This document summarizes Harold Bloom's theory of poetic influence and anxiety of influence. Bloom believes that poetic history is indistinguishable from poetic influence, and that strong poets overcome their anxiety of influence from predecessors through six revisionary ratios: clinamen (correction), tessera (completion), kenosis (discontinuity), daemonization (counter-sublime), askesis (purgation), and apophrades (return of the dead). The document provides examples of how Bloom views the influences on and works of poets like Wilde, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and Stevens in light of his theory of anxiety of influence.

1. S
University of Hyderabad Contemporary Approaches to
Literature
School of humanities Dr. Sowmya Dechamma
Centre for Comparative Literature

2. Harold Bloom
S July 11,1930 – NY USA
S Literary critic, writer,
professor at Yale University
S Contemporary and friend of
Northrop Frye

3. Main terms:
• Intra-poetic relationships.
• Poetic history as poetic influence.
• Poetic misinterpretation/misprision ( reason,
result).
• Imaginative space
• Ephebe

4. Introduction
A Meditation upon Priority and
Synopsis
Two corrective aims of the theory
S To de-idealize our accepted accounts of how one poet
helps to form another.
S To try to provide a poetics that will foster a more
adequate practical criticism

5. • Poetic history is held to be indistinguishable from poetic influence.
• “ My concern is only with strong poets, major figures with persistence to
wrestle with their strong precursors, even to death. Weaker talents idealize;
figures of capable imaginations appropriate for themselves”
• Wilde , as an example, failed as a poet as he lacked strength to overcome
his anxiety of influence.
• Poetic influence scarcely exists except in furiously active pedants.
• Stevens was a highly individual poet, as much an American original as
Whiteman or Dickenson.

6. Freud & Nietzsche
• Both are the prime influences upon the theory of influence
presented in bloom’s book.
• According to bloom, they both underestimated poets and
poetry.
• They too over-idealized imagination.
Wordsworth
• Wordsworth nature poems are shadowed by the anxiety of
influence due to the greatness of the precursor-poem Lycidas
by Milton, who had to struggle with a major precursor in
Spenser.
Shakespeare
• Excluded from the argument of this book for several reasons:
- He belongs to the giant age before the flood, before the
anxiety of influence became central to poetic consciousness.
- Another has to do with the contrast between dramatic and lyric
form.
- The main cause is that Shakespeare’s precursor was

7. SIX REVISIONARY RATIOS
These ratios are performed by a poet as means to “clear imaginative space for himself” . As
the modern ( post enlightenment) writer seeks to achieve literary greatness, he becomes
anxious over influence and, consequently, reacts to his literary precursor.
1. Clinamen or Poetic Misprison: a swerve , a turning away from a precursor poet in attempt
to correct what he did wrong
2. Tessera or Completion and Antithesis: a completion of the precursor's work. It occurs
when a poet retains a precursor poet’s terms but means them in a different way as the
precursor has failed to go far enough.
3. Kenosis or Repetition and Discontinuity: the repetition into which a poet is thrown must
be at once affirmed and undone. It is a breaking device similar to the defense
mechanisms our psyche employ against repetition compulsions.
4. Daemonization or the Counter-Sublime: a yielding up of the poet's humanity to his
precursor. Inspiration purely comes from imagination. The poet incorporates some
elements of the earlier work and taking away some of its uniqueness .
5. Askesis or Purgation and Solipsism: a narrowing of the soul that produces the illusion
that the center will hold more securely as a result. The poet adds a part of his own
imagination to a poem to make it different from the rest. so, the parent-poem stands apart
from the new one.
6. Apophrades or The Return of the Dead: a struggle with the dead that makes it look as if
the living latecomer influenced his precursor.

8. THANK YOU