'Shakespeare was a thorough-going reactionary and upholder of aristocratic privilege -- as was Homer. Milton was a Bible-thumper' Is that supposed to be satirical? Am I missing the irony? Shakespeare was not a reactionary, he was as Harold Bloom rightly says, one of the key figures in the invention of the human. Milton was not 'a bible thumper', he was a revolutionary, and ideologue of individual conscience against the divine right of kings.
Aristocratic privilege? Homer? What could that even mean? 'Homer', as Giambattista Vico explained more than three hundred years ago, was not an historic individual, but the collective name for a folktale teller.