Susan, are we talking about the same Bloom that held sway at U of Chicago,
those horrid Great Books seminars, and such? I was a longtime Hyde Park
resident, but never attended UC [graduated U of M]; got the feeling, though,
that bombasting faculty members often became the 'stars', and, therefore,
grabbed up the elite few highly paid professorships.
Best,
Judy
2008/11/12 Susan Holahan <[log in to unmask]>
> on 11/12/08 10:41 AM, Dominic Fox at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> >> His interpretations of individual poems were often--well--off. Look, for
> >> example, at "The Visionary Company" (very early book on the Romantics).
> Or
> >> don't: it's irritating. He loves to pronounce in large terms, finesse
> the
> >> details.
> >>
> > I believe the term is "strong misreading". Strong critics rationalise
> > their own weaknesses. And rationalise this rationalisation as critical
> > strength.
> >
> > Dominic
>
> You're right. I'd forgotten. Operating under the influence not of anxiety
> but of the great Europeans (Spitzer, Curtius, etc.), I quarreled with Bloom
> in his seminar on the Romantics until I ran out of patience. He quarreled
> indulgently with young women then, no "School of Resentment" allusions.
>
> Susan H.
>
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