Stephen Greenblatt, a renowned literary scholar and Harvard professor, delves into the interplay between art and history. He discusses how storytelling shapes cultural understanding, reflecting human experience through literature. Greenblatt critiques traditional historical narratives, emphasizing the significance of Columbus Day in racial identity. He also explores the political context of Shakespeare's works and their contemporary relevance, advocating for critical engagement with texts like the Adam and Eve narrative, which continues to influence our self-perception.
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insights INSIGHT
Humanities and Human Expression
Humans have always tried to record their experiences through art, music, and storytelling, starting with cave paintings 35,000 years ago.
These forms of expression are fundamental to human existence and provide a connection to our origins and how we create meaning.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Burning Villages - Past and Present
Stephen Greenblatt discussed his book Renaissance Self-Fashioning and a passage about a 16th-century merchant raiding and burning a village.
He connected this historical anecdote to the Vietnam War footage of a GI burning a village, highlighting the resonance of past actions with the present.
insights INSIGHT
The Dark History of Columbus Day
The origin of Columbus Day was not a celebration of Italian heritage but a political move to define Italian-Americans as "white" after the lynching of Italian immigrants.
This historical context adds a layer of complexity to the current debates about Columbus Day.
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In 'The Swerve', Stephen Greenblatt explores the impact of Poggio Bracciolini's discovery of Lucretius' 'De Rerum Natura' in 1417. This ancient Roman poem, which posits a universe governed by natural laws rather than divine intervention, had a profound influence on the Renaissance and beyond, shaping the thought of figures like Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein. Greenblatt's book is both a biography of Bracciolini and an intellectual history of how this text helped shape modernity.
Tyrant
Shakespeare on Politics
Stephen Greenblatt
Renaissance Self-Fashioning
Stephen Greenblatt
In *Renaissance Self-Fashioning*, Stephen Greenblatt explores the concept of self-fashioning during the Renaissance, examining how major literary figures like More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare shaped their identities and public personas. The book delves into the cultural and intellectual context of the time, highlighting the influence of the Reformation, humanism, and print culture on the emergence of individual identity.
An infinite number of things happen; we bring structure and meaning to the world by making art and telling stories about it. Every work of literature created by human beings comes out of an historical and cultural context, and drawing connections between art and its context can be illuminating for both. Today’s guest, Stephen Greenblatt, is one of the world’s most celebrated literary scholars, famous for helping to establish the New Historicism school of criticism, which he also refers to as “cultural poetics.” We talk about how art becomes entangled with the politics of its day, and how we can learn about ourselves and other cultures by engaging with stories and their milieu.
Stephen Greenblatt received his Ph.D. in English from Yale University. He is currently Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has specialized in Renaissance and Shakespeare studies, but has also written on topics as diverse as Adam and Eve and the ancient Roman poet Lucretius. He has served as the editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Norton Shakespeare, and is founder of the journal Representations. Among his many honors are the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation. His most recent book is Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.
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