Revisiting Harold Bloom: Reading as Textual Violence
Revisiting Harold Bloom: Reading as Textual Violence

Summary/Abstract: The article examines Harold Bloom's essay entitled "The Breaking of Form", which brings together in a nutshell the main concepts and principles of the theory of literary influence expounded in some of his previous writings, starting with the seminal 1973 volume, The Anxiety of Influence. Bloom's criticism marks a clear break with earlier concepts of literary "influence" (most notably with T. S. Eliot's view of the relationship between "tradition" and "the individual talent", according to which the "ideal order" of existing literary monuments is modified in a peaceful and natural manner by the emergence of each "really new" work of art). The relationship between later and earlier "strong" poets, as described by Bloom, is essentially one marked by pathos and irrepressible agonistic impulses.

• Details
• Contents