Abstract: Harold Bloom's view of world literature originated between the 1980s and 1990s. In his critical and editorial work on literary texts, he asserted that world literature included both generalized works and classic texts. In his studies of literary patterns and correlations, he relied on his “theory of misreading” in exploring the mechanism of the worldwide “influence” and “misreading” between different texts on the one hand and, on the other, actively promoted the “cosmopolitanism” of literature in his later push for the popularization of classics and the aesthetic education of the populace, thus further enhancing the “cosmopolitan literariness” of texts. Meanwhile, he placed a very high value on the significance of translation in the construction of world literature. However, an analysis of the implication from his proposed booklist of and comments on world literature may reveal a clear tendency of Eurocentrism in his view on world literature. The picture he painted for “world literature,” the one with “the West monologue and the East aphasia,” not only harmed the diversity and equilibrium of the literary ecology in the world and the cultural and social harmony between the West and the East, but also obliterated the important role of Eastern culture in the construction of Western culture. Three elements, namely, “America”, “aesthetics” and “Shakespeare,” constitute the core and framework of Bloom's view on world literature. His discussion on issues concerning the role of translation in the globalization of Chinese literature has guiding significance to the current global outreach and internationalization of Chinese literature.

Key words: Harold Bloom, view on world literature, Eurocentrism, the East, translation