Summary
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, set in the raw and frightening beauty of the English moors, is the targic and passionate story of Catherine and Heathcliff, two lovers drawn together from the moment they meet. Their love is consuming and destructive, forbidden and inescapable, making Brontë's tale an enduring classic of English literature. This updated volume offers clear analysis perfect for students seeking valuable insight into this haunting tale praised for its innovative structure, originality, and poetic style. Essays include Virginia Woolf's look at the novel as a prose-poem, an examination of the book as a proto-feminist critique of John Milton's Paradise Lost, an account of the novel as a myth of rebirth, and a look at the book as a critique of sexual unions approved by society.
Specifications
Chronology. Bibliography. Index.
About the Author(s)
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. Educated at Cornell and Yale universities, he is the author of 30 books, including Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), The Visionary Company (1961), Blake's Apocalypse (1963), Yeats (1970), A Map of Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Agon: Toward a Theory of Revisionism (1982), The American Religion (1992), The Western Canon (1994), Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996), and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist. The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sets forth Professor Bloom's provocative theory of the literary relationships between the great writers and their predecessors. His most recent books include How to Read and Why (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2002), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2003), Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (2004), and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). In addition, he is the author of hundreds of articles, reviews, and editorial introductions. In 1999, Professor Bloom received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism. He has also received the International Prize of Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennial Prize of Denmark.