The Analysis of the Verses and Narrations of the First Book of Masnavi Manavi Based on Harold Bloom's Theory of Creative Misprision

Creative misprision is a theory proposed by Harold Bloom based on intertextuality and the relationships between literary texts and their influence on each other. The theory posits that there is always a conflict between poets and writers of the past and the succeeding ones. In his most important work, The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom emphasizes the two-way but hostile relationship between new writers and past ones. To get rid of the anxiety of influence of the past texts, poets and writers use methods through creative misprision to create new works in an attempt to show their own superiority to their predecessors. In the present research, we analyze the transformations that Jalāl al-Din Rūmi has applied in order to get rid of the anxiety of the influence of past texts , and to study the role of Bloom's creative misprision in Masnavi by using analytical-comparative method. The findings show that Rumi's creative method in the creation of stories and anecdotes to get rid of the influence of past texts is an instance of the creative misprision. For this purpose, he has employed a variety of techniques such as association, using educational, religious and philosophical themes, changing the elements of the stories, and symbolism.