F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby

Front Cover
Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom
Infobase Publishing, 2010 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 191 pages
Self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby epitomizes the decadence of the 1920s Jazz Age in this tale of mobility and decline told with detached curiosity by his neighbor and confidant Nick Carraway. As Harold Bloom suggests, in his introduction to this new edition of full-length critical essays on the work, the novel transcends its own time period in the ways it addresses classic American themes of identity and success. The Great Gatsby has only a few rivals as the great American novel of the twentieth century;...Even after many decades, the relevance of the novel increases, because it is the definitive romance of the American Dream, a concept or vision that haunts our society. In the course of narration, Nick presents himself not only as Gatsby's best believer, but also as one of Gatsby's biggest skeptics. While Nick's faith in Gatsby thus encourages the reader's own receptivity, ...Nick's reservations prevent the reader from going overboard, from accepting Gatsby's magic too natively, believing too completely in his smile. Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations, aseries of more than 100 volumes, presents the best current criticism on the most widely read and studied poems, novels, and dramas of the Western world, from Oedipus Rex and The Iliad to such modern and contemporary works as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Each volume opens with an introductory essay and editor's note by Harold Bloom and includes a bibliography, a chronology of the writer's life and works, and notes on the contributors. Taken together, Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations provides a comprehensive critical guide to the most vital and influential works of the Western literary tradition
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Disembodied Voices and Narrating Bodies in The Great Gatsby
13
An Analysis of the Decadence of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby
39
Narrative Knots and Narrative Unfolding
59
The Great Gatsbys Aesthetics of NonIdentity
71
Pastoral Mode and Language in The Great Gatsby
97
The Great Gatsby and Carnival in a Bakhtinian Perspective
109
The Great Gatsby and The Obscene Word
125
The American Carnival of The Great Gatsby
145
Reading Gatsby Closely
157
Chronology
167
Contributors
169
Bibliography
171
Acknowledgments
175
Index
177
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

Harold Bloom was born on July 11, 1930 in New York City. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell in 1951 and his Doctorate from Yale in 1955. After graduating from Yale, Bloom remained there as a teacher, and was made Sterling Professor of Humanities in 1983. Bloom's theories have changed the way that critics think of literary tradition and has also focused his attentions on history and the Bible. He has written over twenty books and edited countless others. He is one of the most famous critics in the world and considered an expert in many fields. In 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new institution in Savannah, Georgia, that focuses on primary texts. His works include Fallen Angels, Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems, Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life and The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of The King James Bible. Harold Bloom passed away on October 14, 2019 in New Haven, at the age of 89.

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