Shakespeare:
The Invention of the Human
By Harold Bloom
Riverhead Books, $35
ISBN 1573221201

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Our foremost literary critic, Harold Bloom, is known for his influential and often controversial views, whether the subject is his theory of poetic influence or which authors and their works should comprise the Western canon. To distinguish his approach from the writings of other critics, several years ago Bloom wrote, "[the great critics] remember always that high literature is written by suffering human beings and not by language, and is read by suffering human beings." Where do we get our present day understanding of what it is to be human?

In his exhilarating new book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Bloom illuminates our understanding of human nature or personality as we understand those terms in a secular sense. "What Shakespeare invents is ways of representing human changes, alterations not only caused by flaws and by decay, but effected by the will as well, and by the will's temporal vulnerabilities." Bloom notes that "the representation of human character and personality remain always the supreme literary value." And Shakespeare did it better than anyone else. The work of Chaucer and others influenced him, but if we compare Shakespeare's work with writers both before or contemporary with him, his understanding of the human experience far exceeds that of everyone else. For Bloom, Shakespeare went beyond "psychologizing us." "He extensively informs the language we speak, his principle characters have become our mythology, and he, rather than his involuntary follower Freud, is our psychologist."

Bloom describes his book as a personal statement, the result of a lifetime of involvement with Shakespeare's work. He guides us through each of the 39 plays, in approximate chronological order as they were written and performed. The result is a dazzling performance by a major teacher. Passionate about his subject, immensely learned, strongly opinionated, Bloom provides provocative commentary in a most engaging way.

Roger Bishop is a contributor to BookPage.