Stephen Greenblatt
Paperback | Pages: 356 pages Rating: 3.85 | 26016 Users | 2677 Reviews
Be Specific About About Books The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
| Title | : | The Swerve: How the World Became Modern |
| Author | : | Stephen Greenblatt |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 356 pages |
| Published | : | September 4th 2012 by W. W. Norton Company (first published September 26th 2011) |
| Categories | : | History. Nonfiction. Philosophy. Science. Religion |
Narrative Toward Books The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
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 thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous 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, colliding and swerving in new directions.
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; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.
Particularize Books During The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
| Original Title: | The Swerve: How the World Became Modern |
| ISBN: | 0393343405 (ISBN13: 9780393343403) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Ovid (Roman), Poggio Bracciolini, Lucretius |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (2012), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Nonfiction (2012), National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction (2011), James Russell Lowell Prize (2011), Cundill History Prize Nominee (2012) |
Rating About Books The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Ratings: 3.85 From 26016 Users | 2677 ReviewsCrit About Books The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Before reading this book, I hadn't thought much about the renaissance. Sure, a few college French courses helped drive home the point that it literally means "rebirth," and I kind of knew that old books were involved, but I didn't think much about the logistics. I imagined ancient texts were found in much the same way anything else gets found, as in "Oh, by the way, I was going through storage looking for the Christmas decorations, and guess what I found: some poem by this dude Lucretius!"On the Nature of Things by Lucretius was one of my favorite books I read when I was an undergraduate philosophy student. Perhaps it helped that my professor was a thin man, with a sprawling beard, and intense green eyes, who would shriek the lines of the poem like a Puritan preacher. Fortunately, Stephen Greenblatt cannot take away my experience of reading Lucretius. Much of his book is speculative (if he was here then he probably would have gone to this monastery, and while there, he probably
Before reading this book, I hadn't thought much about the renaissance. Sure, a few college French courses helped drive home the point that it literally means "rebirth," and I kind of knew that old books were involved, but I didn't think much about the logistics. I imagined ancient texts were found in much the same way anything else gets found, as in "Oh, by the way, I was going through storage looking for the Christmas decorations, and guess what I found: some poem by this dude Lucretius!"
This is a book about the philosophical epic poem De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things") by Lucretius, written circa first century BC. It tells of its loss in Medieval times and later rediscovery during the Renaissance. The title, The Swerve, is used (in translation) by Lucretius to describe the unpredictable movements by which particles collide and take on new forms. The rediscovery of Lucretius, it is suggested, was a kind of "swerve" which helped to create the new cultural forms of the
This review has been revised and can now be seen at Shelf Inflicted (a Group Blog).Changed my life forever, did this book.Reposting the body of the review.***De rerum natura was a long narrative poem expounding Epicurean philosophy that was written in the first century before the common era. I am told by those possessed of sufficient Latin fluency to appreciate it that it is beautiful. I am not possessed of that level of fluency, and to me it seemed agonizingly impenetrable and obscurantist.But
First, the title is really dumb. And both sides of the colon. The Swerve? Even after reading the book and having it explained to me, I still find it off-putting. And I have a problem with titles which add, after the colon, some phrase of puffery. Usually it's how something or someone (_________) Changed the World or Saved Civilization, even if (_________)'s accomplishment was much more modest. This book would tell us How the World Became Modern. But the World is a very big place. And some of it
The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) founded a school of thought that thrived for hundreds of years during the Hellenistic and Roman periods following Plato. Only a few fragments of his writings survive today. The most complete statement of Epicureanism that has survived is a poem, ON THE NATURE OF THINGS, written by the Roman poet Lucretius. THE SWERVE is Stephen Greenblatt's account of how ON THE NATURE OF THINGS was rescued from obscurity by Poggio Bracciolini, a Vatican bureaucrat
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