Harold Bloom vs. The School of Resentment

Harold Bloom (literary critic, lover of Hamlet and mortal enemy of Harry Potter) on the infiltration of "cultural studies" in academics in a delightful interview with Jennie Rothenberg of The Atlantic:

". . . To a rather considerable extent, literary studies have been replaced by that incredible absurdity called cultural studies which, as far as I can tell, are neither cultural nor are they studies. But there has always been an arrogance, I think, of the semi-learned.

. . . we have this nonsense called Theory with a capital T, mostly imported from the French and now having evilly taken root in the English-speaking world. And that, I suppose, also has encouraged absurd attitudes toward what we used to call imaginative literature.

. . . the wave of French theory was replaced by the terrible mélange that I increasingly have come to call the School of Resentment—the so-called multiculturalists and feminists who tell us we are to value a literary work because of the ethnic background or the gender of the author. . . . I have sometimes characterized these people as a Rabblement of Lemmings, dashing off the cliff and carrying their supposed subject down to destruction with them."

"Ranting Against Cant"
The Atlantic Unbound, 8/16/03