Stephen Greenblatt Books
Stephen Greenblatt is an American literary historian, critic, and scholar, best known for his work on Renaissance literature and for pioneering the field of New Historicism. He is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and the author of several acclaimed books, including 'Will in the World' and 'Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.
Known for: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Books by Stephen Greenblatt
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
In this Pulitzer Prize–winning work, Stephen Greenblatt traces how the rediscovery of Lucretius’s ancient Roman poem 'De Rerum Natura' in the 15th century helped ignite the Renaissance and transform Western thought. The book explores how this classical text’s ideas about atomism, pleasure, and the nature of the universe challenged medieval orthodoxy and laid the groundwork for modern secularism, science, and humanism.
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The Medieval World
When Poggio Bracciolini was born, the world he entered was defined by hierarchy and theological certainty. The medieval imagination was ordered around God—every natural phenomenon explained through divine will, every text interpreted in service to religious truth. Universities taught not discovery b...
From The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Poggio Bracciolini’s Background
To appreciate how the recovery of an ancient poem could alter history, we must first know the man who found it. Poggio Bracciolini was born near Florence in 1380—a child of the early Renaissance, raised amid the resurgence of Italian art and learning but still bound by the papal bureaucracy he serve...
From The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
About Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Greenblatt is an American literary historian, critic, and scholar, best known for his work on Renaissance literature and for pioneering the field of New Historicism. He is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and the author of several acclaimed books, i...
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Stephen Greenblatt is an American literary historian, critic, and scholar, best known for his work on Renaissance literature and for pioneering the field of New Historicism. He is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and the author of several acclaimed books, i...
Stephen Greenblatt is an American literary historian, critic, and scholar, best known for his work on Renaissance literature and for pioneering the field of New Historicism. He is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and the author of several acclaimed books, including 'Will in the World' and 'Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.'
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Stephen Greenblatt is an American literary historian, critic, and scholar, best known for his work on Renaissance literature and for pioneering the field of New Historicism. He is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and the author of several acclaimed books, including 'Will in the World' and 'Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.
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