Volume-XII, Special Issue, April 2026 |
Reading UA Fanthorpe with the Bloomian Lens Fatima Noori, Assistant Professor, Jagat Taran Girls' Degree College, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India |
Received: 04.04.2026 | Accepted: 09.04.2026 | Published Online: 10.04.2026 | Page No: 446-452 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.12.issue.specialW.312 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
Harold Bloom’s thesis of the Anxiety of Influence (1973) proposed a uniquely antithetical approach to study poetry, where he advocates that all poets suffer from an ‘anxiety’ of being influenced by a literary parent, whom the poet then has a creative struggle with to find his own voice. The present paper attempts a critique of U. A. Fanthorpe’s ekphrastic poem ‘Not My Best Side’ (Side Effects 1978)-- employing this premise and deciphering the revisionary ratios used by Fanthorpe on her parent poet to chalk out her own path. The study details how thematic concerns as well as poetic idiom corresponded to the changing times, even when art is supposed to be anachronistic. | ||
Keywords: Harold Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, poetic misprision, Tessera, Clinamen, Browning. |