Harold Blooms And Rita Felski's Book Analysis

Some people consider reading their favourite hobby and even write it into their CV, while others read solely if they must, for example for school, work or university. However, no matter why one reads, reading literature always affects readers in terms of opinions, knowledge, imagination, interests and much more. Therefore, reading may be regarded as an action that helps readers improve themselves. Still, the question remains, whether reading only causes self-improvement, or if the opposite is also the case. A summary and discussion of Harold Bloom’s and Rita Felski’s arguments will follow, in order to be able to answer this question at the end of this essay. In the prologue of his book, How to Read and Why, Bloom answers the question why
If readers for example read King Lear, it may help them to “understand better the origins of what [they] judge to be patriarchy” (22), or if they read about a lesbian couple, it may let them reconsider their perception of sexuality. Different works from the literary canon may therefore aid readers in transforming their knowledge and opinions, because in order to “read human sentiments in human language you must be able to read humanity, with all of you” (28). Therefore, reading deeply and for their own pleasure helps readers to better understand the
Furthermore, “some members of its female audience recognized themselves in Hedda’s plight and were brought to see the world differently” (36), which presumably felt like an improvement to the persons concerned. Felski further claims that “the writing and reading of fiction has often fuelled the momentum of social movements”, since a collective of people recognize themselves as individuals, as well as the shared history of their generation, in literature (39). This is due to the fact that “we become acquainted with the unfamiliar, are drawn to see things from different angles, glimpse aspects of ourselves in distant lives” (43) and experience a “sense of illumination, a moment of self-reckoning triggered by an aesthetic encounter” (35). This aesthetic encounter can naturally occur while reading literature and lead to a different view of the world. Felski words her experience after reading a piece of literature like this: “something has changed; my perspective has shifted; I see something that I did not see before” (23). Her wording lets clearly perceive that she regards these changes in her perspective as self-improvement through