Its author, Harold Bloom, maintains that the theory has general applicability to the study of literary tradition, ranging from Homer and the Bible to Thomas Pynchon and Anne Carson in the 20th and 21st century.
[1] To illustrate his point, Bloom quotes Oscar Wilde, noting that: "Influence is simply transference of personality, a mode of giving away what is most precious to one's self, and its exercise produces a sense, and, it may be, a reality of loss.
Bloom equates this struggle to the Freudian family drama; particularly to the Oedipus complex and relationship of son to father, where the emerging writer is cast as the 'son' in a battle against the 'father'; a literary precursor.
[1] Bloom claims that this forces poets or authors into a type of 'creative misprision'; where they must distort the works of their literary masters in an attempt to create something revolutionary and innovative.
In order to determine the effects of this theory on literature, Bloom has established the six "revisionary ratios", which are occasionally based on the model of Freud's defense mechanisms.