the anxiety of influence

 

  • The author suggests that the powers in the precursor poem actually derive from something beyond it; the poet does so “to generalize away the uniqueness of the earlier work”.

  • The poet, toward the end of his/her life, opens up his poem – this time deliberately rather than naturally – to the precursor’s influence.

  • While admitting the influence of extraliterary experience on every poet, he argues that “the poet in a poet” is inspired to write by reading another poet’s poetry and will
    tend to produce work that is in danger of being derivative of existing poetry, and, therefore, weak.

  • The author “completes” his precursor’s work, retaining its terms but meaning them in a new sense, “as though the precursor had failed to go far enough”.

  • The poet does this in such a way as to do the same to the precursor, whose limitations and individuality are also emphasized, separating him/her from the later poet.

  • Thus Bloom attempts to work out the process by which the small minority of ‘strong’ poets manage to create original work in spite of the pressure of influence.

  • In The Anxiety of Influence and other early books, Bloom claimed that influence was particularly important for post-enlightenment poets.

  • Bloom’s central thesis is that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintain with precursor poets.

  • Bloom since has changed his mind, and the most recent editions of The Anxiety of Influence include a preface claiming that Shakespeare was troubled early in his career by
    the influence of Christopher Marlowe.

  • But this deliberateness creates the uncanny effect that the precursor’s work seems to be derivative of the later poet.

  • Bloom took the word clinamen from Lucretius, who refers to swerves of atoms that make change possible.

 

Works Cited

[‘• antithetical Presidential Lectures: Harold Bloom: Excerpts
• ^ revisionary ratios Presidential Lectures: Harold Bloom: Excerpts
• ^ Jump up to:a b Bloom, Harold (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University
Press. p. 14.
• ^ Bloom, Harold (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 14–15.
• ^ Jump up to:a b Bloom, Harold (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University
Press. p. 15.
• ^ Bloom, Harold (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 15–16.
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