The Anxiety of Influence A Theory of Poetry

by Bloom, Harold

• ISBN13: 9780195112214
• ISBN10: 0195112210
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-04-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence has cast its own long shadow of influence since it was first published in 1973. Through an insightful study of Romantic poets, Bloom puts forth his central vision of the relations between tradition and the individual artist. Although Bloom was never theleader of any critical "camp," his argument that all literary texts are a response to those that precede them had an enormous impact on the practice of deconstruction and poststructuralist literary theory in this country. The book remains a central work of criticism for all students of literatureand has sold over 17,000 copies in paperback since 1984. Written in a moving personal style, anchored by concrete examples, and memorably quotable, Bloom's book maintains that the anxiety of influence cannot be evaded--neither by poets nor by responsible readers and critics. This second edition contains a new Introduction, which explains the genesis of Bloom's thinking and the subsequent influence of the book on literary criticism of the past twenty years.criticism of the past twenty years. Here, Bloom asserts that the anxiety of influence comes out of a complex actof strong misreading, a creative interpretation he calls "poetic misprision." The influence-anxiety does not so much concern the forerunner but rather is an anxiety achieved in and by the story, novel, play, poem, or essay. In other words, without Keats's reading of Shakespeare, Milton, andWordsworth, we could not have Keats's odes and sonnets and his two Hyperions. Given the enormous attention generated by Bloom's controversial The Western Cannon, this new edition is certain to find a readymade audience among the new generation of scholars, students, and layreaders interested in the Bloom cannon.

Author Biography

Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University.

Table of Contents

Prologue: It Was A Great Marvel That They Were In the Father Without Knowing Him	p. 3
Introduction: A Meditation upon Priority, and a Synopsis	p. 5
Clinamen or Poetic Misprision	p. 19
Tessera or Completion and Antithesis	p. 49
Kenosis or Repetition and Discontinuity	p. 77
Interchapter: A Manifesto for Antithetical Criticism	p. 93
Daemonization or The Counter-Sublime	p. 99
Askesis or Purgation and Solipsism	p. 115
Apophrades or The Return of the Dead	p. 139
Epilogue: Reflections upon the Path	p. 157
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