On The Research Of Harold Bloom's Theory Of Literary Criticism

Harold Bloom is an important literary critic in contemporary American, who is called "the most talent, the most originality and one of the most provocative literary critics in western tradition" because of his unique theoretical construction and critical practice. His criticism theory takes the literary texts as the carrier and bases on the aesthetic autonomy of creation subject, insists on aesthetic value itself of literary research in the confused theory environment, revaluates the romantic traditional poetry and excavates the antithetic, confrontational and revisionary relationship that reflects by the intermediary of text intertextuality between poets, then reconstructs literature canon by the aesthetic standard and promotes it to ordinary readers. His relevant theoretical elaboration of literary criticism enriches the existing literature theory such as misreading, intertextuality, canon and literary history etc, and promotes the development of a new aesthetic criticism trend which advocating back to tradition, all of these are worth us to further exploration. In addition, Bloom's literary criticism is a distinct remind for today's literary development:facing the embarrassed situation of literary research in postmodern environment, how to view existing classical achievement and how to innovate based on inheritance are questions that urgently need to consider. The theory of Bloom provides us some enlightens in a certain extent: through misreading and revision of predecessors'and western theory, it is completely possible for us to achieve innovation and then output theory to the world. In this respect, Bloom's critic theory and success of practice is undoubtedly worth reference for China's literary theorist and critics.The dissertation takes the phased stages of Bloom's theory of literary criticism as basic framework of interpreter, combs the whole diachronic development process of Bloom's theory from three main theory phases:early romantic poetry theory, medium-term theory of "influence-misreading-revisionary" and late theory of canon and reading which based on aesthetic autonomy. In this framework, dissertation introduces and interpreters Bloom's specific theory of each stage in detail, meanwhile, compares Bloom's theory to others'theory that similar or opposite to him by parallel research methods in order to deep the understanding of his critic view. The dissertation consists of six chapters, among them, the part from the third chapter to the fifth chapter introduces Bloom's main theory.Chapter one is introduction, consist of two parts. The first quarter introduces Bloom's life experience and then combs his theory development with four stages:early romantic poetry theory, the theory of misreading and antithetic, influential poetics in 1970s, religious research in 1980s, and theory of canon and reading that based on aesthetic autonomy since 1990s. The second quarter briefly describes the current research of Bloom's theory of literary criticism at home and abroad, and then proposes the research methods of the paper. That is, combining grasping transverse overall context and longitudinal, deep interpretation, comparing with other theory in order to achieve a comprehensive introduction and analysis of Bloom's theory. Then introduces the innovation points of the paper.Chapter two is the traceability for the thought origin of Bloom's literary criticism theory, mainly discusses his thought pioneers on philosophy and psychology. Nietzsche's philosophic thought of strong will and guilty feeling provides guide for Bloom's antithetic misreading strategy. Emerson's transcendentalism thought and individualism view is prototype of Bloom's revisionary critical mode. Freud is a pioneer of Bloom who cannot be ignored, his psychoanalysis views such as mental defense and family romance constitutes the internal psychological models of Bloom's influential poetics. At the same time, Bloom makes a revisionary interpretation and research of this pioneer as a latecomer.Chapter three studies Bloom's main theory of literary criticism. The first part is his romantic poetry theory, which began in defining. Bloom discusses the environment of social and religious backgrounds in which romantic poetry produced, and proposes imagine as internal symbol of romantic poetry production. Then, Bloom makes a revaluation on Romanism. In his view, romantic poetry is a kind of rhetorical mythology creation, the natural truth and imagine in poems achieve a mutual confluence through the accommodation of creativity. On this basis, Bloom emphasizes imagines' internalization of core role in romantic poetry. Most of Bloom's studies of romantic poetry are subject researches, in which Shelly and Yeats are outstanding representatives. Bloom's view of the poet's subjective creativity during revision gradually formed in these kinds of subject researches. The poetic theory of "influence-misreading-revisionary", which the forth chapter interprets specifically is the most important part of Bloom's theory. His debates with new criticism that led by T.S.Eliot on romantic poetry, and the influence to his antithetic poetry's production caused by deconstruction constitute the background of Bloom' theory. Thus, Bloom proposes his famous "influential poetry" in The Anxiety of Influence and opens a new influential mode based on deconstructive criticism to "influence":facing the achievement and influence of predecessors, latecomers drop in "anxiety of influence", the only thing they could do is "misread" predecessors by their own creativity to develop new poetry space so that they could achieve confidence and rank among the strong. Besides, Bloom summarizes "six revisionary ratios" as the specific methods that latecomer "misread" predecessors. In A Map of Misreading, Bloom combines rhetoric figures, mental defense mechanisms, imagines and revisionary ratios in order to construct a systematical "map of misreading", thus interprets his practice of antithetic revisionary criticism in a comprehensive angle.Chapter five introduces Bloom's later theory of canon and reading which based on aesthetic autonomy standpoint. In the social and cultural background of postmodernism and the debating on "canon", and on the premise of aesthetic autonomy, Bloom constructs his system of canon by the basic mode of the poetic theory of "influence-misreading-revisionary". Then, on his elite position, Bloom begins to try to introduce a reading method that focuses aesthetic experience to common readers.Chapter six is discussion of the value, evaluation and contemporary significance of Bloom's theory of literary criticism. The important contributions of Bloom's theory reflects in these aspects:the revaluation of Romanticism, the development of intertextuality and literary history, the reconstruction and promotion of canon in the background of culture research, and the contribution to new aesthetic criticism theory trend. Of course, Bloom's theory has its own inevitable limitations, for example, his non-historical position ignores literature external factors and relies on subjective psychology overly. Whatever, on the aspects of literature basic position and the attitude to tradition, Bloom's theory still has important reference meanings for contemporary Chinese literature theory construction.According the above discussions and studies, the dissertation strives to complete these works:first, form a overall understanding of Bloom'theory of literary criticism; second, add the research blank of different stages of Bloom's theory; third, examine Bloom's abundance theory of literary criticism with the association of other theorists and schools, in order to achieve a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of Bloom's theory system of literary criticism.