From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a centuryâan intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Lear, arguably Shakespeareâs most tragic and compelling character, the third in a series of five short books hailed as Harold Bloomâs âlast love letter to the shaping spirit of his imaginationâ (The New York Times Book Review).
King Lear is one of the most famous and compelling characters in literature. The aged, abused monarchâa man in his eighties, like Bloom himselfâis at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from grace and widely agreed to be Shakespeareâs most moving, tragic hero.
Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are seventeen and another when we are forty, Bloom writes about his shifting understandingâover the course of his own lifetimeâof this endlessly compelling figure, so that the book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeareâs characters make. Now he brings that insight to his âmeasured, thoughtful assessment of a key play in the Shakespeare canonâ (Kirkus Reviews). âLear is a âshort, superb book that has a depth of observation acquired from a lifetime of studyâ (Publishers Weekly).