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Harold Bloom on Tolkien

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>"Elf-besotted fans aside, why shouldn't Tolkien be granted admission to the literary pantheon? Well, for one thing, his detractors argue, his prose is unbearably archaic. >"Sometimes, reading Tolkien, I am reminded of the Book of Mormon," writes Bloom. Tolkien's verse--which litters the text of The Lord of the Rings--is generally accepted to be even worse."
You guys told me Harold Bloom was the good guy. He spoke of the evils of Harry Potter and I aligned myself with him.

It turns out he doesn't like the Lord of the Rings though? What in the hell could he have possibly meant by this?
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What really makes Tolkien is the depth of his world building. It's truly magnificent, and it feels deeply authentic to the reader.

He ain't the most exciting writer, and anyone who has sat through pages of Frodo and Sam in the snow will tell you that. The books remain fantastic despite this.
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You don't (and shouldn't) have to agree with him on everything, nor are his opinions law.
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The part where he compares it to the book of Mormon should give it away.
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>>9496242
bloom is /lit/ embodied
aka a giant faggot who shits on everything and hasn't read 3/4 of what he reviews
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LOTR is kinda written like DND...
too much description of meaningless shit.
It's the problem of the series and his work in general. He was so opposed to allegory that he kinda compromised his own work with denial and pointless fluff.
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>>9496242
I thought that was Tolkien's point, to try and replicate the old Germanic epics?
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>>9496242
There's more to the quote than that. It doesn't sound like he actually dislikes LOTR, he's just ambivalent about it. He even admits he could just be too old to really 'get' it, he compares the writing in a scene from ROTK to the King James Bible.
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>>9496309
How can you be too old to get something that sounds too old?
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>>9496265
I think that was Bloom's idea of a sly jab, comparing the ridiculous space magic aliens of the book of Mormon to Tolkien's fantasy landscape, with the only fanbase being cultist retards.

That being said, Bloom is a whore. He only has a position on Tolkien because he is popular, the man only looks to promote himself via a contrarian vein. I don't believe for a second he's even read the trilogy but has been so bold as to edit several collections of criticisms pertaining to Tolkien's mythos.

Harold Bloom is an academic slut who will put his name on anything for six bits. His two (possibly three) anthologies of Tolkien criticism are classic examples of that. In both of them, his contribution is a sneering, patronizing attack on Tolkien, Tolkien readers, and the writers of the essays included in his book. How can that be, you ask? Simple. A book like this is put together by desperate, grovelling grad students, either worshipful or terrified. Bloom's job is to put his name on the result and collect the credit and royalties. If he had any class, he would at least acknowledge the grad students in his introduction. Good luck with that.
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>>9496242
>>9496371
The Book of Mormon was written (or "translated" if you ask the LDS) not in 19th Century English, but in Jacobean era English.

Tolkien is using language not contemporary to his times in the imitation of the King James Bible, classical translations of epic poems, and older English literature.

This is what Bloom refers to with Tolkien being archaic.

>It turns out he doesn't like the Lord of the Rings though?
It's not even Tolkien's best work, the Silmarillion is.
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>>9496377
pasta
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>>9496242

>Not reading Åke Ohlmarks swedish translation, VASTLY superior to the original. Transforms the archaic stiffness to magical ingenuity.
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>>9497332
>swedish
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>>9496271
It's the other way: most fantasy literature is a shameless stylistic and structural copy of Tolkien's writings.
As far as we're concerned, Tolkien's choice are both original and deliberate: he wasn't following any other great writer's path.

You can have suspicion about the value of this original effort, but you still should not conflate it with its derivatives.
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Harold Bloom and academics resistant to the admission of JRR Tolkien as a literary giant are idiots. Their criteria for evaluating a work's worth is whether they personally liked it not - totally subjective, personal, meaningless. They are a few people among billions, and the billions have ruled against them. The aliens who study the ruins of our civilization will find merit in understanding JRR Tolkien for the very fact of the appeal, the influence because something there resonates deep with the human heart. Of course Harold Bloom, a kike with a reptilian brain and no heart, doesn't get it. He decides whether a book is good or not based on his Jewish it is.
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>>9497425
>Their criteria for evaluating a work's worth is whether they personally liked it not

Academic criticism is way more structured and formal than that. Sure, you could argue that ultimately it boils down to the taste of the critic himself, but at the very least this arbitrary statement will be justified and ''revealed'' through an analytic approach.

That said, I agree with your disagreement with academia's scepticism towards Tolkien. Had he been born 200 or 300 years earlier, we would regard him, at the very least, as a solid and innovative writer, and his monumental effort would be met with far less condescension by high brow readers.
Too bad that he got famous in a time in which the literary standards were at they're all time low, meaning that his legacy is now forever linked to one of the most insignificant and pathetic genre in existence (fantasy novels).
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I cant believe he is still going. Has anyone read his fiction? I think there is only one but cant remember the name.
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>>9496267
>bloom hasn't read 3/4 of what he reviews
now thats a poor statement if I've ever seen one
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>>9496267
Was about to write pretty much this.
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I give Tolkien praise for inventing the modern "epic fantasy" genre but that's it.
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Bloom has said that he likes The Hobbit.
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>>9497466
The Flight to Lucifer. I haven't read it but it's supposedly very polarizing rather than straight up bad. It's a sequel/homage/reimagining of A Voyage to Arcturus, a book which I like very much. If Bloom's were easy to get a copy of I'd have it for sure.
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>>9497182
>le silmarils > farmer giles
>>9497332
>merry kills the witch-king
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>>9497182
>Tolkien is using language not contemporary to his times in the imitation of the King James Bible, classical translations of epic poems, and older English literature.
No, he wasn't and was quite clear on this. The only time he reverted to true archaism was in things like Theoden's speech, to emphasise his kingliness (and making a point about Rohan's isolationism etc), or the Witch King's, because he's old as fuck. Even then he doesn't go full archaism, as explained in some letter.
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>>9497559
Isn't that just another insult? He downplays the merit of Tolkien's serious work and then suggests he did better to write children's stories. Boom a shit.
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>>9497896
It's just banter.
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Bloom on Catch-22
>In the aura of an official Counter-Culture, Catch-22 can be read with nostalgia (though not by me) or with the qualified patience that a four-hundred-fifty-page extended joke demands if it is to be read at all.
>Heller’s half-dozen subsequent books were scarcely readable; his time
had passed.

Bloom on On the Road
>I had not reread On the Road during the near half-century since its first publication, and I am not happy at encountering it again. The book has many admirers, including Thomas Pynchon, but I hardly understand what he, and others, discover in this rather drab narrative.
>I can locate no literary value whatsoever in On the Road, but I must admit the same blindness (if it is that) afflicts me when trying to reread the verse of Allen Ginsberg, a good acquaintance whom I miss personally.

Bloom on C.S. Lewis
>At seventy-five, I find it difficult to reread Lewis; he whacks me with a Christian cudgel on nearly every page.
>Like Tolkien and Charles Williams, his good friends, Lewis is most famous for his fantasy-fiction, particularly The Chronicles of Narnia. I have just attempted to reread that tendentious evangelical taletelling, but failed. This may be because I am seventy-five, but then I can’t reread Tolkien or Williams either. Lewis and Tolkien write better prose than Rowling does in her Harry Potter fantasies, but like Rowling they will rub down into Period Pieces, and end in the dustbins. There are of course the epic movies inspired by these works, but will they be viewable a decade hence?
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>>9497973
Take the bloompill today.
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>>9497973
Holy fuck the self satisfied smugness of this cunt

Tolkien a period piece? It's offensive to even compare Tolkien and Rowling in the same sentence, as though there's some common ground for it. I am literally shaking with anger, Twilight is a period piece, tLotR is a modern yet timeless classic.
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>>9496242
>It turns out he doesn't like the Lord of the Rings though
>though
why would you think someone who abhors harry potter would like LOTR, what's wrong with you?
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>>9497973
>but I must admit the same blindness (if it is that) afflicts me when trying to reread the verse of Allen Ginsberg
absolutely based
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>>9498050
>tLotR is a modern yet timeless classic.
i am dead
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>>9498050
Face it, Tolkieneckbeard, you're not a single step above the Pottertards.
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>>9497973
literally right about everything
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>>9498057
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>>9498102
get the fuck out
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I can't believe there are fucking children on this board who not only read Tolkien, but try to defend him. He's nothing more than a children's fantasy writer; it'd be an insult to any decent novelist to include him in any canon aside from the "canon of books for fat man-children to read while they play video games."
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>>9496377
>constantly and publicly derides The Lord of the Rings as not real literature
>publishes several anthologies of critical interpretations on The Lord of the Rings
What did he mean by this?
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>>9496267
to be this undergrad
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>>9498123
>he says while posting Beckett
affecting maturity or sophistication is far more criminal than having some appeal to children
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>>9497332
brb learning swedish so can read LOTR in swedish
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>>9498157
What are you even saying?
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>>9498157
>these are the people who come to /lit/ these days
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>>9498123
I find Tolkien really fascinating in the context of literature critics: He was undoubtedly very smart and knowledgeable about language so it would be stupid to say he didn't write the way he did on purpose. Then you have the fact he invented a genre and had immense influence. And next, both resonated with millions - and millions of relatively smart people, too (arguably the least important point). So at what point do you, as a literature critic, just become a smug contrarian cunt for insulting or downplaying him if at the same time you praise another piece of postmodern navel-gazing?

I'll never get how people look up to critics. I feel like a subjective opinion is better than a subjective opinion hidden behind pseudo-objectivity.
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>>9498089
tolkien is waaaay better at description, and harry potter has more plot holes
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>>9498157
>>9498166
I'm also completely confused by your criticism of "sophistication." Have you ever read Beckett? Aside from "Dream of Fair to Middling Women", "Dante and the Lobster", and "Sedendo et Quiescendo", which are undeniably his worst works, his work is not sophisticated in any degree? Do you really have a hard time reading Beckett or something, kid?
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>>9498173
Critic? What? I'm just some asshole posting on 4chan.

Jeez, don't take me that seriously. I'm going to grad school, and I'd never say such trite, empty criticism in real life as I did here >>9498123
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>Tolkien is bad because he's hard to read
children
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>>9498157
I like both Beckett and Tolkien. Beckett's strong suits include embodying existential dread and confronting the enormous void that weighs down on mankind's psyche, and Tolkien's strengths include the precision and comprehensiveness--no one before him invented lexiconically and grammatically corroborated languages specifically to breathe life into a fictional culture--he meticulously wove into his mythos. There's no reason to hate on either, other than being an unthinking, unread pleb, or being a shitposter trying to instigate.
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>>9498187
>or being a shitposter trying to instigate

Oh, I'm sorry, brother. I've been coming to /lit/ for about 2 and a half years and I thought that was the whole point of this board.
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>>9498180
Eh misunderstanding because of the difference between German and English, I meant the general "you", not you personally; i.e. "one as a literature critic".

The way people get away with dolling up their opinions as superior criticism and develop a fellowship just amazes me.
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>>9496242
>You guys told me Harold Bloom was the good guy

you sound like a simpleton hunny
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>>9498194
>Rolling over and contributing to human mediocrity rather than embodying the electrochemical process that is the Will and affirming life and victory in its multivariate forms.

Rookie mistake.
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>>9498176
these are the serious readers /lit/ has to offer
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>>9498182
who are you quoting
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>>9498227
half the faggots itt talking about how overly long or descriptive and archaic Tolkien's prose is

Bloom included
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>>9498050
>I am literally shaking with anger
TRIGGERED
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>>9496242
>You guys told me Harold Bloom was the good guy. He spoke of the evils of Harry Potter and I aligned myself with him.
You cannot judge a critic by the degree to which their assessments agree with yours. It's the quality of their method that matters.

I'm sure most of us are familiar with Bloom's words on Harry Potter, especially this memetic passage:
> As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous.
In a thread where this came up, an anon did a quick check of the e-text, and found that "stretched his legs" came up exactly once, in the first chapter. How could an experienced critic make such an error? The obvious answer, is that Bloom was trawling for a criticism, found one, blew it up beyond proportion, and then set it on the page in what he thought would be an amusing and condescending anecdote.

Harry Potter is no masterpiece, but that does not allow Bloom to somehow suspend critical integrity in treating that work. The same thing happens in this review of Tolkien. He makes an unfavorable comparison ("reading Tolkien, I am reminded of the Book of Mormon") which he never expands on. He makes a vague and unsupported appeal to popular opinion (Tolkien's verse... is generally accepted to be even worse); anyone who has read Orwell will notice that sneaky passive voice. His comment on Tolkien's prose being "unbearably archaic" betrays (or purposefully conceals) his own ignorance. Anyone who has read Beowulf even once will realize that Tolkien's paratactic style comes from Old English verse.

I am sure there is plenty in Tolkien's works of which one could be negatively critical, but this hardly even counts as criticism. As with these examples >>9497973, it is little more than a collection of pithy, empty, and dismissive statements. It is the work of an egoist who does not even bother to waste his time attempting to read a book critically. And they must be read critically! Even the Harry Potters of the world demand this, for if criticism is not applied equally and fairly to all literary works, what is the point? Anything else is an exercise in professional vanity and virtue-signalling. That this attitude can be found in a long-honored figure as Professor Bloom goes to show the degeneration of criticism in our culture.
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READ DUNSANY
E
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D

D
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A
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Y
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>>9498176
>>9498050
You are pretty embarrassing. Please read more before posting thia kindo of shit.
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>>9498142

His goal in those essay collections is to collect criticism for every famous author whether he likes them or not.
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>>9498339
And is that supposed to defend him? He's going through the motions of publishing for the sake of publishing them. It's not a real reason, and it barely counts as an excuse.
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>>9498283
Well said anon.
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Makes me think of Celines rant about jewish critics.
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>>9498177
>Beckett is not sophisticated in any degree

Oh boy, you have never read him, have you?
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>>9498237
and how does that equal 'hard to read'
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>>9498237
No one said it was hard to read.
I said it was like reading a DND novel.
It's just overly fluffy, essentially meaningless "world-building" shit that really is very generic by modern standards.
It's not high-art or very reflective of reality it all. it doesn't require "work", it's just dull and lame.
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>>9498494
>t. never read Tolkien
if nothing else you're fitting in
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>>9498552
embarrassing post
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>>9498552
I've read all of his work multiple times.
I originally read the hobbit at 10, and LOTR trilogy at 12 years old.
Reread them again at 18 or so.
It's not hard.
I'm sorry that those are the only books you've ever read.
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>>9498557
>>9498554
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>>9498567
very nice response.
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>>9498567
>storage wars meme poster
We are truly dealing with a mental titan
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>>9498359

They're meant for students who want a nice convenient collection of criticism for study purposes. Made some good use of them in school. And if you're a fan of the author it's still neat to read. Bloom just writes the introductions. Don't know why you're so butt hurt about this.
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>>9497973
WHAT DOES HE LIKE THEN?
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>>9498658
>he doesn't like literature made for children and redditors
>what does he like then?????
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>tfw TLotR was always problematic because it appealed to the hippy generation who completely misconstrued it for their own purposes
>tfw this impropriety was doubly compounded by the popular release of the films and subsequent derivative media, spin offs, video games, etc...
>tfw you welcome the contrarian academic backlash as a result eagerly awaiting the day most people don't profess to like or know Tolkien's mythos that I may return to enjoying it untainted by their familiarity or mental appropriations
>tfw this thread leaves me hopeful and glad
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>>9498569
>shitpost
>shitpost in reponse
>wtf nice shitpost shitpost
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>>9498703
>so dumbfounded when someone says tolkien is shit, that it has to be a shitpost
2017 /lit/
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>>9498710
very nice response truly here is a mental titan
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>>9498658

Shakespeare & Pynchon
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>>9496242
https://youtu.be/EVWiwd0P0c0?t=4m50s

4:50s

Bloom is based as fuck and the very definition of our guy.
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>>9497973
He's pretty much right, even though I loved Catch-22 and found it hilarious as a teenager.
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>>9498757
Hey, he hates women and minorities. So do I!

Our guy indeed.
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>>9497440
>they're
how did you even..
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>>9499324
Come on... English is not my native language and there is one typo in a 2 paragraphs long post: are you really going to pick on that?
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>>9498177

What's wrong with Dante and the Lobster?
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The Lord of the Rings is potent for its deep Christian sense of Providence at work in the world. I suspect this is one of the things Bloom finds offputting about it, since his comments on C.S. Lewis here >>9497973 suggest that he is not fond of overtly religious fiction, which LOTR certainly is.
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>>9498050
holy shit fantasyfags are so dumb
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>>9497973
hes 100% correct on the road.
literary speaking, its mccarthys worst work, even though its his most famous.
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>>9498110
triggered, as if by sorcery!
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>>9498699
>it appealed to the hippy generation who completely misconstrued it for their own purposes.
You must be kidding.
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>>9499661
faggot he's talking about kerouac
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>>9499776
>You must be kidding.
What about that strikes you as wrong? Tolkien would literally be woken up in the middle of the night by dumbass American hippies calling him to say how 'far out' his story was.
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>>9498173
>millions of relatively autistic people

fixed
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>>9496271
If anything, D&D was shaped by LOTR, but you're quite wrong in saying Tolkien wrote too much worthless description, since he isn't Martin and his description always not only has plot importance but tends to give away little hints about the world itself. I'm sure you're the type of faggot to complain about the songs in the book, too.
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>>9497182
LotR isn't really that archaic, Silmarillion is definitely archaic, I doubt Bloom would appreciate it.

Obviously the Book of Mormon comparison is hyperbole, but it's pretty u fair, because BoM is ridiculously archaic throughout while LotR uses archaisms only when it serves a purpose.

Here's 3 Nephi 2:3

>And it came to pass that the people began to wax strong in wickedness and abominations; and they did not believe that there should be any more signs or wonders given; and Satan did go about, leading away the hearts of the people, tempting them and causing them that they should do great wickedness in the land.

Sounds nothing like LotR.
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>>9497973
>There are of course the epic movies inspired by these works, but will they be viewable a decade hence?
lol, the LotR movies are 14 years old and are still seen as modern classics.
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>>9500498
Almost all of the CGI involved aged like milk. It's strange and embarrassing to revisit.
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Tolkien deserves to be in literary pantheon for one thing, world building. It among the best ever created.
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>>9498176

>Eagles
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>>9497182
>Tolkien is using language not contemporary to his times in the imitation of the King James Bible, classical translations of epic poems, and older English literature.
So does Bloom not know that or something? If he does why is he making this criticism?
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>>9500549
>le eagles meme
Read the books
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>>9498283
This needs to be screen capped and put on every Bloom thread
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>>9496273
Too bad he failed. Christian morality ruins everything.
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>>9496273
Tolkien's aim was to createan English epic basically. He took inspiration from Germanic, Celtic, and Finnish mythology, and especially Anglo Saxon poetry. But being a Christian of course his beliefs had an affect too, in his view they touched on a deeper truth than pagan mythology alone.

If you read his letters, as a professor of Old English he saw how much Anglo Saxon myth was lost compared to other countries, partly because of the Norman suppression of local culture. That inspired him to make his own mythology, along with his interest in languages. Thinking his fictional world had a single origin or purpose is massively simplifying it. It was something he worked on his entire adult life and brought all his various passions to it, which is why it's so interesting.
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>>9500476
Silmarillion sounds exactly like the quote you posted.
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>>9499661
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>>9498757
>23:00

Very moral man.
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Bloom sounds like a histrionic faggot.
Have Clive James and/or Robert Hughes chimed in their opinions on Tolkien?

21 1 40 30 16 35 7 2
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>>9500654
That's why I said: it sounds nothing like LORD OF THE RINGS
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>>9499328
>:
how did you even..
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>>9500476
>And it came to pass that the people began to wax strong in wickedness and abominations; and they did not believe that there should be any more signs or wonders given; and Satan did go about, leading away the hearts of the people, tempting them and causing them that they should do great wickedness in the land.
Holy shit it's like some pseud tried to remake the Bible except they hadn't had a clue as to what made it good in the first place.
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>>9500879
I know.

The quote also reminds me of a certain passage in Beowulf which says that the pagan lords turned to worshiping the gods -- and therefore Satan -- because they were so desperate in those times.
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>>9498381
Don't tease us anon, share!
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>>9501041
Yeah, that's pretty much what it is. The theology of the Book of Mormon is surprisingly conventional despite its retarded set up (ancient jews in America). The Book of Moses and Book of Abraham are where things get wacky, Joseph Smith wrote those later when Mormon beliefs had massively diverged from Christianity.

Abraham 3:1-4
>1 And I, Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees;
>2 And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it;
>3 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.
>4 And the Lord said unto me, by the Urim and Thummim, that Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of the Lord’s time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.

Moses 5
>28 And it came to pass that Cain took one of his brothers’ daughters to wife, and they loved Satan more than God.
>29 And Satan said unto Cain: Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die; and swear thy brethren by their heads, and by the living God, that they tell it not; for if they tell it, they shall surely die; and this that thy father may not know it; and this day I will deliver thy brother Abel into thine hands.
>30 And Satan sware unto Cain that he would do according to his commands. And all these things were done in secret.
>31 And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called Master Mahan, and he gloried in his wickedness.
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>>9496242
I don't want to go full /pol/ here, but imagine that. Someone surnamed Bloom is criticizing a novel that's a distillation and refinement of European myth. In many regards, it's a touchstone of European identity that's well worth celebrating.

I think people would take offense if you compared something "unbearably archaic" to the Hebrew scriptures, or criticized the verse found in the book of Psalms. I'm starting to think Kevin MacDonald was right about the tendency to unfairly diminish European culture.

>>9501041
Agreed. It's just someone who read the KJV.

Tolkein, however, was a career linguist, and his mode of writing was well though out. He was enamored with ancient Germanic languages and whenever possible, he preferred older Germanic grammar over modern English grammar because he had this sense that English had been bastardized. He preferred etymologically Ango-Saxon words over Greco-Romantic loans. If he used "go not" instead of "do not go" it was because it felt less artificial to a person of Germanic heritage.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_and_Latinate_equivalents_in_English
Many people note that when you have a choice between words of Germanic and Romantic origin, the Romantic word feels more abstract and the Germanic version feels more palpable and forceful. Look at this page and you might end up agreeing.
>>
>>9500549
>Let's fly the Eagles into Mordor, where Sauron's Eye can corrupt them, the Nazgul's can annihilate them and the archers can pepper them with holes.
>>
>>9501560
Then why do they appear at the end? Checkmate.
>>
>>9496267
I'm pretty positive there isn't a single other human alive today who has read as much as him

But yeah so, I agree, what a massive fucking autist
>>
>>9501784
That's the difference, Bloom reads books then shitposts about them, /lit/ skips to the shitposting.
>>
>>9498283
BLOOM BTFO
Seriously though, the dude is a self righteous piece of shit
>>
>>9501536
>unfairly diminish European culture
Bloom thinks Shakespeare is the greatest genius the world has ever produced. Him not liking genre fiction (like most literary critics) doesn't mean he's trying to diminish European culture.
>>
>>9501707
>Eagles
You are baiting but for anyone who hasn't read the book:

>Then why do they appear at the end? Checkmate.

Sauron is dead (at the very least, he is not a threat at the time)
His armies are dead.
The Nazguls are dead.

There is nothing for them to fear anymore.
>>
>>9499776
A lot of people took LOTR to heart, and the constant fanmail and "social contentiousness" attributed to Tolkien eventually led to him making a public statement that there was no political or symbolic relationship to WW2 or hippie culture.
>>
>>9502310
Fair enough. I hate mass produced genre fiction as much as the next guy, but I feel like there's something rare and wholesome in Tolkien that the ivory tower hates. I'm trying to figure out why, but it's hard.
>>
>>9498757
How can anyone take Bloom seriously? Everything about him, down to his appearance screams affectation and pretension.

He looks like he is wearing a Harold Bloom costume. You're on 60 minutes, you can't comb your hair?
>>
The weird thing is Harold Bloom's only novel was an experiment in writing a sequel to this 1920 fantasy book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Voyage_to_Arcturus

That original novel was a huge influence on Tolkien and CS Lewis. Additionally, Harold Bloom loves Chesterton, also big influences on Tolkien and Lewis.

I wonder what Harold thought of The Worm Ouroboros or George MacDonalds?
>>
>>9502581
Holy hell I was just thinking about that book. "Man if he thinks Tolkien of all people is affected, he'd better not ever read A Voyage to Arcturus."
Rich irony.
>>
>>9502581
voyage to arcturus and some of macdonalds novels, and also gormenghast (which is admittedly finer than lotr) are in his western canon list. bloom likes some genre fiction, but of course hes more concerned with quality.
>>
>>9502360
>>9502726
>>9502581
welcome to /lit/ newfag scum!

>they cant into good genre fic
>>
File: 12938123.jpg (26KB, 771x161px) Image search: [Google]
12938123.jpg
26KB, 771x161px
>>9502581
Oh man, I need to read this shit now, I feel I'm in for a real (dreadful) treat. Thanks anon, had no idea this even existed.

Lmao, what kind of self respecting critique actually writes unofficial sequels to genre fiction stories? Bloom is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
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