Harold Bloom's seminal work The Anxiety of Influence postulates a critical vision according to which poets are influenced in their writing by the different relationships they become engaged in with precursor poets. Bloom discerns the process by which the small minority of what he calls 'strong' poets manage to create original work, in spite of the pressure of influence in an Agon1 that encloses six revisionary ratios. Peter Weir's film Dead Poets Society reads as an intertextual continuum, a form of homage paid to the grand poets of English and American literature, who are themselves indebted to the Ancient poet Ovid. With a focus on Bloom's revisionary ratios, the present paper aims to demonstrate that Weir's movie is a filmic intertext descending from Ovid, and the grand Romantic poetry becomes an educational manifest for the anti-exile of the mind appropriated to a contemporary audience. © 2018 Ovidius University. All rights reserved.

Revisionary ratios Peter Weir Anxiety of influence Harold Bloom Intertextuality

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