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Review
From reviews of the first edition
"Bloom has helped to make the study of Romantic poetry as intellectually and spiritually challenging a branch of literary studies as one may find."--The New York Times Book Review
"This book will assuredly come to be valued as a major twentieth-century statement on the subject of tradition and individual talent."--David J. Gordon, The Yale Review
Product Description
Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, an insightful study of Romantic poets and the relation between tradition and the individual artist, has sold over 17,000 copies in paperback since 1984 and remains a central work of criticism for students of literature. For the second edition, Bloom offers a new introduction which explains the genesis of his thinking and the subsequent influence of the book on literary criticism of the past twenty years.
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Shelley speculated that poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Shelley speculated that poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is certainly not a book for the general reader, as it goes out of its way to use specialist terms which it makes no effort to define in an accessible way. The basic idea is that every poet is competing with a predecessor and that in modern western poetry, there's so little room left for insight that the poet can only "misread" - it's all been said (mostly by Shakespeare) and the modern poet is fighting against the death of the western poetic tradition by a "strong misreading". This is, perhaps, an interesting premise, but Bloom's style is the ultimate in pretentiousness and obscurantism - the sort of writing that gives criticism a bad name. Though the title of this book is often used as a nice catchphrase, the book itself has had less influence than its fame would suggest, basically because the theory, where it is intelligible, is unworkable. In fact, the ideas are childishly simplistic, and that may be why Bloom felt the need of using a sophisticated and often impenetrable jargon.
In fairness to Bloom, in his later work he has toned down his defensive jargonism, and his recent The Anatomy of Influence (2011) takes the same theme as this book but doesn't bother pretending it has a unifying theory behind it, and is much the better for it. That book is a decent read, and plays to Bloom's strength, which is basically his genuine enthusiasm for the subject of poetry. Anxiety of Influence, though, is a book with no substance and no system, but written so that it takes several readings to actually realize this.
In fairness to Bloom, in his later work he has toned down his defensive jargonism, and his recent The Anatomy of Influence (2011) takes the same theme as this book but doesn't bother pretending it has a unifying theory behind it, and is much the better for it. That book is a decent read, and plays to Bloom's strength, which is basically his genuine enthusiasm for the subject of poetry. Anxiety of Influence, though, is a book with no substance and no system, but written so that it takes several readings to actually realize this.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Behind the impenetrable language lies ignorance. On page 115 Bloom writes: "Hence Nietzsche, lovingly recognizing in Socrates the first master of sublimation, found in Socrates also a destroyer of tragedy. Had he lived to read Freud, Nietzsche might somewhat admiringly have seen in him another Socrates..."
Where did Nietzsche "lovingly recognise in Socrates the first master of sublimation"? The answer -- nowhere. It has become fashionable to attribute to the philosopher any provocative or unusual opinion, or to use him as a back-up for the author's poorly conceived idea.
Nietzsche had an agonistic relationship with Socrates whom he accused of the `tyranny of reason' (in Twilight of the Idols, among others) and charged with the death of tragedy. His attitude to other one-time idols (e.g. Schopenhauer, Wagner) was similar: combative reverence. Nietzsche was gravely preoccupied with `self-birthing' and the `right of priority'; that meant, figuratively speaking, killing anyone whom he had deeply loved and worshipped in order to assert the 'independence of the soul'. Hardly surprising, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was his most revered play (read his own account in The Gay Science, II: 98). Indeed, as Kaufmann aptly observed, Nietzsche had a sort of `Brutus complex'. Here was an opportunity to label it all as `the anxiety of influence', the opportunity Bloom sorely missed! For one of the most insightful treatments of Nietzsche-Socrates ambivalent dynamics I suggest reading Bertram's `Nietzsche'.
Would Nietzsche have admired Freud as `another Socrates'? Certainly not! Even with all his passion for agon, he wouldn't insult Socrates by making such comparison. Asserting that toddlers plot to kill their fathers in order to bed their mothers(as Freud did with his 'Oedipus complex') is closer to a delusion than to any psychological insight. `Passing by in silence' would have been Nietzsche's likely treatment of him. Bloom's uncritical admiration for Freud's pseudoscience says more about Bloom than it does about Freud. Not to mention the fact that Freud plagiarised so many of Nietzsche's and Schopenhauer's concepts, while publically denying that he had ever read their works. Of this, I imagine, Bloom is also ignorant.
Where did Nietzsche "lovingly recognise in Socrates the first master of sublimation"? The answer -- nowhere. It has become fashionable to attribute to the philosopher any provocative or unusual opinion, or to use him as a back-up for the author's poorly conceived idea.
Nietzsche had an agonistic relationship with Socrates whom he accused of the `tyranny of reason' (in Twilight of the Idols, among others) and charged with the death of tragedy. His attitude to other one-time idols (e.g. Schopenhauer, Wagner) was similar: combative reverence. Nietzsche was gravely preoccupied with `self-birthing' and the `right of priority'; that meant, figuratively speaking, killing anyone whom he had deeply loved and worshipped in order to assert the 'independence of the soul'. Hardly surprising, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was his most revered play (read his own account in The Gay Science, II: 98). Indeed, as Kaufmann aptly observed, Nietzsche had a sort of `Brutus complex'. Here was an opportunity to label it all as `the anxiety of influence', the opportunity Bloom sorely missed! For one of the most insightful treatments of Nietzsche-Socrates ambivalent dynamics I suggest reading Bertram's `Nietzsche'.
Would Nietzsche have admired Freud as `another Socrates'? Certainly not! Even with all his passion for agon, he wouldn't insult Socrates by making such comparison. Asserting that toddlers plot to kill their fathers in order to bed their mothers(as Freud did with his 'Oedipus complex') is closer to a delusion than to any psychological insight. `Passing by in silence' would have been Nietzsche's likely treatment of him. Bloom's uncritical admiration for Freud's pseudoscience says more about Bloom than it does about Freud. Not to mention the fact that Freud plagiarised so many of Nietzsche's and Schopenhauer's concepts, while publically denying that he had ever read their works. Of this, I imagine, Bloom is also ignorant.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Prof. Bloom writes in a very difficult style and his conceptual leaps are sometimes difficult to follow. But if you love great poetry, it is certainly worth struggling against his erudition to find what lies beneath, a true love of language.
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Harold Bloom is an erudite and scholar writer and professor and his critic of literature, the formation of a writer, a strong writer in his own words, is contained in this... Read more
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