Apophrades, Adonais, and the return of the Shelleys

Abstract

This chapter returns to Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence, and in particular his notion of apophrades. It does so in the context of a reading of P. B. Shelley’s elegy to John Keats, Adonais. The chapter argues that Bloom’s version of apophrades elides the uncanniness possessed by the original Greek concept; an uncanniness exploited within Shelleys’ own poetry.