News at Eleven: In Shakespeare: The Invention

of the Human (1998), [Harold] Bloom posited the startling and much-disparaged notion that human consciousness discovered itself in Shakespearian drama, in particular in the great soliloquies, the example of which taught us to begin overhearing ourselves and thereby to become aware of what and who we are in ourselves and in the world. Bloom's emblematic Shakespeare figures are Falstaff and Hamlet, respectively affirmer and negator par excellence.

from The Guardian: John Banville on Harold Bloom

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