Anxiety of Influence

Anxiety of Influence

Anxiety of influence, in the unusual view of literary history offered by the critic Harold Bloom, a poet's sense of the crushing weight of poetic tradition which he has to resist and challenge in order to make room for his own original vision. Bloom has in mind particularly the mixed feelings of veneration and envy with which the English Romantic poets regarded Milton, as a 'father' who had to be displaced by his 'sons'. This theory represents the development of poetic tradition as a masculine battle of wills modelled on Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex: the 'belated' poet fears the emasculating dominance of the 'precursor' poet
and seeks to occupy his position of strength through a process of
misreading or *MISPRISION of the parent-poem in the new poem, which is always a distortion of the original. Thus Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' is a powerful misreading ofWordsworth's 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality', through which the younger poet seeks to free himself from the hold of his predecessor. Bloom's theory is expounded in The Anxiety ofInfluence (1973), in which he claims that 'the covert subject of most poetry for the last three centuries has been the anxiety of influence, each poet's fear that no proper work remains for him to perform'.


(Source: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms by CHRIS BALDICK)

Academic Discourse

Academic Discourse

Academic discourse: A general term for the written language used by college and university faculty members. Some academics hold that the term should be plural, reflecting the range and variety of linguistic conventions that separate, for example, writing in psychology from that in art history. But despite wide differences in vocabulary and style, there are some agreed-upon features common to most academic prose, notably professional terminology (see JARGON) and rather strict criteria in determining the proof of an argument. In other words, academic discourse traditionally tends to subordinate rhetoric to logic, maintaining the appeal to reason as the highest standard of discursive language use.

Occasionally that standard is questioned or challenged by the scholars themselves. One example concerns the Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, an exemplary practitioner of academic discourse in the books and articles he has written in connection with NEW HISTORICISM. In 2004, Greenblatt published a popular
biography of Shakespeare (Will in the World), in which he speculates about his subject, not only rather loosely by academic standards, but substantially contradicting the thrust of his earlier works on Shakespeare’s plays, producing a generally negative reaction among his academic peers. On the other hand, nonacademic reviewers and general readers have responded very positively to the biography, applauding the author for having “liberated Shakespeare from the professors and returning him to the people.” The controversy illustrates the differences generated by different discourses, and the perils of attempting a crossover from one to the other.

In COMPOSITION STUDIES, academic discourse serves as a reminder of the gap between the expectations of the traditional college teacher and the student. The latter, particularly in a BASIC WRITING course, frequently feels overwhelmed by the attempt to mimic or imitate academic discourse in a writing assignment. The effort to sound “academic” usually results in a greater failure than had the student used his/her own “voice.” One consequence has been a growing pedagogical interest in the WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM movement in an attempt to introduce beginning writers to the forms and conventions of the major academic disciplines.

(Source: A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition  by Edward Quinn)

National Seminar on Partition Literature and Its Relevance to the Contemporary India March 2016

Two Day National Seminar
on
Partition Literature and Its Relevance to the
Contemporary India
14 & 15, March 2016
Periyar EVR College

International Seminar on Globalization and Literature 11-12 March 2016

A Two Day International Seminar
on
Globalization and Literature
11-12 March 2016
Shanmuga Industries Arts and Science College
Tiruvannamalai 606601

I Am A Teacher

‘I Am A Teacher’ 
invites you to join us for an interactive information session to talk about the program and how we are preparing teachers for the classrooms of tomorrow.

 

Date: January 23, 2016
 

Time: 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
 

Venue:
Acharya Tulsi Meditation Center,

             The Heritage School, Sector 62, Gurgaon.

 

To participate in this session, call us at: +91 9810236412 or email us at: info@iamateacher.in

There are limited seats for this event.

To apply, visit - http://www.iamateacher.in/Register.html
To know more about us, visit www.iamateacher.in
For More Detail Please Click on the PDf Icon

Seminar on New Trends in Language Learning Using Technology Digital Learning Day jan 2016

Seminar on

New Trends in Language Learning Using Technology

Digital Learning Day
17-18 February 2016
Malabar Christian College

Hyderabad Literary Festival 7-10 January 2016

Hyderabad Literary Festival
7-10 January 2016