The Anxiety of Influence

work by Bloom

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July 15, 2026

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Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence is a seminal work of literary criticism. Bloom theorized that poets create their work by "misreading" the texts of their predecessors. This "misreading" is not a failure but a necessary struggle for originality, a way for a new poet to assert their own voice against the weight of literary tradition. Bloom described this process using Freudian concepts, suggesting that poets experience an "anxiety" when confronting the influence of earlier, powerful works. This anxiety drives them to create new meanings and interpretations, ultimately shaping the course of literary history.12

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American literature
Theory
…theory of literary influence in The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975), Bloom reached a wide audience with The Western Canon (1994) and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), both of which explored and defended the Western literary tradition.
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…theory of literary influence in The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975), Bloom reached a wide audience with The Western Canon (1994) and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), both of which explored and defended the Western literary tradition.
Read More

Harold Bloom
…his critical theory, and in The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975), he systematized one of his most original theories: that poetry results from poets deliberately misreading the works that influence them. Figures of Capable Imagination (1976) and several other works of the next decade develop…
Read More
…his critical theory, and in The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975), he systematized one of his most original theories: that poetry results from poets deliberately misreading the works that influence them. Figures of Capable Imagination (1976) and several other works of the next decade develop…
Read More