Hispanic-American Writers (Bloom's Modern Critical Views (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. 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), and Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996). 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 Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist, 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 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.

Grade 9 Up—This volume focuses on recent writers to emerge in this field, including Junot Díaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. In his introduction, Bloom restates his well-known argument that literature must be evaluated by aesthetic standards, and not by the sociopolitical or ethnic viewpoint it represents. Aesthetics and the use of language are indeed among the themes addressed here. Each scholar also addresses the question of how Latino writers reflect and shape their cultural identities in fiction. Two essays focus particularly on the construction of Afro-Hispanic identity, making valuable contributions to the recognition of racial diversity within Latino cultures. The language is elevated, and the essayists make extensive use of academic jargon. Moreover, passages from Spanish are not translated into English, which requires readers to have a solid knowledge of both languages. The book also contains contributor biographies. It will be most helpful to high school libraries serving students in advanced-placement literature courses, academic libraries, and public libraries with extensive research collections.—Mary Landrum, Lexington Public Library, KY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.