School of Resentment

School of Resentment is a term coined by Harold Bloom to collectively group together certain forms of critical interpretation, such as African American, Marxist, New Historicist and feminist criticism to name a few. He outlines this term in his introduction to "The Western Canon", in which he claims that his purpose is distinguished from political motives and that he desires to have literature judged purely on aesthetic values. Bloom has no problem with discussing the social and political issues in books, but he strongly disapproves of how various ideologies have overtaken English literature departments and are only interested in their own political motives, not aesthetic or literary worth. In his work he defends the Canon from this collective group, which he believes want to break down the Canon so that they can insert inferior literary works for political purposes. The School of Resentment is usually defined as scholars who wish to enlarge the Canon by adding more minority, political and/or female authors regardless of their writings' aesthetic merit. Bloom feels that such an opening threatens the nature of the canon and will lead to its eventual demise.