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practitionershave exaggeratedthe commonalitiesbetween the two fields, paying insufficientheed to the profounddifferencesbetween

law is contortedto make it seem continuouswith literature.At the

overlooked.57

Thus, in the law-and-literaturemovement, as in all interdisciplinary movements,scholarsmust carefullyexaminethe points at which the distinct

is not oversimplified.

While Cole's synthesisis anoriginal,valuablecontributionto the law-and- literaturemovement,it falls victim to both evils notedby Posner.First,Cole overlooks importantopportunitiesfor mutualilluminationbetween law and

subversionpossesses in literatureto the law withoutqualification.

Cole's comparisonof the anxietyof influencein literatureand law lacks rigor because it uses Bloom's theory at an inappropriatelyhigh level of generalityand because it fails to consider literarytexts. Bloom's theory is much more than a general statementabout a Freudianrelationshipbetween

influenceby describingsix revisionaryratios.Cole recognizesthe importance of these ratios by consideringhow they might be appliedto the law.5 Cole fails, however, to apply individualrhetoricalstrategiesto the legal texts; he

the theory to both law and literature,60Cole does not apply the anxiety of influenceat any level of generalityto worksof literature.Thus readersmust

57.POSNER,supra note 10, at 13-14.

58.While Cole's applicationof the ratios to the law shows the correct analytic instinct in that it attempts to draw parallels between the fields of law and literature,the applicationis simplistic. For example, Cole argues that clinamen appears to describe the type of development contemplatedby

precedentialincorporation,while apophrades describes the overrulingof precedent. Such one-to-one correspondences,however,do not exist betweenthe two fields. Revisionaryratiosare rhetoricalstrategies that can be used towards variousends in the law. Rehnquist'sopinion thus used clinamen to advocate

overrulingprecedent,while the joint opinion used apophradesto incorporateprecedent.See infra partV. 59. The readershould be wary of this level of generality,for it is much easier to translatea theory

theoryis more easily "contortedto make literatureseem relevantto law."POSNER,supra note 10, at 13.

mischaracterizedthe parallelsbetweenthe ratiosand legal strategies. 60. See, e.g., Cole, supra note 7, at 863.

III.Two REVISIONARY RATIOS: APOPHRADES AND CLINAMEN

While all six of Bloom's revisionary ratios apply to the law as well as to

A.Apophrades

Bloom uses the term apophrades to describe the following dynamic:

Apophrades, or the return of the dead; I take the word from the Athenian dismal or unlucky days upon which the dead returned to reinhabit the houses in which they had lived. The later poet, in his own final phase, already burdened by an imaginative solitude that is almost a solipsism, holds his own poem so open again to the precursor's work that at first we might believe the wheel has come full circle, and that we are back in the later poet's flooded apprenticeship, before his strength began to assert itself in the revisionary ratios. But the poem is now held open to the precursor, where once it was open, and the uncanny effect is that the new poem's achievement makes it seem to us, not as though the precursor were writing it, but as though the later poet himself had written the precursor's characteristic work.63

This dynamic consists of three sequential parts. The first phase of apophrades involves the poet in his imaginative solitude. That solitude is never complete, however, because Bloom presumes that all writers are continually haunted by

the ghosts of their predecessors, that "strong poets keep returning from the dead, and only through the quasi-willing mediumship of other strong poets."64 This consciousness of the "strong dead" is particularly acute "in poems that quest for a final clarity, that seek to be definitive statements, testaments to what is uniquely the strong poet's gift (or what he wishes us to remember as his unique gift)."65In the second phase of apophrades, the poet is "flooded" by these ghosts such that the ghosts' achievements overwhelm the poet's. If the poet remains in this phase, he succumbs to the anxiety of influence. That is, if the ghosts "return intact, then the return impoverishes the later poets, dooming them to be remembered-if at all-as having ended in poverty, in an imaginative need they could not themselves gratify."66In the third phase, however, the poet can reassert himself, showing that the flooding occurred

63.BLOOM,supra note 6, at 15-16.

64.Id. at 140-41.

65.Id. at 140.

66.Id. at 141.

grand and final revisionarymovement that purifies even this last influx. [Some poets can] achieve a style that captures and oddly retains priority over their precursors,so that the tyranny of time almost is overturned,and one can believe, for startledmoments,that they are being imitatedby theirancestors.68

Apophradesis thusa covertdynamicin whicha poetappearscontrolledby his precursorbut laterreveals thathe controlshis precursor.

B.Clinamen

The second revisionaryratio,clinamen,is describedas follows

as to make change possible in the universe.A poet swerves away from his precursor,by so readinghis precursor'spoem as to execute a clinamenin relationto it. This appearsas a correctivemovementin

his own poem, whichimpliesthattheprecursorpoemwentaccurately up to a certainpoint, but then shouldhave swerved,precisely in the directionthatthe new poem moves.69

Underclinamen,the poet "followsreceiveddoctrinealong to a certainpoint, andthendeviates,insistingthata wrongdirectionwas taken[by his precursor] at just that point, and no other."70Clinamenis thus a more straightforward formof subversionthanapophrades,insofaras clinameninvolvesno duplicity.

The poet who employs clinamen,however,faces a dauntingtask in that he must show his own movementto be "corrective."He must identifythe point at which things went wrong for his predecessor and legitimate his own

text, which may have seemed both powerful and normative,appearto be arbitrary:

67. Bloom distinguishesbetween positive and negative apophrades.In the positive form, the poet

to the predecessordeliberately,but, ratherthanovercominghis predecessor,he is overcome. Bloom cites works by Yeats, Stevens, Browning,and Dickinson as examples of positive apophrades,and works by Roethkeas an example of negativeapophrades.Id. at 141, 142. Absentan indicationto the contrary,the termapophradesin this Note refersto the positive form.

68.Id. at 141.

69.Id. at 14.

70.Id. at 29.

484 The Yale Law Journal [Vol. 104: 471

The poet so stationshis precursor,so swerves his context, that the visionaryobjects,withtheirhigherintensity,fade intothe continuum. The poet has, in regardto the precursor'sheterocosm,a shuddering

objects. This sense is not reductive,for it is the continuum,the

stationingcontext,thatis reseen,and shapedinto the visionary;it is broughtup to the intensityof the crucialobjects,which then "fade" into it ....7

In this form of clinamen,the belatedtext robs its precedentof authorityby revealing its choices as arbitraryHowever,. this revelationof arbitrariness cannotlead to a generalsense of nihilism,for thenthe usurpingtext wouldbe deemedequallyarbitraryTherefore,. the poet who employsclinamendoes not

a visionaryqualityequalto or greaterthanthatof the precedent.By situating

(the precursor'ssuperior meaning). The belated text thereby engages the precursorin a debateover the meritsof the precursor'sposition.

IV. THERATIOSAPPLIEDIN LITERATURE

A. RevisionistLiterature

Bloom's apophradesandclinamencan now be exemplifiedby two literary texts: Tom Stoppard'sRosencrantzand GuildensternAre Dead and Aime

texts; thatis, texts thatexplicitly alludeandrespondto canonicalprecedents. In fiction, such texts include J.M. Coetzee's Foe,72a rewritingof Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe,73and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea,74 a rewriting of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.75In poetry, the revisionist subgenreincludes Anthony Hecht's The Dover Bitch,76which provides the apostrophizedbeloved's responseto MatthewArnold'sDover Beach,77and

71.Id. at 42.

72.J.M. COETZEE,FOE(1986).

73.DANIELDEFOE,ROBINSONCRUSOE(MichaelShinageled., Norton 1975) (1719).

74.JEAN RHYS, WIDE SARGASSOSEA (1966).

75.CHARLOTTEBRONTE,JANEEYRE(New York Univ. Press 1977) (1847).

76.ANTHONYHECHT,The Dover Bitch, in COLLECTEDEARLIERPOEMS 17 (1990).

77.Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, in THE NORTONANTHOLOGYOF POETRY794 (Alexander W.

Allison et al. eds., 3d ed. 1983) [hereinafterNORTONANTHOLOGY].

78.Sir WalterRaleigh, TheNymph'sReplyto the Shepherd,in NORTONANTHOLOGY,supra note 77,

at 105.

same for Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.79

Modernistdramahasproducedcompellingrevisionsof Shakespeare,including those discussed in this Note: Stoppard'sRosencrantz(revising Hamlet) and

Cesaire's Tempete (revising The Tempest).80

B. Rosencrantzand Guildenster Are Dead

Stoppard'sRosencrantzexemplifiesthe revisionaryratio of apophrades. The text progresses through all three of the phases discussed above:8'It begins with an initial uncertaintyaboutits relationshipto Hamlet;it then is flooded by Hamlet, appearingto be nothing more than a parasiteon the originalplay; in the end, however,it conductsa subversionof Shakespeare's

play.

1.Uncertainty and Precedent

Rosencrantzbegins with uncertainty,with two more men waiting for Godot.RosencrantzandGuildensternarefirstseen flippingcoins, which keep

is an emblem of the uncanny.Guildensternplaintivelyextrapolatesfrom this phenomenonto theirlives:

GUIL: Practicallystartingfrom scratch.... An awakening,a man standingon his saddleto bang on the shutters,our namesshoutedin a certain dawn, a message, a summons.... A new record for heads

and tails. We have not been ... picked out ... simply to be abandoned... set loose to findour own way.... We are entitledto

some direction.... I would have thought.82

The charactersmust wrestlewith the extentto which precedentprovidesthe direction of which Guildensternspeaks. Despite what Guildensternsays, Rosencrantz and Guildensternare not "startingfrom scratch."83To the contrary,Shakespearehas alreadygiven an accountof theirlives in Hamlet.

79.ChristopherMarlowe,ThePassionateShepherdto His Love,in NORTONANTHOLOGY,supranote 77, at 185.

80.The revisionist subgenreis useful for the purposeof examining literarymodes of subversion

becauserevisionisttexts clearlyidentifyandgrapplewith theirpredecessors.Bloom arguesthatall literary texts subvert their predecessors, but revisionist texts by their very nature are more self-consciously subversivethanothers.While the debtsof some authorsto theirprecursorsmay be questioned,Stoppard's and Cesaire's debts to Shakespearemay not. Thus, revisionist texts cannot simply depart from their predecessors;they mustconfrontthe anxietyof influencedirectly.The necessityof thisconfrontationmakes texts in this subgenremost like legal texts, which mustalso pay heed to precedentbecauseof the doctrine of staredecisis.

81.See supra partIII.A.

82.STOPPARD,supra note 8, at 20.

83.Id.

And ALFRED,who has been near tears, starts to sniffle.

Come, come, Alfred, this is no way to fill the theatresof Europe.87

The entireplay turnson whetherGuildensternwill be ableto "createdramatic

rather than simply being created by Shakespeare'sdramatic precedent,"88

precedent. Guildenstern'shope is not unfounded:After all, Shakespeare himself had few originalplots, yet he succeededin creatingprecedentrather than being createdby it.89Still, it is hardnot to accept Alfred's sniffling as rational in the face of the odds that confront him. Like Rosencrantzand

Guildenstern,he presentshimselfas an amateuraskedto provehimselfin "the theatresof Europe."90

Rosencrantzand Guildensternattemptto escape the adventof Claudiusand Gertrudebut cannot:

ROS and GUILhavefrozen. GUILunfreezesfirst. Hejumpsat ROS. GUIL:Come on!

But a flourish-enter CLAUDIUSand GERTRUDE,attended.

CLAUDIUS: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz ... (he raises a hand at

straighteningupfrom hispreviousbowand halfwayuphe bowsdown again. Withhis head down,he twiststo look at GUIL,who is on the

way up.

Moreoverthatwe did muchlong to see you, The need we have to use you did provoke

Ourhasty sending.

ROS and GUIL still adjusting their clothing for CLAUDIUS's presence.

ROS: Both your majesties

Might, by the sovereignpower you have of us,

87.Id. at 32.

88.Id.

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Put your dreadpleasuresmore into command

Thanto entreaty.

GUIL: But we both obey,

And here give up ourselvesin the full bent

To lay our service freely at your feet,

To be commanded.9'

The lines spoken by Claudius,as well as the responsesof Rosencrantzand Guildenstern,are lines taken directly from Hamlet.92The canonical play

and Guildenstern,who have previouslyspoken in modernidiom, are forced

into Renaissancedialect.They realizesuddenlythatthey areboth temporarily

scriptedand conscriptedby Hamlet.The fully exploited irony of their first lines in Hamletheightensthateffect ("ROS:Both your majesties/ might,by the sovereign power you have of us, / Put your dreadpleasuresmore into command/ Than to entreaty."93)Rosencrantz's. obsequiousresponse to the king andqueen recognizesthatthe royals' entreatycouldjust as well be, and thereforeis the functionalequivalentof, a command.He recognizesthatwhat

is finally made explicit in this scene: When charactersexit Rosencrantzthey enterHamlet, and vice versa. Yet these are not two equal worlds. Hamletis the dominantmode of existence; it presentsitself as a procrusteanrealityto which Rosencrantzand Guildensternmust conformwheneverthe two plays

intersect. Even if their lives in Rosencrantzseem to be at center stage, RosencrantzandGuildensternarestill only experiencedas bit playersin other people's stories, ratherthan as heroes of theirown. They are filled with the

The fact thatRosencrantzandGuildensternmustcede theirown realityto thatof HamletwhenevermajorcharactersfromShakespeare'splayintrudeinto the world of Rosencrantzmakes the characters'lives seem as mindlessly repetitiveas the results of the coin tosses in the first scene: No matterhow

91.Id. at 35-36.

92.Compareid. with WILLIAMSHAKESPEARE,HAMLETact 2, sc. 2, 11.1-32 (HaroldJenkinsed.,

1982).

93.STOPPARD,supra note 8, at 36.

94.Id. at 39.

95.BLOOM,supra note 6, at 16.