This book is Bloom's ultimate gesture towards his country, America. It channels readings and experiences of a lifetime into a specific proposition that includes twelve authors. Among the poets, he recommends Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, and Hart Crane. Among the novelists, he suggests Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner, and Henry James. Among the thinkers who shaped American identity with a view towards the Sublime, one stands out: the one and only Emerson.
Emphasized are: the importance of aesthetic enjoyment for human self-knowledge, the value of great works of the canon for the improvement of the individual and the cohesion of society, and the intrinsic worth of literature as an imaginary parable against death. The "sublime" defines the position of the work of creative imagination in relation to something that is simultaneously majestic, terrifying, and limitless. The "demon" is the name for the mystery of creative imagination. As he notes: "When I speak of the poet within the poet, I mean precisely his demon, his potential immortality as a poet and therefore, in essence, his divinity."
