BLOOM, HAROLD

born July 11, 1930, New York, N.Y., U.S. American literary critic known for his innovative interpretations of literary history and of the creation of literature. Bloom attended Cornell (B.A., 1951) and Yale (Ph.D., 1955) universities and began teaching at Yale in 1955. His early books, The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (1961, rev. ed., 1971) and The Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition (1971), explore the Romantic tradition from its beginnings in the 18th century to its influence on such late 20th-century poets as A.R. Ammons and Allen Ginsburg. In The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975), Bloom proposed one of his most original theories: that poetry results from poets deliberately misreading the works that influence them. Figures of Capable Imagination (1976) expands upon this theme. His most controversial work appeared in his commentary on The Book of J, published (1990) with David Rosenberg's translations of selected sections of the Pentateuch. Bloom speculated that the earliest known texts of the Bible were written by a woman who lived during the time of David and Solomon and that the texts are literary rather than religious ones on which later rewriters imposed beliefs of patriarchal Judaism.