Reading Harold Bloom – What For and How? On Canonicality of the Critic Cover Image

Po co czytać Harolda Blooma i jak, czyli o kanoniczności krytyka
Reading Harold Bloom – What For and How? On Canonicality of the Critic

Author(s): Karina Jarzyńska
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: kanon literacki; Harold Bloom; kanoniczność; lęk przed wpływem; kanon literatury polskiej; literary canon; canonicality; the anxiety of influence; canon of Polish literature

Summary/Abstract: The relationship between the idea of Harold Bloom’s literary canon and the status of his own critic’s oeuvre is discussed in the article. Diverse topics and literary styles cultivated by the author of The Anxiety of Influence were characterised and evaluated from the perspective of their canonicality understood as an aesthetic and social value. According to Bloom himself, the canonical texts also offer the spiritual value with help of such tools as irony and metaphor, provoking the readers to assess their own condition. The article presents the Polish reception of Harold Bloom’s texts and examines the presence of Polish literature in the Western literary canon designed by him. Its weak representation demands response of the critics who could propose their own list of literary works based on criteria equally strong as Bloom’s ones but overcoming his oftentimes colonial, patriarchal and exclusionary influence.

  • Issue Year: 17/2020
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 505-517
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Polish