Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry

Graham Allen (University College Cork)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1973

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)

Resources

Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is one of the most cited and debated texts to have emerged in the field of Anglo-American literary theory. The object of a huge amount of debate and comment since its first publication in 1973, The Anxiety of Influence has changed for good the manner in which critics working on literary influence think about that subject. Students of Romantic poetry, or indeed of modern literature in general, will find it hard to proceed through their studies without coming across references to Bloom's seminal text.

Newcomers to the text will most probably experience it in its second Oxford University Press edition, published in 1997, which includes a lengthy preface …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2481 words

Citation: Allen, Graham. "The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 November 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1612, accessed 04 December 2024.]

Save this article