Harold Bloom is a literary critic and theorist who has had a profound impact on the study of Western literature and poetry.
A critic of British and American Romanticism, Bloom has developed a new theory of poetic influence with important consequences for conventional interpretive theory. His work has evolved beyond the conventional boundaries of literary criticism, incorporating psychoanalytic theory, the history of religion, and Jewish and American studies. Bloom’s many published works include The Anxiety of Influence (1973), Agon (1982), Poetics of Influence: New and Selected Criticism (1985), Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present (1989), The Book of J (1990, with translation by David Rosenberg), The American Religion (1992), The Western Canon (1994), Omens of Millennium (1996), Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1999), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2004), and Where Shall Wisdom be Found (2004).
Bloom is the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, where he has taught since 1955. He has also served as the Berg Professor of English at New York University.
Bloom received a B.A. (1951) from Cornell University and a Ph.D. (1955) from Yale University.
Last updated January 1, 2005.