Lear
The Great Image of Authority
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Lear
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Harold Bloom
About this listen
King Lear is perhaps the most poignant character in literature. The aged, abused monarch is at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from majesty. He is widely agreed to be William Shakespeare's most moving, tragic hero.
Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Emma Bovary or Hamlet when we are 17 and another when we are 40, Bloom writes about his shifting understanding - over the course of his own lifetime - of Lear, so that this audiobook also explores an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare's characters make. He delivers that kind of exhilarating intimacy, pathos, and clarity in Lear.
©2018 Harold Bloom (P)2019 HighBridge CompanyListeners also enjoyed...
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Story5 out of 5 stars 18
The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom
- By Jesse on 12-24-20
By: Harold Bloom
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The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 237
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 141
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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5 out of 5 stars
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A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
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The Bright Book of Life
- Novels to Read and Reread
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Classic Bloom, but a curious reading of him
- By J. J. Kuzma on 09-10-21
By: Harold Bloom
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Possessed by Memory
- The Inward Light of Criticism
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What an endowment!
- By Norman on 04-03-21
By: Harold Bloom
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The Modern Scholar
- Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies
- By: Professor Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Professor Harold Bloom
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lowest WPM Ever
- By Ronald on 11-16-11
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King Lear
- Arkangel Shakespeare
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Trevor Peacock, Clive Merrison, full cast
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 823
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 730
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 722
This shattering drama of isolation and loss is one of the greatest tragedies in world literature. King Lear of Britain has three daughters: the hard-hearted Goneril and Regan, and the good and gentle Cordelia. He determines to divide his kingdom between them, giving the largest share to she who can say she loves him the best. Lear's tragic lack of judgment and self-knowledge is paralleled by the blindness of the loyal Gloucester who is persuaded to reject his virtuous son, Edgar, in favor of the villainous Edmund.
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5 out of 5 stars
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tragedy par excellence
- By turbopro on 08-10-16
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Ruin the Sacred Truths
- Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Mort Crim
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 20
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 19
Harold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or "J") writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Illiad, the Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not one of Bloom's best
- By Benjamin Myers on 03-31-17
By: Harold Bloom
Bloom being Bloom
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