Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American author, intellectual and literary critic. Bloom defended 19th-century Romantic poets at a time when their reputations stood at a low ebb, has constructed controversial theories of poetic influence, and advocates an aesthetic approach to literature against feminist, Marxist, New Historicist, poststructuralist (deconstructive and semiotic), and other methods of academic literary criticism. Bloom is currently a Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University.

Bloom said: "Poetic influence, as I conceive it, is a variety of melancholy or the anxiety-principle." A new poet becomes inspired to write because he has read and admired the poetry of previous poets; but this admiration turns into resentment when the new poet discovers that these poets whom he idolized have already said everything he wishes to say. The poet becomes disappointed because he "cannot be Adam early in the morning. There have been too many Adams, and they have named everything."

In order to evade this psychological obstacle, the new poet must convince himself that previous poets have gone wrong somewhere and failed in their vision, thus leaving open the possibility that he may have something to add to the tradition after all. The new poet's love for his heroes turns into antagonism towards them: "Initial love for the precursor's poetry is transformed rapidly enough into revisionary strife, without which individuation is not possible."