Bloom, Harold (1930—)
Jewish American literary theorist and critic best known for his notion of the *anxiety of influence. Born in New York, Bloom grew up in the South Bronx. In 1947 he was admitted to Cornell University. There he was mentored by M. H. Abrams, a specialist in the study of romanticism, a subject that Bloom would make his own too. He graduated from Cornell in 1952, then spent a year at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before going to Yale to complete his doctoral studies. He finished his PhD in 1955 and was employed more or less immediately by Yale and has worked there ever since. Bloom is an incredibly prolific writer and editor and his range is enormous---he seems to have read everything of literary significance in seemingly every language. At the core of his work is the idea that all writers are engaged in a kind of creative field struggle with their literary predecessors. This thesis is spelled out in a short but highly influential book entitled The Anxiety of Influence (1973). The history of poetry, Bloom argues, is the history of poetic influence. Strong poets creatively misread their precursors so as to open a poetic space for their imaginative voice; weak poets, meanwhile, idealize and imitate, lacking both the courage and the talent to do better. Oscar Wilde, he says, is just such a failure, because his poetry owes everything to Coleridge. The strong poet, as Bloom calls them, digests, or better yet sublime, their precursor (the exception to this rule is Shakespeare who had neither a precursor or successor who was his equal). Bloom has been criticized by feminism scholars like Elaine Showalter for his almost entirely masculine view of literary history; but has equally been an inspiration for feminist critics like Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Camille Paglia. His theory of inspiration and influence is at the heart of virtually everything Bloom has written. A champion of an elitist or Olympian view of literature, Bloom never hesitates to state what he thinks is good or bad in literature. He was even bold enough to propose a definitive reading list in his bestseller The Western Canon: The Books and the School of the Ages (1994). Further Reading: G. Allen Harold Bloom: Poetics of Conflict (1994). P. De Bolla Harold Bloom: Toward Historical Rhetorics (1988). R. Sellars and G. Allen (eds.) The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom (2007).