The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry

by Harold Bloom

This is a revised and enlarged edition of the most extensive and detailed critical reading of English Romantic poetry ever attempted in a single volume. It is both a valuable introduction to the Romantics and an influential work of literary criticism. The perceptive interpretations of the major poems of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Beddoes, Clare, and Darley develop the themes of Romantic myth-making and the dialectical relationship between nature and imagination. For this new edition, Harold Bloom has added an introductory essay on the historical backgrounds of English Romantic poetry and an epilogue relating his book to literary trends.

Genres: Poetry, Literary Criticism, Romanticism, Nonfiction, Literature, History, Classics

506 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[Saul]

I picked up this book on a bit of a whim when looking for a companion to my reading of the "Big Six" of English Romantic poetry. I soon realized that this was the furthest thing from a broad survey, or a gentle introduction, but is instead a laser-focused study of a theme that Bloom takes to be the key to the Romantics — what he calls their "faithless faith":

The world of actuality faced first by Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and by Shelley, Byron, and Keats after them, afforded no existing conceptions fully acceptable to the imagination, and presented a provocation for a heightening of consciousness so intense that a true awareness of reality inevita­bly sought for itself the identifying sanction of imagination.

Bloom acknowledges that it's natural for us modern readers to be a bit baffled by a conviction like this, even if we are sympathetic to it. What is more incredible is that few among the Romantics themselves could sustain a true belief in it. For example, while fairly accounting for the brilliance of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and for their important influence on Byron, Shelley, and Keats, he makes it very clear that their arcs were ultimately an abandonment of this ethos. At one time he remarks that unlike the younger Romantics "they died as Christians", but only after "they had died as poets" (ouch!)

From the beginning, Bloom takes Blake as his model. He holds him up as the apotheosis of the Romantic spirit — the member of the Company with the most potent and sustained vision. On the critical level, he uses Blake's own cosmology as a framework and language for studying the other poets. This is clearly the young Bloom, the bright-eyed Blakean freshly inspired by Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry, before his later pessimistic turn towards Gnosticism.

Bloom does a great job of making connections: between each of the poets and their work, and also to the "legitimate heirs" of this tradition — W.B. Yeats, Hart Crane, and Wallace Stevens. He also connects the poets to the outer world of their time and the events unfolding within it, but it is striking how rare this happens, doubly so when we remember this was the age born in the wake of the French Revolution. This gives the book a feeling of dwelling in the pure land of art, which seems fitting.

The wonderful thing about this book is that beyond all the close readings and analysis, a story of its own is being told. It is the story of six extraordinary artists being gifted with a Promethean spark, and of their various reactions to it. Some of them only held it for a moment before retreating and allowing it to burn out. Some kindled it into a magnificent blaze, and were prematurely snuffed out by fate. It's tragic, but also beautiful, just like the poems themselves. I'll let Bloom have the last word:

What allies six great poets so different in their reactions to the common theme of Imagination is a quality of passion and large­ness, in speech and in response to life. All of them knew increas­ingly well what Stevens seems to have known best among the poets of our time, that the theory of poetry is the theory of life. As they would not yield the first to historical convention, so they could not surrender the second to religion or philosophy or the tired resig­nations of society. They failed of their temporal prophecy, but they failed as the Titans did, massive in ruin and more human than their successors.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read and referred to this book over many years. An excellent study of the British Romantics. It does not go into the weeds as much as some of Bloom’s studies — perhaps because he wrote this early in his career. This one is plainer, straightforward, with good analyses. For an understanding of William Blake, this book is as good as any study written, in my opinion.

[Muzzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bloom's prose is at its very best here. If you haven't read any Bloom yet, I highly recommend you start here. His chapter on Percy Shelley alone is beautiful -- some of the clearest explication I've ever encountered.

The English Romantics owe Harold Bloom a huge debt for preserving their memory in America.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly Bloom's masterpiece, this is the ultimate study of the English Romantics. Bloom's earliest books are his most essential, and this is very likely the best of these. Beautiful analysis throughout.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crucial work by Harold Bloom on Romantic Poetry which has provided a foundation for many other scholars

[Luis A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Visionary Company" was the book that established Harold Bloom as a literary critic and made a contribution to literary criticism.
Through examinations of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and others Bloom gives his critic's opinions and takes on Romanticism with writing that is worthy of being read and paid attention to.
If one wishes to have a piece of Bloom's critical mind when it comes to romantic poetry, this is a good book to own. It has gained an important place in literary criticism of the 20th c. Any lover of poetry and its history throughout various movements and groups should have a copy of this important book.

[Wm Jas Tychonievich]

(This book lives at Casa Minierva, where I read it for a few minutes each week as I wait for my food. It's going to be on my "currently reading" list for a looong time.)

[Souvik Bhattacharji]

Visionary Company is the key to open the treasury of English Romantic poetry...

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly written, argued, before the whole Bloomian myth developed.