Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens

by Harold Bloom

This reinterpretation of the full sweep of English and American romantic poetry offers close readings of poems of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Yeats, and Stevens. It also reviews the crucial ideas of Emerson, Nietzsche, and in particular Freud, whose psychoanalytic theory of repression and defense Bloom undertakes to revise for purposes of literary criticism. "Bloom offers a fully defined alternative to the principal modes of contemporary criticism, from Freudian literary criticism (which he insists is neither Freudian nor literary criticism) to the New Criticism and structuralist and archetypal approaches. It is an original, vigorous, and passionate study which is both compelling and provocative."-The British Studies Monitor "Show me but one paragraph of Bloom's approaches to texts, and I'm hooked. . . . I find sheer delight in his ingenious ways."-Kenneth Burke "Bloom has made a remarkable contribution to poetic theory."-Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader

Genres: Literary Criticism, Poetry

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. 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. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature 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 Cornell University.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Bloom, poets writing after John Milton are in an Oedipal situation with regard to that poet. He argues that Milton’s poems are so strong that they make it difficult for later poets to write original work—Bloom terms this the “anxiety of influence.” He argues that the “ephebe” (young poet) has to “repress” the knowledge of Milton before he or she can write. Bloom traces this repression in the poems of writers like William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Wallace Stevens.

For me, this is an instance of the critic as artist: Bloom writes that the response to a poem is another poem, and his book is a weird poem, combining psychoanalysis and Kabbalah in a theory of poetic tropes.

I once described Bloom’s theory to someone else who asked me “With Bloom’s system, what do you need the poems for?” He had a good point. Nevertheless, I found this book to be entertaining.

Acquired 1993
The Word, Montreal, Quebec

[Esteban · Rating 3 out of 5]

La tesis de Bloom es que los poemas son más fuertes cuando sus efectos contradictorios están en conflicto con sus intenciones implícitas. Eso funciona muy bien para Milton, un poeta cuya obra más grande es un acto fallido monumental, y bastante bien para Blake, por razones muy parecidas. No estoy tan familiarizado con el resto de los poetas que trata, pero me dio la impresión de que a medida que el libro avanza sobre ellos la voluntad de sistema de Bloom se malogra y la tesis pierde validez.