"In the culmination of a series that began with "The Anxiety of Influence" and "A Map of Misreading," Harold Bloom expands upon his controversial theory of revisionism, which he views as a contest of opposing artistic and moral drives. From this theoretical perspective, Bloom re-examines Freud, religious sources of literature, literary modes such as fantasy, and the sequence of American writers that includes Emerson, Whitman, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and John Ashbery. A 1982 National Book Critics Circle nominee."--Back cover

A discussion of poetic theory examines the language of poetry, three models of poetic originality, and the technique whereby modern poets come to terms with those of the past

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