Anxiety Of Influence
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Anxiety Of Influence
Anxiety of Influence is a type of literary criticism established by Harold Bloom in 1973, in his book, '' The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry''. It refers to the psychological struggle of aspiring authors to overcome the anxiety posed by the influence of their literary antecedents. Theory The theory of anxiety of influence is a theory applied principally to early nineteenth century romantic poetry. Its author, Harold Bloom, maintains that the theory has general applicability to the study of literary tradition, ranging from Homer and the Bible to Thomas Pynchon and Anne Carson Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the Unit ... in the 20th and 21st century. It is based primarily on Bloom's belief that there is no such thing as an original poem, that every new composition is ...
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Literary Criticism
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, the ''Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'' draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary ...
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Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." Following the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. During his lifetime, he edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Bloom was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literary departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" ( multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Co ...
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A Theory Of Poetry
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish ...
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Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For ''Gravity's Rainbow'', Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction."National Book Awards – 1974"
. Retrieved 2012-03-29.
(With essays by Casey Hicks and Chad Post from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog. The mock acceptance speech by Irwin Corey is not reprinted by NBF.)
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Anne Carson
Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the United States and Canada since 1979, including McGill, Michigan, NYU, and Princeton. With more than twenty books of writings and translations published to date, Carson was awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, has won the Lannan Literary Award, two Griffin Poetry Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry and the PEN/Nabokov Award, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 for her contribution to Canadian letters. Life and work Early life Anne Carson was born in Toronto on June 21, 1950. Her father was a banker and she grew up in a number of small Canadian towns. Education In high school, a Latin instructor introduced Carson to the world and ...
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Apprentice Complex
The apprentice complex is a psychodynamic constellation whereby a boy or youth resolves the Oedipus complex by an identification with his father, or father figure, as someone from whom to learn the future secrets of masculinity. The term was introduced by Otto Fenichel in 1946, and has since been developed by postmodern writers on the construction of masculinity. Psychoanalytic views Fenichel considered that the apprentice complex offered a ready mode of enjoying dependence under a guise of future independence – temporary submission to the father's authority offering a means to becoming oneself a male in time. Always ambivalent in that the ultimate goal is to replace the father, the complex may disguise a powerful degree of hostility, and was open to several forms of pathological distortion. If meant by a paternal threat, the complex may regress to a passive identification with the mother. The apprentice complex also appears as a facet of therapeutic training, in an idealisati ...
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Sandra Gilbert
Sandra M. Gilbert (born December 27, 1936) is an American literary critic and poet who has published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She is best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, ''The Madwoman in the Attic'' (1979). ''Madwoman in the Attic'' is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis. She lives in Berkeley, California, and lived, until 2008, in Paris, France. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with David Gale, mathematician at University of California, Berkeley, until his death in 2008. Academia Gilbert received her B.A. from Cornell University, her M.A. from New York University, and her Ph.D. in English literature fro ...
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Covering Cherub
Covering cherub (in literary usage) is the obstructing presence for the artist of the inherited tradition, and cultural predecessors, with which they are faced. Origins Found originally in Ezekiel, the covering cherub was adapted for use by (among others) both Milton and William Blake. In the Blakean vision, the covering cherub was a composite but always negative figure of truth's guardian turned destructive, of a cruel and hardened Selfhood; and it was from Blake that in 1967 Harold Bloom derived his concept of the covering cherub as a literary/cultural barrier. Apparently, a waking nightmare he experienced gave rise first to his poem on the subject, "The Covering Cherub", and eventually to his book ''The Anxiety of Influence''. Thematics For Bloom, "the Covering Cherub then is a demon of continuity...cultural history, the dead poets, the embarrassments of a tradition grown too wealthy to need anything more". Bloom considered the artistic struggle in Freudian terms, as a fil ...
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Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics known as the Delegates of the Press, who are appointed by the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century. The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho. For the last 500 years, OUP has primarily focused on the publication of pedagogical texts and ...
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Literary Criticism
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, the ''Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'' draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary ...
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