"Authentic literature doesn't divide us," the scholar and
literary critic Harold Bloom once said. "It addresses itself to
the solitary individual or consciousness." Revered and sometimes
reviled as a champion of the Western canon, Bloom insists on the
importance of reading authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, and
Chaucer -- not because they transmit certain approved cultural
values, but because they transcend the limits of culture, and
thus enlarge rather than constrict our sense of what it means to
be human. As Bloom explained in an interview, "Shakespeare is
the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is
put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are
represented by him on the stage." Bloom began his career by
tackling the formidable legacy of T.S. Eliot, who had dismissed
the English Romantic poets as undisciplined nature-worshippers.
Bloom construed the Romantic poets' visions of immortality as
rebellions against nature, and argued that an essentially
Romantic imagination was s