Bloom’s Literature

About This Product

Take a quick look at the overview video for Bloom’s Literature:

Edited and curated by Yale University professor Harold Bloom, one of the world’s leading literary scholars, Bloom’s Literature provides all of the essential information users need to research, study, and explore literature. Bloom’s Literature offers a wealth of relevant content on the authors and works most studied in the high school curriculum, multicultural classics, contemporary literature, and more. Students and researchers will find exactly what they need without having to wade through an uncurated search.

Click here (PDF) for an overview of the newly relaunched Bloom’s Literature.

Highlights:

• Complete coverage: Bloom’s Literature contains a wide range of reference essays and scholarly criticism examining great authors—from William Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling—and their works.
• Full-length videos of classic plays and films: Bloom’s Literature features more than 750 full-length videos of great literary works, from comedies to dramas to musicals—including Hamlet (starring David Tennant), Death of a Salesman (starring Lee J. Cobb), Julius Caesar (starring John Gielgud), and The Glass Menagerie (starring Katharine Hepburn)—that engage students and make the literature come to life, highlighting character interaction and pivotal plot devices that might be harder to discover in just the written word. Also included are video clips featuring major scholars such as Harold Bloom discussing important literary topics.
• Hundreds of full-text, classic works: Bloom’s Literature includes a Literary Classics eBook shelf containing the full contents of more than 1,000 classic works of literature—most of which were selected from Bloom’s Literary Canon—including the essential works of the most important authors in world history and literature. Researchers can filter these titles by type of work to find what they need. This eBook shelf can be found under “Resources” in the Browse drop-down menu at the top of any page or under “Browse Resources” on the right-hand side of the home page.
• “How to Write about Literature”: Bloom’s Literature offers specific, user-friendly guidance on how to write good essays on the most assigned authors and works of literature. The strategies and ideas offered in this section are designed to help researchers bring deeper analysis into essays and write at a level not normally achieved until college. Subjects covered for each title and author include:
  • Themes
  • Character
  • History and Context
  • Philosophy and Ideas
  • Form and Genre
  • Language, Symbols, and Imagery
  • Compare and Contrast Essays
• Essential writing help: Two general sections on the “How to Write about” page can be used as guides for any writing project:
  • How to Write a Good Essay includes easy-to-understand advice on writing papers on a variety of general topics.
  • Preparing to Write walks readers through the different steps of putting together an essay, including preparing a thesis statement and outline; writing an introduction, conclusion, and body paragraphs; and assembling a list of works cited. A sample essay is provided.
• Shakespeare Center: Bloom’s Literature’s all-new Shakespeare Center houses in one convenient location a treasure trove of content on all things Shakespeare. Every play is covered in depth, along with the sonnets and longer poems, providing a complete research and study center for researchers and a robust repository of content for educators to use for lesson planning, assignments, and classes. Comprehensive essays provide history and context to Shakespeare’s life, times, and impact. Coverage of each play includes:
  • The full, searchable text of the play
  • Analysis of key passages
  • Critical articles by noted scholars, selected by Harold Bloom
  • Introduction and background
  • Detailed synopses
  • In-depth character studies
  • Difficulties of the play
  • The play today
  • Full-length performance videos and/or critical videos
  • Images and illustrations
  • “How to Write about” articles
  • Essay topics/discussion questions
• Authors: Bloom’s Literature features a wealth of content on the finest contemporary and classic writers from around the world. The most studied authors are featured on the home page and can also be accessed via a tab in the Author Index. Authors can be browsed by name, nationality, type, and dates of birth and death. A Quick Find option in the Author index allows users to quickly search for an author by last name.
• Works: Bloom’s Literature provides overviews, synopses, analyses, and literary criticism of thousands of works. The most studied works are featured on the home page and can also be accessed via a tab in the Works Index. Works in the Works Index can be browsed by title, genre, or publication date; they can also be filtered by author.
• Characters: Bloom’s Literature is packed with information on more than 49,000 major and minor literary characters. The most studied characters are featured on the home page and can also be accessed via a tab in the Character Index. The “Find a Character” tab in the Character Index allows users to search for a character by name or by work.
• Literary criticism: Bloom’s Literature includes critical essays from Facts On File’s extensive collection, Harold Bloom’s acclaimed essays, and criticism from the Bloom’s imprint.
• Topics and themes: Bloom’s Literature features in-depth entries on literary movements, groups, periodicals, and historical events.
• Author interviews from Publishers Weekly: Bloom’s Literature offers more than 4,000 of Publishers Weekly‘s author interviews and profiles, from 1989 to the present. These articles cover everyone, from the latest literary prizewinners to major young-adult novelists to important best sellers to poets to noted nonfiction writers, and many more. Bloom’s also features more than 250 podcasts of Publishers Weekly Radio, featuring audio interviews with famous authors such as Gay Talese, Buzz Bissinger, and Jacqueline Woodson. Researchers can now not only read about these great authors but also hear them speak in their own voices.
• Essay topics: Bloom’s Literature features more than 10,000 topics providing research and writing suggestions on a range of literary topics. These topics are designed to inspire students and researchers to think critically, delve deeper, and ask (and answer) fresh, new questions.
• Full-text poems: Students and researchers can find more than 2,600 full-text, searchable poems in Bloom’s Literature. Each poem:
  • Has a corresponding analytical entry in the database available via Search, allowing students and researchers to enhance their understanding by reading the poem alongside criticism of it.
  • Is presented in an easily readable format and can be found under “Resources” in the Browse drop-down menu at the top of any page or under “Browse Resources” on the right-hand side of the home page.
• Authoritative source list: Bloom’s Literature features a complete inventory, by type, of the sources of the content in the database, including thousands of scholarly and critical books, hundreds of peer-reviewed journals and other periodicals, respected image and manuscript archives, famous film and television producers, and much more—sources researchers can trust.

Features:

• Tablet/mobile-friendly videos and more than 5,000 images
• Complete A-to-Z indexes for authors, characters, and works
• Tag “clouds” for all content, linking to other content with the same tags
• Browsable timelines
• Harold Bloom’s Canon of Literature
• Student and educator curriculum tools, including “Teaching Literature through Film”
• New and improved search capabilities, including search assist technology
• “Search by Standards” feature, providing lists of articles correlated to Common Core, state, national, provincial, IB, and College Board AP standards
• Read Aloud tool
• Ability for users to set preferences for default language, citation format, number of search results, and standards set for correlations
• Persistent record links
• Dynamic citations in MLA, Chicago, APA, and Harvard formats, with EasyBib export functionality
• Searchable Support Center with valuable help materials, how-to tips, tutorials, and live help chat
• Google Translate for 100+ languages.