William Shakespeare was an Elizabethan poet, playwright, and actor, active at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th. He is generally viewed as the most important writer in the English language, and his plays are more widely performed than those of any other playwright in history.

As Bloom notes in The Western Canon, little is known about Shakespeare’s life beyond that he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, married Anne Hathaway, and had three children, Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. Primarily active between 1589 and 1613, Shakespeare’s notable works include Hamlet (1609), Macbeth (1623), King Lear (1606), Othello (1604), Romeo and Juliet, and more, as well as many sonnets and other poems.

In The Western Canon, Bloom centers Shakespeare in the canon, connecting his influence to most other writers. For Bloom, Shakespeare’s plays are the most aesthetically valuable artifacts in Western literature. There is some debate about Shakespeare’s identity and authorship, as Bloom notes, with some arguing that Francis Bacon, the 17th Earl of Oxford, or Christopher Marlowe could have written Shakespeare’s plays, while others argue that multiple authors could be responsible for Shakespeare’s works. Bloom rejects these theories.

Dante Alighieri, commonly called Dante, was an Italian poet best known for The Divine Comedy (1308), a narrative poem that explores Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso). Dante is credited with establishing Italian literature, as he favored writing in the vernacular of Tuscany over Latin. Dante was involved in the Guelph-Ghibelline Conflict, fighting in the Battle of Campaldino and subsequently allying himself with the White Guelphs, leading to his exile from Florence. During exile, Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, in which many real-world figures appear, including Beatrice, with whom Dante claimed to have fallen in love.

Bloom focuses on the ambition of Dante’s work as an example of mythmaking, highlighting how Dante deviates from Christian traditions of the time by elevating Beatrice into the divine hierarchy. In addition to the aesthetic value of Dante’s poetry, Bloom appreciates his creation of Beatrice as a character and the influence his work had on later authors.

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet whose most notable work is The Canterbury Tales (1400), a narrative poem about a group of pilgrims telling stories to entertain each other. The characters are detailed and, though the work was not finished, was planned to include over 100 stories. Chaucer’s contribution to writing was a shift from the use of French or Latin to Middle English, the language of The Canterbury Tales. As a public servant, Chaucer’s life is largely documented: He was awarded wine and later money from Edward III and Richard II for his contributions to literature, setting a precedent for later poets laureate.

Bloom centers his discussion of Chaucer on the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner from The Canterbury Tales, as he sees these two characters as influencing Shakespeare’s later development of “self-overhearing.” Bloom rejects “moralizing” critics who judge the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, identifying them as early examples that lead into the critical “hero-villain” characters of later works.

Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish author best known for Don Quixote (1605), a novel in two parts that follows Alonso Quijano, who becomes the titular Don Quixote after reading too many chivalric romances. The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605, while the second was published 10 years later in 1615. Cervantes served in the Spanish military, participating in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. He was enslaved for five years and worked as a tax collector near the end of his life, during which time he wrote Don Quixote. Cervantes was not a successful writer during his life, though his work has had a lasting impact on literature and literary studies.

Bloom values Cervantes’s use of what Huizinga called “the order of play.” Bloom highlights interactions between Don Quixote and his companion, Sancho Panza, as exemplary of play, which forms a key role in establishing how Cervantes would influence later writers. Bloom also compares Quixote’s romanticized love interest, Dulcinea del Tobosa, to Dante’s Beatrice.

Michel de Montaigne is a French essayist of the French Renaissance best known for his Essais, or Essays (1592). Montaigne stands out in Bloom’s essays as one of the writers better known for his involvement in government and philosophical writing, rather than his contributions to imaginative literature. As a skeptic, Montaigne wrote critically without explicitly discussing religion in ways that might lead to accusations of blasphemy.

Bloom values Montaigne’s contribution to secular reasoning and examinations of meaning and psychology. In analyzing the Essays, Bloom also discusses Moliere, whom Bloom sees as the direct inheritor of Montaigne’s thoughts and outlook. As with most authors in The Western Canon, Bloom finds similarities between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Moliere’s The Misanthrope (1666) in Montaigne’s writing.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known as Moliere, was a playwright and actor of 17th-century France. He is primarily known for his comedies, and many critics draw similarities between Moliere in French and Shakespeare in English. Moliere’s notable works include The Misanthrope and Tartuffe (1664), both of which achieved success on the stage. Moliere was patronized by Philippe I, the Duke of Orleans, which linked Moliere to the court of Louis IV.

Bloom primarily discusses The Misanthrope, focusing on similarities between Moliere’s protagonist, Alceste, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Hamlet. Bloom separates French literature of this time from the remainder of Europe, since Moliere serves the role of Shakespeare in France, though Bloom does not think Moliere rises to the level of aesthetic value in Shakespeare’s plays.

John Milton was a poet in the 17th century in England. Though he wrote many poems, his most notable work is Paradise Lost (1667), an epic poem illustrating the fall of Lucifer and the subsequent fall of humanity. During his life, Milton was also an overtly political writer. He served as Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Oliver Cromwell’s government, and wrote several famous political tracts, including The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates(1649), Eikonoklastes (1649), and Areopagitica (1644), all of which detailed his republican views. After the restoration of Charles II to the throne, a period known as the Restoration, Milton lost some of his popularity.

While many critics place Milton alongside Shakespeare in the history of English poetry, Bloom centers his discussion of Milton on the similarities between Satan in Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s “hero-villains,” specifically Iago from Othello. Though Bloom thinks that Satan fails to rise to Iago’s degree of aesthetic power, he still credits Milton for creating Satan as a unique and eloquent character.

Dr. Samuel Johnson was an English writer credited with works ranging from poetry to literary criticism, biography, and lexicography. Over the course of his career, Johnson famously wrote A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the short novel The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), and the biographical collection Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779). James Boswell, who befriended Johnson in the early 1760s, wrote his biography, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Bloom agrees with the popular stance that Johnson was a major contributor to the contemporary practices of literary theory and criticism.

Bloom discusses how Johnson did not write poetry in line with the competitive spirit of Bloom’s anxiety of influence. Johnson’s contributions to the canon are in the form of literary criticism and personality, with Bloom quoting Johnson in his essays on other writers.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and polymath who contributed to literature, philosophy, politics, and religious discussions in the 18th and 19th centuries in Germany. He was well-known in his lifetime and began his literary career with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), a novel. He also wrote scientific works, including Metamorphosis of Plants. His most notable work is Faust, Parts One and Two (1829), in which he tells the story of Faust and Mephistopheles, in which Mephistopheles makes a deal with Faust for his soul.

Bloom discusses Faust primarily through the lens of the grotesque, highlighting Goethe’s “strangeness” and “mythmaking” in the play while drawing connections between Goethe’s writing and earlier authors. Goethe’s contribution, for Bloom, is limited, as he does not see many later German poets drawing inspiration from Goethe. He does, however, note the connections between Goethe and other authors, including James Joyce.

William Wordsworth was a Romantic poet and the Poet Laureate under Queen Victoria from 1843 to 1850, the year he died. He is best known for The Prelude (1850), a poem largely based on his own life and published after his death. His work with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, is credited with launching the Romantic Age. He is considered a key figure of the period.

Bloom regards Wordsworth as launching the Democratic Age. Bloom discusses Wordsworth’s poems The Ruined Cottage, “The Old Cumberland Beggar,” and “Michael.” Bloom takes from Wordsworth a sense of human dignity that he identifies as universal, noting how Wordsworth’s subjects are often impoverished or deprived of basic necessities, which lines up with his conception of the Democratic Age.

Jane Austen was an English novelist from the Georgian period. She is best known for her commentary in her novels of the English upper classes. Through wit and irony, Austen criticized social norms in novels of sensibility, and she is often considered a part of the transition toward literary realism in literature. Her notable works include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1817), and Persuasion (1817), which remain widely read and frequently adapted into film and television series to this day.

Bloom discusses Persuasion as an example of Austen’s skill, seeing the main character, Anne Elliot, and her love interest, Captain Frederick Wentworth, as prime examples of dynamic, fully explored, and psychologically realistic characters. Bloom criticizes Feminist critics who focus on Anne’s status as a woman in the Georgian period, focusing instead on how Anne’s character displays wisdom and observation.

Walt Whitman was an American poet in the 19th century. He is best known for Leaves of Grass (1855) and Song of Myself (1856). Whitman’s work exemplified the American identity of rugged individualism and drew from the Transcendentalist movement of Emerson and Thoreau. His poems were controversial for their thinly veiled sexual themes, which often explored masturbation and selfhood.

Bloom explores Whitman’s use of poetry as a medium for “American religion,” for which he considers Whitman’s masturbatory themes critical. Bloom praises Whitman’s self-exploration, highlighting the idea of the three selves: The outward self, the conscious self, and the true self, or soul. Bloom credits Whitman with influencing many later poets in the canon, including Borges, Neruda, and Pessoa.

Emily Dickinson was a 19th-century American poet who is best known for her posthumously published poems, which are predominantly untitled. Dickinson wrote over 1,800 poems, though she would only publish 10 poems in her lifetime. Her poetry is considered innovative in its style and content, though the initial publication by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd obscured her originality, which was rediscovered in the restoration of her poems in 1955.

Bloom regards Dickinson’s poetry as a significant but rewarding challenge to the reader, praising her ability to “rename” everything to fit her unique perspective. This brand of “strangeness,” Bloom insists, is the root of her aesthetic value. He rejects the idea that her femininity played a role in her writing.

Charles Dickens was a prolific English novelist in the 19th century. He is considered by many as one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era. Dickens was known for his involvement in political movements regarding children’s and workers’ rights, and many of his works reflect the need for reform in English industry and society. His literary reputation began with The Pickwick Papers (1836), and his other major novels include Oliver Twist (1838), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Great Expectations (1862), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Bleak House (1853).

Bloom focuses on Bleak House, exploring the main characters Esther Summerson and John Jarndyce as unique and innovative characters. Bloom pushes back against criticism that seeks to identify Esther as an oppressed woman and criticism that speculates on the ethics of Jarndyce’s wealth in the novel, insisting that the value in Dickens’s writing lies in the aesthetic value of the novel’s characters.

Mary Ann Evans, who published under the pseudonym George Eliot, was a 19th-century English novelist and poet. As a leading writer of the Victorian era, Eliot wrote seven novels, including Silas Marner (1861), Daniel Deronda (1876), and Middlemarch (1871). Often compared to Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, Eliot’s works frequently examined the concerns of provincial England. She is known for her realism and psychological themes.

Bloom praises Middlemarch for its aesthetic value, identifying Eliot as one of the most powerful novelists in English. As with other women authors, Bloom separates Eliot’s femininity from her writing, speculating that Eliot could not have written Middlemarch better if she was a “radical feminist.”

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian author who is considered to be one of the most prominent novelists in history. His most notable works are War and Peace (1867) and Anna Karenina (1879). Later in life, Tolstoy adopted unorthodox religious and social views, advocating for nonviolence, the abolition of class exploitation, and religious doctrines that came to be classified as Christian anarchism. His later works explore some of his religious concerns through the realism common to all his works.

Bloom discusses Tolstoy’s novella Hadji Murat (1912). Exploring both Tolstoy’s relationship with nonviolence, Tolstoy’s military service, and the actual figure of Hadji Murat, Bloom praises Tolstoy’s innovation and “strangeness,” noting that Tolstoy may have seen Hadji Murat as a character to emulate. Bloom also highlights Tolstoy’s distaste for Shakespeare, which Bloom attributes to the anxiety of influence.

Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright who is often praised for his theatrical realism. His major works include Hedda Gabler (1890), A Doll’s House (1879), Peer Gynt (1867), and Emperor and Galilean (1873). Like Moliere in France, Ibsen is often considered the Norwegian Shakespeare.

Bloom discusses Hedda Gabler and Peer Gynt, insisting that Hedda’s gender is irrelevant to her characterization and promoting the idea that Ibsen’s conception of “trollishness” is central to his “strangeness” and aesthetic value. Though Freud and Shaw both praised Ibsen as being equal to or better than Shakespeare, Bloom rejects this claim, instead tracing Shakespeare’s influence on Ibsen’s characters, including Hedda, Peer, and Brand.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist best known for creating psychoanalysis as a means of treating psychological concerns in his patients. Like Montaigne and Johnson, Freud is included in Bloom’s canon despite not writing imaginative fiction. Freud’s notable works include The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Though many of Freud’s ideas have since been discredited, the methodology of his reasoning is still valued.

Bloom criticizes Freud for trying to apply psychoanalytic theories to Shakespeare and credits Shakespeare with originally creating psychoanalysis through characters like Hamlet and the process of “self-overhearing.” However, Bloom praises Freud’s writing for its “strangeness” and sympathizes with Freud’s anxiety, claiming Freud sought to discredit Shakespeare out of a fear that he could not compete with Shakespeare’s originality.

Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust was a French novelist in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. His primary notable work is In Search of Lost Time (1913), formerly translated as Remembrance of Things Past. The multi-volume novel explores multiple characters and is known for its innovative, immersive narrative style.

Bloom discusses the themes of sexual jealousy and psychological realism in Proust’s work, considering him one of the greatest novelists of the Chaotic Age. Though insisting that Proust’s sexuality and Jewish heritage are not relevant to his aesthetic value, Bloom traces the impact of Proust’s life as a gay Jewish man in the text as a significant factor in an accurate reading of the novel.

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet in the early 20th century. He is best known for his novels Ulysses (1922), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as a short story collection, Dubliners (1914). Joyce is acknowledged for his lasting impact on contemporary literature through his unique use of perspective and language.

Bloom explores the connections between Shakespeare and Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, praising Joyce for his acknowledgement and interplay with the anxiety of influence regarding Shakespeare’s impact on his works. Bloom identifies Finnegans Wake as a particularly influential and challenging work, suggesting that contemporary readers are ill-equipped to handle the text and therefore cannot receive the benefit of understanding it.

Virginia Woolf was a 20th-century English novelist and writer, considered one of the most influential Modernist writers. Raised in a literary household, Woolf became a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group. She is known for her novels, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), as well as her essays, such as A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). Woolf is often viewed as an early Feminist figure.

Bloom explores Orlando as an expression of the love for reading, specifically setting Woolf against her Feminist writings by implying that Woolf was predominantly a great novelist. Though Bloom acknowledges that he is “not competent” to judge Feminist criticism, he nonetheless argues that Woolf’s femininity and political views do not play a role in determining the aesthetic value of her works.

Franz Kafka was a Czech novelist who wrote in German in the early 20th century. He is regarded as a particularly influential writer, with the term “Kafkaesque” becoming a common descriptor for the uncanny. Kafka’s writing often explores themes of power, agency, and social or bureaucratic oppression. His notable works include The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925), and The Castle (1926).

Bloom’s discussion of Kafka’s work centers on Kafka’s Jewish heritage, which Bloom simultaneously integrates into his readings of Kafka’s work and separates as irrelevant to Kafka’s value as a writer. Kafka takes up the theme of the grotesque, which Bloom compares to both Dante and Goethe. He notes that Kafka has had a lasting influence on later literature.

Jorge Luis Borges was a prominent Argentinian writer, known for his essays, short stories, and poetry. Bloom and others consider Borges the center of the Latin American canon, with his works influencing writers across the world. He is best known for his Ficciones (1844), The Aleph (1945), and Labyrinths (1962). His motifs and themes often involve labyrinths, time, mirrors, and myths, all of which contribute to the influence his works have in magical realism and fantasy.

Bloom praises Borges conception of literature as a continuous, anonymous process of writing, which is similar to Bloom’s own theory of the anxiety of influence. Bloom centers Borges in the Latin American canon, drawing a connection to Whitman, whom Bloom sees as a primary influence on Borges’s writing.

Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet and political figure best known for his Canto general (1950) and his love poems, including the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). Neruda was involved in Chilean politics and government, including serving as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. Neruda supported Salvador Allende’s presidency until the coup of 1973 led by Augusto Pinochet.

Bloom celebrates Neruda’s aesthetic value but condemns his political involvement, saying that the moments in which Neruda’s communist beliefs enter his poetry are the only flaws in it. Discussing the rivalry between Neruda and Borges, Bloom favors Borges. He claims that Neruda, Borges, and Pessoa all failed to meet the degree of artistic mastery of Whitman in poetry.

Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet and literary critic known for his prolific use of alternate personas in writing and publishing. Among over 70 alternate identities, which he called heteronyms, Pessoa is known for writing under the names Alberto Caeiro, Alvero de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. His notable works include Mensagem (1934) and The Book of Disquiet (1982).

Bloom largely discusses the different heteronyms as variations of Whitman’s influence on Pessoa’s writing. As with Borges and Neruda, Bloom wonders if Pessoa “failed” to achieve the degree of Whitman’s writing because he did not “read” Whitman “closely enough,” which ignores the possibility that Hispanic and Portuguese poets might not regard an American poet as the primary influence on their own writing.