‘POETIC ORIGINS AND FINAL PHASES’
HAROLD BLOOM
Critical summary for students of Indian
Universities
Dr. S. Sreekumar
Harold
Bloom, Professor of Humanities at Yale University was closely associated with
Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller. They constituted a group
which was very influential in contemporary American criticism. The over-riding
influence of these critics and their role in shaping the course of American
criticism, especially the campus variety, earned them the sobriquet, ‘hermeneutic
Mafia’. Though Bloom was closely allied with Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida,
he frequently disagreed with their contentions. “Bloom is very much his own man, one of the
most idiosyncratic critics writing today”.
