of intertextuality, does. The question Virgil raises
for the characters within the story is whether their
virtue will be enough to “spare the conquered and
battle down the proud,” the rule of law given to
Aeneas so that Rome may be founded. Will Aeneas
be strong enough and wise enough to show the
wisdom necessary for a true ruler of a great city,
or will his desire for the past in Troy still affect his
judgment? Because the images on the shield remind
the audience of the glory of republican Rome, the
question being asked of them is whether they have
the strength and wisdom necessary to go forward
into the imperial future in order to create, through
their own practice of virtue, an even greater city than
the one Aeneas founded. Can they go forward and
not look back to the past, to “tradition”? Thus, in
The Aeneid, Virgil combines the thematic and politi-
cal meanings of tradition through intertextuality by
changing the significance of an important literary
symbol.
In contrast to what has been handed down, these
three actions—conflict, wisdom, and intertextual-
ity—can be seen in later literature. In his book The
Anxiety of Influence, the literary critic Harold Bloom
attempts to describe the stages of change that take
place as the ephebe (the younger artist) asserts his
voice over the father (the precursor: the elder artist
or the tradition). These are: clinamen, or poetic mis-
reading; tessera, or antithetical completion—that is,
finishing the misreading in a logical way; kenosis, a
turn away or break from the logical implications of
the precursor; demonization, an inspiration derived
from the ephebe’s reaction to the precursor, but
not contained in it; ascesis, the solitude derived
from a movement toward a completed vision; and
apophrades, the revisionary image held up to its
precursor. Although Bloom’s language derives from
Neoplatonism and gnosticism, his description fol-
lows the classical tradition as shown above.
An earlier critic, T. S. Eliot, also describes the
relationship between a new work of literary art
and its predecessors in his essay “Tradition and the
Literary Talent” (1919). Eliot shows the necessary
interaction between a new work and the context in
which it appears. For him, the new work is accepted
as literary because it fits into the context of which
it is a part; in turn, because it is a literary work of
art, the new work changes readers’ understanding
of the entire tradition by its refiguring of the whole
context. Unlike Bloom’s esoteric description, Eliot’s
understanding of the literary tradition adds a new
component to the term tradition by showing that
tradition itself is constantly changing and unstable.
In other words, the “tradition” of literary tradition is
the constant production of new works added to the
canon. The critic must develop the wisdom to decide
which new works of art deserve to move the tradi-
tion forward and which do not rise to that level. One
question that Eliot’s essay raises is, of course, what is
meant by a literary tradition.
As we have seen, authors read earlier authors
and derive inspiration and innovations from them.
The rejection of both subject matter and form cre-
ates new subject matter and form for new audiences.
The texts that make up this development are called
a “tradition” as well. Thus, every linguistic group
has some sort of literary tradition, whether oral or
written, by which stories give meaning to experi-
ence. The particular groupings for literary tradi-
tions can be national (English, German, Chinese),
formal (epic, tragic, comic, lyric, narrative, poetic,
dramatic), or periodic (ancient, medieval, modern.)
Within each of these groupings are particularities of
form, language, subject matter, worldview, and so on,
which identify the work as part of its “tradition” even
though, as discussed above, each work will also be
unique because of its rejection of some aspect of its
tradition. The example of Virgil’s changing Homer
is part of the classical tradition, which in turn forms
the basis of Western literary tradition, but there are
many more.
In our global environment, the dynamic mean-
ing of tradition is perhaps more important than ever,
for authors writing in their national “traditions” are
now borrowing from each other at a very rapid pace,
producing a literary environment that in time may
change our understanding of literature itself. For
example, postcolonial literature borrows from Euro-
pean models but adds native experience and forms
into that tradition; Salman Rushdie is perhaps the
best-known writer in this tradition.
See also Alexie, Sherman: Lone ranGer and
tonto FistF iGht in heaven, the; Alvarez, Julie:
how the García GirLs Lost their accents;116 tradition