
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2020
Verified Purchase
The late critic Harold Bloom loved Shakespeare above all as the center of the western canon. He was
passionate about teaching literature as literature, not as psychology, politics, economics, theology or
other ideologies. The emphasis is not on the stories (the Bard mostly borrowed these from historians or
other writers) but the characters, personalities, and human nature. While Shakespeare was a dramatist,
he was even more a poet, and developed the personalities through this poetry. The sonnets were
certainly poems, but so were the plays.

Among the characters that Bloom emphasizes again and again are Hamlet, Falstaff, Cleopatra,
Macbeth, Iago, Rosalind, Edmund and Lear. He treats the characters as real people, because they
seem more real than a lot of the people in so-called real life. So for instance, in Poem Unlimited
Bloom offers speculation about what Hamlet did, going to England and Germany to learn drama
and other intellectual disciplines. Hamlet has actually surpassed his creator and become an
author in his own right. We quote Hamlet as if we're quoting Socrates or Jesus or Buddha.
These characters are traced through Shakespeare's career development with the comedies,
histories, tragedies and romances (a term that Bloom dislikes for the final plays such as
the Tempest). When it comes to the genres, Shakespeare is beyond genre, as Polonius
showed with his "history-comedy-tragedy" etc. and all the combinations including poem
unlimited.

Besides Hamlet, Bloom's favorite is Falstaff, from Henry IV part I and II. Even though he's
a raunchy big old guy, he is almost as smart as Hamlet and teaches us about joie de vivre
and humor. The apotheosis or death of Cleopatra was the end of an era, as she had been
the lover of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony etc. Octavius went on to great political
accomplishments but was not as interesting as the previous generation. But Cleopatra's
death was also the end of Shakespeare's high tragedies.

Bloom shows Shakespeare's development in relation to Chaucer, Marlowe who came
before him, Ben Jonson who was a contemporary, Fletcher who came along toward
the end, and the successor John Milton. Bloom also relates Shakespeare's characters
to others in the western canon such as Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
Austen, Coleridge, Melville, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Proust.

How does Bloom understand himself? He is a critic in the romantic tradition, along
with Dr. Johnson, AC Bradley, Hazlitt, Swinburne and Goddard. He is passionate about
teaching Shakespeare as literature and not through Freud or Marx. In fact he interprets
Freud through Shakespeare (!) rather than vice versa. This is a very long book but joyfully
quick.

Read more

29 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Michael Lima
The Revenge Of The Bard
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 1999
Verified Purchase
Like Bloom, I've sat thorough many productions of Shakespeare's works in which the themes and the characters were distorted, mutilated, or simply ignored. I've wondered if there was anyone in the world who actually read the plays instead of using them as a marketing gimmick to display their own concepts. Fortunately, Bloom shows that he has read the plays.
Many of this book's reviewers have focused their energy on whether or not Bloom proves his thesis (which is that Shakespeare "invented" the ways that we define ourselves as humans). Just to put my opinion on it, I don't think he did. Then again, I don't think Bloom thinks he did either, as is evident by his statement in the book's end that Chaucer "invented" the human and Shakespeare perfected it.
So, why should a reader invest time in a book where it is questionable whether the author proved the central thesis? Because Bloom does such a wonderful job of dissecting the plays that one gets lost in the nuances that he brings out. His critical analyses of the plays are insightful and provocative. While I might take exception to some of his comments (I don't think Richard III is as weak as Bloom thinks it is), his writing style has conveyed his ideas in such a way that I have to respect his opinions.
I was glad that I had read/seen some of the plays so that I could understand the context of Bloom's comments about them. I did feel a little lost when reading his analyses of those plays to which I had not been exposed. Instead of wallowing in the feeling, I wanted to read those plays in order to see if I agreed with his comments. Any critical study that makes one want to return to the original source material to discover if its arguments are valid is a very good study. While I don't believe one should accept Bloom's analyses at face value, his comments provide a solid counterpoint to many of the myths about the plays. I heartily recommend this book to those who want to broaden their perspective on Shakespeare's works.

Read more

39 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Luiz Alexandre Borges Pereira dos Santos
Obra de referência
Reviewed in Brazil on November 10, 2024
Verified Purchase
Leitura obrigatória, uma viagem pessoal, apaixonada e fascinante, do autor

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
Vladimir S.
Shakespeare defining humanity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2024
Verified Purchase
First class definition of man in Western Civilisation.

Read more
Report
dr george pollard
A worthwile investment
Reviewed in Canada on May 22, 2019
Verified Purchase
A scholarly, yet accessible read, with the most appropriate material selected from each play. What amounts to annotation is interesting. If you're willing to do a bit of work in exchange for great rewards, this book is for you. dgp

Read more
Report
Kumar Das
Worth purchase..
Reviewed in India on October 31, 2019
Verified Purchase
Nice

Read more
Report
Cliente Kindle
Muy recomendable
Reviewed in Spain on July 4, 2019
Verified Purchase
Comencé a leer el libro pero por otros compromisos no continué la lectura, sin embargo es un autor muy erudito con una prosa brillante y una fuerza que invita a leerlo como una novela. Excelente la edición y presentación.

Read more
Report
Translate review to English

See more reviews

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Return this item for free

Return this item for free

Image Unavailable

Follow the author