The drama of critical discourse: the case of Richard II

Abstract

Contrasting them with the poet-in-a poet, Harold Bloom says that "Critics may be wary of origins or consign them disdainfully to those carrion-eaters of scholarship." That in literary criticism there is an abundance of influence is hard to deny. Actually influence in this field has been firmly established as an accepted procedure with its own decorum and etiquette. Critics often doff to each other in recognition. And one may argue that there is too some anxiety of influence here and a variety of evasion ratios. Bloom, in trying to investigate this phenomenon, seeks to formulate a "theory of poetry," a phrase which he uses as a subtitle to his other book on the subject The Anxiety of Influence. Whether it is possible to speak of a theory of literary criticism on the basis of influence and evasion is an interesting and even stimulating question, one which this paper attempts to answer by a consideration of some relevant works of criticism dealing with Shakespeare's history play Richard II on its psychological, historico-political, and artistic levels.