A Study On Harold Bloom’s New Aesthetic Criticism

Harold Bloom, one of the most influential literary critics in the West academia, is extremely keen to the problems in the contemporary western literary criticism and literary theory. His new aesthetic criticism is gradually formed through the argument with other schools as to aesthetics, authoritarian and cannons, which boasts of Bloom’s strong pro-actuality and consciousness of questions. The academia holds different views towards the characteristics and values of Bloom’s criticism. Bloom exerts great influence in the aesthetic shift of contemporary western literary theories.Judging from its main characteristics, Bloom’s criticism belongs to a new aesthetic criticism. Based upon this knowledge and relevant researches, the dissertation will attempt to examine Bloom’s major theories and his conceptions, in order to elaborate on his new aesthetic criticism, and make an evaluation of it. The paper consists of six chapters.The first chapter focuses on Bloom’s adoption of western classical literary theories. The theoretical basis of Bloom’s new aesthetic criticism is extremely complicated, among which are found classical literary theories and non-literary theories, such as ancient Jewish Kabbalah. Bloom excels in absorbing and transforming those classical theories by which he attempts to solve the problems in the contemporary literary field. Traditional Aestheticism, Romanticism, Freud’s Family of Romance and the theory of horological defense, and Frye’s mythological-archetypal theory are the key stones for Bloom’s literary criticism.The second chapter discusses the unique characteristics of Bloom’s new aesthetic criticism. During the process of absorbing and transforming those classical theories,Harold Bloom unconsciously formed a new aesthetic criticism, which belongs to none other than himself. Aesthetic, agon and subject-internalization are the key notions that represent Bloom’s criticism. These notions distinguish Bloom from both traditional aesthetics and contemporary literary critical schools. Elaborating on these unique characteristics will not only help illustrate Bloom’s theory of misreading and cannon theory, but lay a solid foundation for deepening our insights into his essential notions and criticism.The third chapter will look into Bloom’s theory of misreading from the perspective of his new aesthetic criticism. Compared with other constituents of Bloom’s criticism, the theory of misreading is quite systematic and logical, containing some important notions, such as reverse influence, transcendental anxiety, andmisreading. These notions, so typical of Bloom’s criticism, reflect Bloom’s absorbing of western critical traditions. In this theory, reverse influence and transcendental anxiety is the motivating power for misreading, while misreading paves the way for acquiring poet’s identity and aesthetics. Along with this, Bloom produced a map of misreading which combines revisionism, ratios, psychological defense, poetical imagination and figure of speech, and illustrates the complicated process of poetical creation.The fourth chapter mainly focuses on Bloom’s cannon theory from the perspective of his new aesthetic criticism. The cannon theory is another major part of Bloom’s criticism. From the adopted broad perspective, we could enlighten on the diachronic development of his cannon theory. It furthered Bloom’s aesthetic stance since his study of Romantic poetry, and his insights into aesthetics acquired during the construction of misreading theory. In Bloom’s opinion, aesthetic is strange, agonic and interoperable with sublime. Besides, Bloom in his cannon theory produced a list of western cannons that represents the unique characteristics of his new criticism..Chapter Five will concentrate on Bloom’s literary critical practice. Bloom usually expresses his ideas and opinions through his critical practice. His practice entails Romantic poetry, western cannon and religious texts. In his practice, Bloom inherits from traditional aestheticism the appreciative criticism, and attempts to find the aesthetic value of poems, dramas, essays, novels and religious texts, which is a clear reflection of his new aesthetic criticism. Bloom believes that literary criticism is an individual act where critics can express him/herself. Thus, Bloom’s critical practice could be said re-creation of texts through his misreading.Chapter Six will deliver a full evaluation of Bloom’s new aesthetic criticism.Bloom unconsciously formed his criticism during the process of arguing with other literary schools and transforming traditional literary theories. His criticism boasts of the consciousness of questions and realistic pertinence when anti-aesthetics and disubjectation are popular in the contemporary literary theories. Through a comprehensive study of Bloom’s criticism, this chapter will elaborate on the values and enlightenments that Bloom’s new aesthetic criticism delivers on aesthetics,author’s subjectivity and cannon studies. Due to the fact that Bloom’s new aesthetic criticism is formed unconsciously during his arguments, it should be admitted that there are certain drawbacks in his criticism that acquires our attention. Bloom’s overstressing author’s subjectivity sets his criticism into an awkward subjectivism and semantic free dilemma.Taken from a comprehensive view of Bloom’s new aesthetic criticism, it could be found that Bloom attempts to find new meanings from traditional literary criticism,and sticks to pure literary study, literary works’ aesthetic values and author’s subjectivity when western contemporary literary academia is in a state of diversification. Thus, a systematic study of Bloom’s criticism will not only deepen our understanding of his criticism, but also help acquire something that will contribute to the construction of our Chinese contemporary literary theories.