Thanks Borges. From the GGG subtopic "Thoroughly Modern Miscellany", inclusion and the ping is due to the importance of Harold Bloom.
From Wiki -
“His position was that politics had no place in literary criticism, that a feminist or Marxist reading of Hamlet would tell us something about feminism and Marxism but probably nothing about Hamlet itself.”
I like that. If you’re interpreting with a political angle, you’re re-writing the book, not reading it for personal insight.
A quick primer on the man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom
Influenced Camille Paglia, who influenced Rush and Drudge.
Only thing I’ve ever read by him is his “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human”, and that’s been awhile.
But he stuck up for the reading canon when the rest of the humanities were taking the path of least resistance and catering to snowflakes.
Columbia is once again in the throes of deciding whether the core curriculum which still emphasizes the canonical literature and philosophy of Western Civilization or should divert resources and teaching to more diversity.