Introduction / Harold Bloom - Critical Extracts: James Baldwin / Irving Howe / Ralph Ellision / Houston A. Baker, Jr. / Sherley Anne Williams / Charles T. Davis / Nina Kressner Cobb / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. / Charles Johnson -- How "Bigger" Was Born / Richard Wright -- Native Son and Three Kinds of Revolution / Edward Margolies -- Bessie's Blues / Edward A. Watson -- Native Son / Kenneth Kinnamon -- Richard Wright and Native Son: Not Guilty / Dorothy...

Contains thirteen critical essays, along with extracts from critical material by such authors as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Henry Irving, and Victor Hugo.

Harold Bloom's introduction centers upon Shylock's problematical forced conversion to Christianity by Venetian justice, and his muted reaction to this outrage. Short critical extracts on Shylock follow, beginning with major figures such as August Wilhelm von Schlegel and including Victor Hugo and W.H. Auden. The second section reprints lengthier critical essays. Barbara K. Lewalski examines the Biblical aspects of Shylock; Graham Midgley finds Shylock...