Comparative Study of Hakim Omar Khayyam'sand A. E. Housman's Selected Poems Based on Bloomian Theory of Anxiety of Influence

This thesis attempts to render a comparative reading of Omar Khayyamsۥ and A.E Housmansۥselected poems based on Bloomian theory of Anxiety of Influence. The poems will be analyzed comparatively based on two of Bloomian revisionary ratios: Clinamen and Apophrades. Harold Bloom (۱۹۳۰), American literary theorist of poetry, is a prolific,individualistic, and controversial writer and editor. He is a literary critic, currently sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. He did his early works on EnglishRomanticism. His writing falls roughly into four groups: a series of studies in Romantic poetry, six books on the theory of poetry, studies in the modernist inheritance of Romanticism and its transformation into the American sublime and the Chelsea house series of literary several hundred volumes of criticism on major writers and texts. However, the main purpose of this research is to study the theory of Anxiety of Influence. This theory contains six revisionary ratios: Clinamen, Tessera, Askessis, Daemonization, Kenosis and Apophrades. Due to the vast number of similarities, which were found among Khayyamsۥ and Housmansۥ poetry, both thematically and structurally, they have come into consideration in this thesis. Also, as the differences between poems came to be mostly Bloomian, a reading of them on the basis of Bloomian theory of Anxiety of Influence seemed to be fulfilling the purpose of a MA thesis. The poems have a lot of features in common; among them this study focuses on local colour and motifs like carpe diem and death. Moreover, features like swerving and the return of the dead make poems different from each other. Finally it is concluded that all these features have been the real key to say that Housmansۥ misread Khayyam's poetry and he has tried to runs away from this misreading by using Bloomian Clinamen and Apophrades.

Keywords:

Anxiety of Influence , Clinamen , Tessera , Askessis , Daemonization , Kenosis and Apophrades , Omar Khayyam , A.E Housman , Bloom , misread.