Super Short Summary

The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom is a critically acclaimed 1973 monograph in which Bloom argues that poetry is largely the result of later poets' responses to their predecessors' works, particularly their misreading of these works. Bloom develops the theory from his study of nineteenth-century Romantic poetry but posits it as generally applicable across creative fields. The book outlines six "revisionary ratios" through which poets engage with and attempt to overcome the influence of their predecessors, resulting in a complex dynamic of anxiety and creativity.