Harold Bloom

Yale professor Harold Bloom--who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic--gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from "Don Quivote" to "Book of numbers"; from "Wuthering Heights"...

Presents the text of Shakespeare's play of unrequited love and contains extensive annotations that provide context, pronunciation, and alternative readings and phrasings.

In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who is forced to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. When Antonio's business falters, repayment becomes impossible -- and by the terms of the loan agreement, Shylock is able to demand a pound of Antonio's flesh.

This second edition of Othello has a new, illustrated introduction by leading American scholar Ayanna Thompson, which addresses such key issues as race, religion and gender, as well as looking at ways in which the play has been adapted in more recent times. Othello is one of Shakespeare's great tragedies-written in the same five-year period as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. The new introduction attends to the play's different meanings throughout...