ТВОРЧА ОСОБИСТІСТЬ ДЖОНА МІЛТОНА У ПОТРАКТУВАННІ ГАРОЛЬДА БЛУМА: PRO ET CONTRA

Abstract

Background. The decline of the humanities, caused, among other things, by the pragmatism of reading texts, prompted Harold Bloom to write a thorough work The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. The author discusses the notion of the Canon and provides a number of factors that determine the inclusion of a particular writer in the list of canonical ones. Bloom develops the concept of the Western Canon around William Shakespeare, whom he considers to be inextricably linked to a broad paradigm of texts and authors who followed him. Actuality of the article lies in the need to form a critical attitude to established authorities, the dominant opinion in society, and to develop one's own position, in particular, when clarifying the criteria that ambivalently mark Good and Evil in the context of political, ideological struggle or war. Milton himself mentioned that: "The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven". The article aims to study Harold Bloom's interpretation of John Milton's Paradise Lost in "The Western Canon" and sets the following tasks: to study Milton's connection with Shakespeare, to highlight Bloom's main thoughts on the central figure of Milton's poem – Satan, to highlight analytical reflections on Bloom's concept, as well as to classify semantic losses or gains in the Ukrainian translation of the poem by O. Zhomnir. Methods. The study was carried out using cultural-historical, biographical, mythopoetic, comparative-historical and receptive methods. Results. It has been established that Harold Bloom, providing convincing arguments in favor of the canonicity of John Milton in English literature, outlines the historical context that connects Milton and Shakespeare and determines the significant influence of the latter on the former. "The Western Canon" allows us to reveal the image of Satan, to trace the Shakespearean evolution of the character in his style, to establish a clear hierarchy of the importance of characters in the poem, and to determine the attitude of John Milton, a Puritan poet, to this character. Conclusions. Harold Bloom overemphasises the antecedents of the "poet" and, accordingly, the "fear of influence". The dialectic of generations, according to Bloom, is permanent, as is the process of interpretation. Therefore, for Bloom, the originality of the poet, in our opinion, lies in what he lost in comparison with his "father" or gained by overcoming him. That is why Bloom's contextual comparison of Milton with his predecessor, Shakespeare, is so important.