ABSTRACT

In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom argued that the history of poetic traditions could be seen to proceed in terms of a continuous misreading of prior poets and existing poetry-through caricature, parody, distortion, misrepresentation and wilful revisionism-by those currently living and writing. He described this misreading as “an act of creative correction”, which was necessary for clearing an imaginative space in which one could write oneself, create one’s own voice (1975:30).