Swerve: How the Renaissance Began - Hardcover

Greenblatt, Stephen

3.87

32,790 ratings by Goodreads

9780224078788: Swerve: How the Renaissance Began

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022407878X ISBN 13: 9780224078788

Publisher: W.W. Norton, 2011

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One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. The book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, "On the Nature of Things," by Lucretius -- a thrillingly beautiful poem of the most dangerous of ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion. The copying and translation of this ancient book, the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age, fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno, shaping the thoughts of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein, and influencing writers from Montaigne to Thomas Jefferson.

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About the Author:

Stephen Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar. He has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations.

Review:

"[This] concise, learned and fluently written book tells a remarkable story" Sunday Times "More wonderfully illuminating Renaissance history from a master scholar and historian (starred review)" Kirkus Reviews "[A] superb history... This concise, learned and fluently written book tells a remarkable story... Highly skilled, close-focus readings of moments of great cultural significance are Stephen Greenblatt's speciality" -- Charles Nicholl Observer "In this gloriously learned page-turner, both biography and intellectual history, Harvard Shakespearean scholar Greenblatt turns his attention to the front end of the Renaissance as the origin of Western culture's foundation: the free questioning of truth (starred review)" Publishers Weekly "[A] superbly readable piece of historical work...an exciting story, and Greenblatt tells it with his customary clarity and verve" -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Daily Telegraph

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