Harold Bloom is one of the preminent living literary critics. He’s the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He’s written over thirty books (which I won’t list for obvious reasons) and he’s the recipient of many awards and honory degrees (which I also won’t list for obvious reasons).

Here is an excellent video lecture series called “Criticism and Self-influence.”  The series focuses on:

his readings of Whitman in his first lecture and of Shakespeare in his second, these lectures are contributions to Bloom’s intellectual biography. They will give a sense of how Harold Bloom reads, what stirs his mind, what he looks for, and what he projects on a text. With so impressive a list of works to his credit, Bloom will assess not only his impact on the world of literary criticism, but also his vision as a man of letters who has taught us how to think about that one subject that will always challenge our ability to think:

Harold Bloom: Criticism and Self-Influence from The Graduate Center, CUNY on FORA.tv

Harold Bloom: Criticism and Self-Influence, Part 2 from The Graduate Center, CUNY on FORA.tv