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A review by sallytreanor
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, 2nd Edition by Harold Bloom
2.0
This was my giving Bloom a chance and it did not go well. I can well understand why this is such a seminal text of poetic criticism, but it does not stand the test of time well, partly because of its dogged reliance on Freud and partly because Bloom's admittedly elegant sentences are so burdened by their own smug intellectual acrobatics as to render that elegance inert. I'll admit there were large swaths of the book that I just didn't make much of an effort to understand. I will also admit that I enjoyed both the preface and the final chapter, in which Bloom finally gets out of his head and into actual texts.
PS. Referring to schools of feminist criticism as "covens" is an appellation that does not age well. Oof.
PS. Referring to schools of feminist criticism as "covens" is an appellation that does not age well. Oof.