Passion and Literature

I've just started Harold Bloom's `Genius', and he insists that literature helped create perceptions of human nature. Bloom is particularly high on Shakespeare, but he also mentions Montaigne, Cervantes, and Milton as early moderns who helped create the idea (as he puts it) of `overhearing oneself'. He suggests that these authors created characters who looked into themselves and found truth there. This shift, from a medieval focus on external sources for truth to an early modern focus on internal sources for truth, seems to be a common feature across many aspects of early modern thought. Descartes certainly does this. Did Descartes read Montaigne? or Cervantes? I don't know whether Shakespeare was in French by that time, but I'm pretty sure the Essays and Don Quixote were available to Descartes. How much of an impact did these authors have on constructions of the passions? Bloom would argue (I think) that the widespread availability of literature gave people new models for themselves, new ways to explain themselves. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about this could fill us in?