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((Short description|1973 book by Harold Bloom))
((multiple issues|section=|
((more citations needed|date=August 2016))
((primary sources|date=August 2016))
((original research|date=August 2016))
))

((Infobox book 
| name          = The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         = File:The Anxiety of Influence.jpg
| caption = Cover of the first edition
| author        = [[Harold Bloom]]
| illustrator   = 
| cover_artist  = 
| country       = United States
| language      = English
| series        = 
| subject       = Literary criticism
| publisher     =
| release_date  = 1973
| english_release_date =
| media_type    = Print
| pages         =
| isbn          = 0-19-511221-0
| dewey= 
| congress=
| oclc=
| preceded_by   = 
| followed_by   = 
))

'''''The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry''''' is a 1973 book by [[Harold Bloom]] on the [[anxiety of influence]] in writing poetry. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical<ref>[http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html#anticrit antithetical] Presidential Lectures: Harold Bloom: Excerpts</ref> approach to [[literary criticism]]. Bloom's central thesis is that [[poet]]s are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintain with precursor poets. While admitting the [[Social influence|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. Because poets historically emphasize an original poetic vision in order to guarantee their survival into posterity, the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets. 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. Such an ''[[agon]]'', Bloom argues, depends on six revisionary ratios,<ref>[http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html#ratios revisionary ratios] Presidential Lectures: Harold Bloom: Excerpts</ref> which reflect [[Freud]]ian and quasi-Freudian defense mechanisms, as well as the [[Trope (linguistics)|tropes]] of classical [[rhetoric]].

Before writing this book, Bloom spent a decade studying the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] poets of the early nineteenth century. This is reflected in the emphasis given to those poets and their struggle with the influence of [[John Milton]], [[Robert Burns]], and [[Edmund Spenser]]. Other poets analyzed range from [[Lucretius]] and [[Dante]] to [[Walt Whitman]], [[Wallace Stevens]], and [[John Ashbery]]. In ''The Anxiety of Influence'' and other early books, Bloom claimed that influence was particularly important for post-[[the Enlightenment|enlightenment]] poets. Conversely, he suggested that influence might have been less of a problem for such poets as [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] and [[Ben Jonson]]. Bloom later 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]]. The book itself is divided into six major categories, called "six revisionary ratios" by Bloom.  They are ''[[clinamen]]'', ''[[tessera]]'', ''[[kenosis]]'', ''[[demonization|daemonization]]'', ''[[askesis]]'', and ''apophrades''.

==Six revisionary ratios==
Bloom introduces his six revisionary ratios in the following manner, which he consistently applies in this book as well as his successor volume titled ''A Map of Misreading''.

* '''Clinamen''' – Bloom defines this as "poetic misreading or [[misprision]] proper". The poet makes a swerve away from the precursor in the form of a "corrective movement". This swerve suggests that the precursor "went accurately up to a certain point", but should have swerved in the direction that the new poem moves. Bloom took the word ''[[clinamen]]'' from [[Lucretius]], who refers to swerves of atoms that make change possible.<ref name=":0">((Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=14))</ref>  
* '''Tessera''' – Bloom defines this as "completion and antithesis". 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 word ''[[tessera]]'' refers to a fragment that, together with other fragments, reconstitutes the whole; Bloom is referring to ancient [[Greco-Roman mysteries|mystery cults]], who would use ''tessera'' as tokens of recognition.<ref name=":0" />
* '''Kenosis''' – Bloom defines this as a "breaking device similar to the [[defence mechanisms]] our psyches employ against [[repetition compulsion]]s", in other words "a movement toward discontinuity with the precursor". The poet humbles himself, "as though he were ceasing to be a poet", but does so in such a way as to empty out the precursor poem too, so that the later poet is not deflated as much as may seem. Bloom took the word ''[[kenosis]]'' from [[Paul the Apostle|St. Paul]], who uses it to refer to [[Jesus]] accepting his own reduction from divine to human status.<ref>((Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=14–15))</ref>
* '''Daemonization''' – Bloom defines this as a "movement towards a personalized Counter-Sublime, in reaction to the precursor’s Sublime". 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". Bloom took the term daemonization from [[Neoplatonism]], where it refers to an adept being aided by an intermediary, who is neither divine nor human.<ref name=":1">((Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=15))</ref>
* '''Askesis''' – Bloom defines this as a "movement of self-purgation which intends the attainment of a state of solitude". The author curtails the impression of his/her own "human and imaginative endowment" in order to separate themselves from others and stress his/her own individuality. 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. Bloom took the word ''askesis'' ([[asceticism]]) from the [[Pre-Socratic philosophy|pre-Socratic philosophers]].<ref name=":1" />
* '''Apophrades''' – Bloom defines this as the “return of the dead”. The poet, toward the end of his/her life, opens up his poem – this time deliberately rather than naturally – to the precursor's influence. But this deliberateness creates the [[uncanny]] effect that the precursor's work seems to be derivative of the later poet. Bloom took the word ''apophrades'' from the [[Athens|Athenian]] concept of the days on which the dead return to reinhabit the houses in which they once lived.<ref>((Cite book|title=The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry|last=Bloom|first=Harold|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1973|location=New York|pages=15–16))</ref>

==See also==
* [[Covering cherub]]

==References==
<references />

==Further reading==
* Geddes, Dan. ''Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence''. The Satirist. Available at: http://www.thesatirist.com/books/anxiety_of_influence.html
* Hollander, John. "The Anxiety of Influence". March 4, 1973. ''The New York Times''. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/01/specials/bloom-influence.html

((DEFAULTSORT:Anxiety Of Influence, The))
[[Category:1973 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Books by Harold Bloom]]
[[Category:English-language books]]

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