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Stephen Greenblatt: The 2016 Holberg Conversation

Holberg Prize Talks

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How Important Is the Material Medium for Literature?

The oldest work of literature in the world is on cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia. When those cities were destroyed by their enemies when Nineveh was burned down, or Babylon, they turned into a kind of kiln. And that's why the oldest story that survives, I think, from all of our species, from humanity is Gilgamesh - because of the medium it was written in.

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