Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare. Did he invent the human personality as we inhabit it now? Professor Harold Bloom claims:”Shakespeare is universal. Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. One has to ask the biblical question “Where shall wisdom be found? And I suppose for me the answer is: wisdom is to be found in Shakespeare provided you get at it in the right way.”But why does Shakespeare still hold the popular and indeed academic imagination in the twentieth century? Should we read him above all others as Harold Bloom suggests in the way he suggests? And what does this say about the state of literary criticism today? With Harold Bloom, literary critic, Professor of Humanities, Yale University and Berg Professor of English, New York University; Jacqueline Rose, literary critic and Professor of English, University of London.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Professor Harold Bloom No other episodes
  Professor of Humanities, Yale University and Berg Professor of English, New York University
• Jacqueline Rose 3 episodes
  Professor of English, University of London

Related episodes

• Shakespeare’s Work
  
  11 May, 2000 820 English and Old English literatures
• Shakespeare’s Life
  
  15 Mar, 2001 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Individual
  
  21 Oct, 1999 100 Philosophy
• Originality
  
  20 Mar, 2003 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• William Hazlitt
  
  8 Apr, 2010 820 English and Old English literatures
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  
  18 Apr, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Literature
  
  5 Jan, 2012 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Lear
  
  28 Feb, 2008 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Soul
  
  6 Jun, 2002 120 Epistemology
• The Later Romantics
  
  15 Apr, 2004 820 English and Old English literatures
• Hamlet
  
  28 Dec, 2017 820 English and Old English literatures
• Johnson
  
  27 Oct, 2005 820 English and Old English literatures
• Romeo and Juliet
  
  17 Feb, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• History of Metaphor
  
  25 Nov, 2010 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Science’s Revelations
  
  29 Oct, 1998 500 Science
• The Tempest
  
  14 Nov, 2013 820 English and Old English literatures
• Modern Culture
  
  21 Jan, 1999 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Wittgenstein
  
  4 Dec, 2003 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets
  
  2 Jun, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets
  
  11 Oct, 2018 820 English and Old English literatures

---

Programme ID: p00545dp

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545dp

Auto-category: 822.33 (Shakespearean drama)