Bloom praises Marcel Proust’s strength of characterization, adding that Proust matches Shakespeare in his portrayal of sexual jealousy. Noting Freud’s three forms of sexual jealousy—competitive, projected, and delusional—Bloom highlights how In Search of Lost Time focuses on the third and acknowledges the anti-gay bias in Freud’s conception of the term “delusional.” Bloom compares Proust’s representations of Jewish and gay characters but rejects “judging” Proust by his own Jewish heritage or sexual orientation. Bloom calls In Search of Lost Time “wisdom literature,” like that of Johnson or Montaigne.

Bloom quotes from J.E. Rivers, saying that Proust’s “vision” is “androgynous,” which Bloom links to Shakespearean comedy. Analyzing Swann’s “research” as a mix of scientific investigation and jealous paranoia, Bloom highlights how Swann approaches the “abyss” of love and death. Swann’s obsession, for Bloom, is universal, transcending sex or gender, and leads Bloom to discuss the apparent contradiction between Proust, the gay, Jewish author, and Marcel, the Christian, straight narrator. Bloom resolves this contradiction through aesthetics, noting that Proust designed his narrator to better construct his vision, comparing Proust to Freud, Shakespeare, and Dante.

Bloom calls Proust a “doctor” who provides readers with a “retrospective comfort” for unhappy love, which Bloom considers inevitable (376). Bloom compares Saint-Loup’s passionless relationship with Rachel to Swann’s solipsistic reflection on his jealousy, leading into a discussion of Marcel’s relationship with Albertine. Marcel’s jealousy precedes his love for Albertine, defining all romance as jealousy, though Bloom is unsure if Marcel’s perspective is also Proust’s.

In the final section of In Search of Lost Time, Bloom argues that Marcel the narrator becomes Proust the novelist. Citing Roger Shattuck’s comparison of In Search of Lost Time to The Bhagavad-Gita, Bloom claims that Proust forms a connection between the Western and Eastern canons.

Bloom discusses Shakespeare’s influence on James Joyce through readings of Ulysses. Bloom sees Ulysses as a combination of The Odyssey of Homer and Hamlet, though he sees more of Hamlet in the novel. Citing Frank Budgen’s James Joyce and the Making of “Ulysses,” Bloom examines Stephen Dadelus’s commentary on paternity, concluding that Shakespeare is Joyce’s “ghostly father.” Agreeing with Sir William Empson, Bloom opposes critics who try to “Christianize” Joyce, noting how Stephen’s discussion of paternity elevates Shakespeare into a god-like figure.

In Leopold Bloom, Bloom finds the Shakespearean in his rich interior life, noting how Leopold, though benign, notices everything in Ulysses. Bloom compares Leopold to Shakespeare, calling him “everyman and no man” (390), and emphasizes Stephen’s assertion that people “walk” through themselves only to meet themselves, which Bloom reads as Joyce living through Shakespeare to meet himself.

Bloom shifts the discussion to Finnegans Wake, claiming that “multiculturalism” is removing any challenging texts from the canon, of which Finnegans Wake is one. Bloom locates Wake as Leopold’s dream after the end of Ulysses and credits James S. Atherton’s The Books at the Wake, Matthew Hodgart’s “Shakespeare and Finnegans Wake,” and Adaline Glasheen’s Third Census of “Finnegans Wake” as invaluable to his reading. Bloom reads a scene in Ulysses in which Stephen and Leopold see a reflection of a beardless, frozen Shakespeare and concludes that Joyce was aware of his anxiety over competing with Shakespeare.

Aided by the cited critics, Bloom identifies multiple references to Shakespeare’s plays throughout Finnegans Wake, interpreting them as indications both of Joyce’s desire to rival or surpass Shakespeare and Joyce’s understanding that Shakespeare is too great to be matched. Bloom predicts that Joyce would have written another work, On the Sea, if he had lived longer and asserts that it would have been as canonical as Joyce’s other works.

Bloom praises Virginia Woolf’s novels Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, and Between the Acts. He acknowledges that he is “not yet competent” (403) to “judge” Feminist criticism. Bloom disagrees with some of Woolf’s literary criticism and considers Walter Pater to be her main precursor in writing. Bloom quotes from A Room of One’s Own and questions whether Woolf, like Austen, “consumed all impediments” (405) to writing, appreciating that Woolf loved reading and wrote well without being a “zealot.”

Bloom calls Woolf an “Epicurean materialist,” praising her ability to reconceptualize reality through her aesthetics. Bloom rejects the idea that Woolf was a political writer and agrees with John Burt’s argument that A Room of One’s Own presents two contradictory arguments. Bloom argues against Feminist proponents of Woolf, claiming that they, like the “pseudo-Marxists” and “multicultural opponents” of “intellectual standards” (408) have devalued Woolf’s aesthetic worth. Bloom claims that Woolf’s aestheticism and Feminism were inseparable, arguing that Woolf’s writing was molded in a reaction against her father, Leslie Stephen.

Bloom compares Orlando to Don Quixote, saying that books are inevitably about other books. Though Orlando is a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf was in love, Bloom sees Orlando as neither Sackville-West nor Woolf, though the character shares Woolf’s love of reading. Orlando shows, in Bloom’s view, the value of reading, illustrating Woolf’s claim that those who love reading can receive no greater reward than that love itself. Bloom values Woolf’s idiosyncratic strangeness, remarking that no power could suppress her talent. Bloom predicts that all current political values will eventually become antiquated, allowing readers to rediscover Woolf without the burden of politics.