Richard L. W.

Clarke LITS3303 Notes 11E

1

HAROLD BLOOM A MAP OF MISREADING (1975):

The Dialectics of Poetic Tradition

Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich,
1971. 1183-1189.

Blooms questions are similar to those which occupied Eliot in many of his theoretical and
critical writings:
what is literary tradition? What is a classic? What is a canonical view of
tradition? How are canons of accepted classics formed, and how are they
unformed? . . . [D]o we choose a tradition or does it choose us? (1185-6)
Blooms position is basically that imitation is inevitable, and what you imitate is what
another person has done, that persons writing or teaching or thinking or reading (1186).
Hence, his definition of the term tradition as the influence that extends past one
generation, a carrying-over of influence (1186). Blooms position is, in a nutshell, that
literary tradition is founded on the cognizance by a fresh author (1186) not only of his
own struggle against the forms and presence of a precursor (1186) but also of the
precursors place in regard to what came before him (1186).
This is why Bloom speaks of a psychology of belatedness (1187) afflicting all
literary production and stresses the inevitability of revisionism (1187). It is for this
reason that Bloom can speak of the dialectics of literary tradition (1184) and discount
the notion of fresh creation (1184).
The clearest analogue (1188) of the process of literary repression and revision, he
writes, is necessarily Oedipal; reject your parents vehemently enough, and you will
become a belated version of them, but compound with their reality, and you may partly
free yourself (1188). It is for this reason that Bloom suggests that a voluntary parody is
more impressive than an involuntary one (1188). Indeed, the greatest paradigm
(1188) of this process may be found in, according to Bloom, Miltons Paradise Lost, a poem
which is identical with the process of repression that is vital to literary tradition (1188)
and, more especially, in the figure of Satan (whom he describes consequently as the
greatest poet in the language). Satan, he says, like any strong poet, declines to be
merely a latecomer. His way of returning to origins, of making the Oedipal trespass, is to
become a rival creator to God-as-creator (1188).
At first glance, moreover, Blooms model seems both androcentric and Eurocentric.
However, upon closer inspection it becomes clear that he is acknowledging the fact that
the European canon has been male-dominated. He leaves room for the development of
alternative traditions: by women (he prophesies that the first true break with literary
continuity will be brought about in generations to come, if the burgeoning religion of
Liberated Woman spreads from its clusters of enthusiasts to dominate the West [1186])
and by non-Europeans (he asks whether a teacher should teach Paradise Lost in
preference to the Imamu Amiri Baraka? [1188]). However, he stresses that both these
groups ultimately also reflect the influence of the Canon: the hypothetical teacher
mentioned above will find, Bloom contends, that he is inevitably teaching Paradise Lost,
and the other central classics of Western literary tradition, whether he is teaching them
overtly or not (1189). The value of Blooms model of literary history for an understanding
of the relationship which binds the emerging Post-colonial canon to the Canon ought to be
obvious.