Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
    Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
    Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
    Audiobook3 hours

    Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air

    Written by Harold Bloom

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history-and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. She is the lover of Marc Antony, defender of Egypt, and, perhaps most enduringly, a champion of life. Cleopatra is supremely vexing, tragic, and complex. She has fascinated readers and audiences for centuries and has been played by the greatest actresses of their time, from Elizabeth Taylor to Vivien Leigh to Janet Suzman to Judi Dench.

    Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Cleopatra with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime. The book becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our own humanity.

    Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare's characters make. With Cleopatra, he delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. The result is an invaluable resource from our greatest literary critic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateNov 20, 2018
    ISBN9781684416790
    Author

    Harold Bloom

    Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He has written more than sixty books, including Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air, Falstaff: Give Me Life, The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and How to Read and Why. He is a MacArthur Prize fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards, including the Academy’s Gold Medal for Criticism. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

    More audiobooks from Harold Bloom

    Related to Cleopatra

    Titles in the series (5)

    View More
    View More

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Cleopatra

    4/5

    10 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Book received from NetGalley.I enjoyed this literary study about Cleopatra final pharaoh of the Ptolemy dynasty. While Harold Bloom focuses mainly on Shakespeare's play he does bring in a few other fictional accounts of her rule. I also liked how he mentioned the various actresses who portrayed her both on stage and screen. I have to respectfully disagree with his favorite though since I have always been fond of Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal of the royal. I think this would be a great reference for anyone who is currently studying Shakespeare's play.