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Toni Morrison's Beloved
A critical overview of the work features such contributors as Bernard W. Bell, Trudier Harris, Nancy Jesser, and Susan Corey.
130 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Harold Bloom
1,715 books2,017 followersHarold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 8, 2012
This book has cemented my low opinion of Harold Bloom, with this sentence from his intro:
He goes on, but I will spare you. Bloom's name is on the book, as it is on two other books I read as I researched Beloved, so he is making money with this book that contains what I see as a low blow. Bloom may not regard Beloved as a masterpiece. But, as he notes, many people of critical discernment do, including those at the New York Times who, in 2006, named it the best book of American fiction of the past 25 years.
To use the term "supermarket literature" (deliberate deployment of damning oxymoron), in the preface to a scholarly collection of essays on that work, even while passively saying that it's not him but others of his acquaintance, is insulting, not just to Morrison and the authors of the essays, but to me as a reader. Why should I read a book about a book that someone of critical discernment thinks is supermarket literature?
Then, to add further insult, the book is full of typos (could they not hire a competent copy editor?) and the final essay has several outright factual errors, e.g. the rooster is misidentified as Brother, not Mister and thus Morrison's careful strategies of naming characters are undermined.
Poorly done, Bloom, poorly done. It's not enough to condescendingly admit that you think Song of Solomon is a masterpiece. You've outed yourself as an intellectual bully. After reading Beloved and the two other books with your name on it about Morrison, I would much rather live in a world that had Morrison's literature than Bloom's if I had to choose. But then, perhaps he'd think I don't have critical discernment, and thus my opinion would not matter.
Beloved divides many of my acquaintances who possess critical discernment; for some of them it is a masterwork, for others it is supermarket literature. I myself am divided: no character in the novel persuades me, and yet much of the writing has authentic literary force." (emphasis mine)
He goes on, but I will spare you. Bloom's name is on the book, as it is on two other books I read as I researched Beloved, so he is making money with this book that contains what I see as a low blow. Bloom may not regard Beloved as a masterpiece. But, as he notes, many people of critical discernment do, including those at the New York Times who, in 2006, named it the best book of American fiction of the past 25 years.
To use the term "supermarket literature" (deliberate deployment of damning oxymoron), in the preface to a scholarly collection of essays on that work, even while passively saying that it's not him but others of his acquaintance, is insulting, not just to Morrison and the authors of the essays, but to me as a reader. Why should I read a book about a book that someone of critical discernment thinks is supermarket literature?
Then, to add further insult, the book is full of typos (could they not hire a competent copy editor?) and the final essay has several outright factual errors, e.g. the rooster is misidentified as Brother, not Mister and thus Morrison's careful strategies of naming characters are undermined.
Poorly done, Bloom, poorly done. It's not enough to condescendingly admit that you think Song of Solomon is a masterpiece. You've outed yourself as an intellectual bully. After reading Beloved and the two other books with your name on it about Morrison, I would much rather live in a world that had Morrison's literature than Bloom's if I had to choose. But then, perhaps he'd think I don't have critical discernment, and thus my opinion would not matter.
February 20, 2019
A volume in Bloom's Modern Critical Intepretations, this contains fourteen critical articles on Beloved, which I just finished for the library's February book discussion. It is a tribute to Morrison's complex and multi-layered novel that each of these interpretations finds something completely different in the book.
The interpretations of the title character Beloved are especially diverse; of course we know who she is literally -- Sethe's murdered daughter -- but she is obviously something more. What else is it that she symbolizes? Answers here include the embodiment of Sethe's guilt feelings, the Freudian return of the repressed, the longing of slaves for their mothers, the African ancestors, all the victims of slavery, memory, history or the past in general. Is she evil, a succubus or vampire figure; neutral, an infantile "pre-Oedipal" personality seeking love; or positive, a catalyst for the confrontation of Sethe, Paul and Denver with their memories and hence of their ultimate redemption?
Is the novel about the nature of history, the legacy of slavery, a Freudian or religious ritual overcoming of trauma, an analysis of sexual politics or a critique of liberalism? Is it an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic novel? Are its roots in African oral/aural literature, slave narratives, or modernist writers like Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner?
Probably it can be read in all these ways, and all of them find some support in Morrison's own descriptions of the writing of the book. I seldom get much out of critics, but despite some academic jargon, this collection actually added to my appreciation of the novel.
The interpretations of the title character Beloved are especially diverse; of course we know who she is literally -- Sethe's murdered daughter -- but she is obviously something more. What else is it that she symbolizes? Answers here include the embodiment of Sethe's guilt feelings, the Freudian return of the repressed, the longing of slaves for their mothers, the African ancestors, all the victims of slavery, memory, history or the past in general. Is she evil, a succubus or vampire figure; neutral, an infantile "pre-Oedipal" personality seeking love; or positive, a catalyst for the confrontation of Sethe, Paul and Denver with their memories and hence of their ultimate redemption?
Is the novel about the nature of history, the legacy of slavery, a Freudian or religious ritual overcoming of trauma, an analysis of sexual politics or a critique of liberalism? Is it an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic novel? Are its roots in African oral/aural literature, slave narratives, or modernist writers like Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner?
Probably it can be read in all these ways, and all of them find some support in Morrison's own descriptions of the writing of the book. I seldom get much out of critics, but despite some academic jargon, this collection actually added to my appreciation of the novel.
November 14, 2012
Happy 25th anniversary! Been one of my favorites for most of that time ...
"I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love. But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day."
Toni Morrison, Beloved
"I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love. But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day."
Toni Morrison, Beloved
November 29, 2025
(Be)loved it.... what a writer!
Read
August 20, 2012This book cut at my soul as a Mother; To emagined giving your babies away to slavery and to have a life-long fear of being taken away; how that fear manifests into an event thats so unimaginable....This story moved me spiritually, psychologically, and profoundly.
September 12, 2007
How do you give a review of Beloved... entering a parallel reality that enlightens us on the dimension that we inhabit...an ultimate work of fiction and imagination
July 18, 2009
A collection of essays on Morrison's great novel.
March 9, 2011
The best book ever read
Read
January 18, 2013Outstanding.
December 19, 2008
This book is not for the faint of heart, it is very moving and cuts to the bone.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews