{"id":107,"date":"2012-01-03T11:59:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T19:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/?p=107"},"modified":"2012-01-03T12:05:45","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T20:05:45","slug":"the-swerve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/2012\/01\/03\/the-swerve\/","title":{"rendered":"The Swerve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0393064476\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=rebuithetower-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0393064476\">The Swerve: How the World Became Modern<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=rebuithetower-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0393064476\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\nBy Stephen Greenblatt<br \/>\n356 Pages<\/p>\n<p>Greenblatt chronicles the fortuitous discovery and\u00a0reintroduction\u00a0of Lucretius&#8217; \u00a0epic poem\u00a0<em>De Rerum Natura<\/em>\u00a0(On the Nature of Things) by the\u00a0fascinating\u00a0Poggio Bracciolini. \u00a0The story is told mostly as a narrative focused on the main character of Poggio, a 15th century Humanist, book hunter, papal secretary, social climber and admirer of ancient thought. \u00a0The story fluidly weaves together Greek and Roman\u00a0Epicurean\u00a0philosophy and its\u00a0accompanying\u00a0historical context with middle age monastic scholarship and the budding Humanist enlightenment. \u00a0Greenblatt (Editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature) highlights the Epicurian ideas expressed in\u00a0beautiful\u00a0prose in the poet Lucretius&#8217; masterwork and their refraction throughout a diverse collection\u00a0Enlightenment\u00a0though and literature including everything from the works of Shakespeare to Montaigne to Jefferson. <em>De Rerum Natura<\/em>\u00a0appeared in the mid 1st century BC \u00a0and expressed radical ideas including atomism, a material soul, the lack of an afterlife, advocacy of the pursuit of pleasure, and a theology that dismissed god as taking an active role in the world. \u00a0Suppressed\u00a0by early Christianity these ideas survived, ironically, only by the heroic and wrote efforts by monastic scholars who\u00a0copied\u00a0the works and preserved the knowledge while keeping it tightly controlled.<\/p>\n<p>Greenblatt concentrates mainly on the historical context of the poems&#8217; creation,\u00a0disappearance\u00a0and \u00a0rediscovery giving details of 1400 and 1500 papal corruption and political\u00a0upheaval, Roman decline, dark age monasticism and early Greek and late Roman though\u00a0with very \u00a0little study of the actual poem itself. \u00a0This is not entirely bad as it gives the reader a taste of \u00a0what Lucretius has to offer and motivates them to pursue the actual text. \u00a0In summary Greenblatt has taken one chance moment in history (the swerve) and weaved it into a thoroughly enjoyable tapestry\u00a0connecting\u00a0ancient and modern thought. \u00a0This book is highly recommended for anyone with interested in middle european history, literature, and the connection between ancient thought and the birth of Humanism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Swerve: How the World Became Modern By Stephen Greenblatt 356 Pages Greenblatt chronicles the fortuitous discovery and\u00a0reintroduction\u00a0of Lucretius&#8217; \u00a0epic poem\u00a0De Rerum Natura\u00a0(On the Nature of Things) by the\u00a0fascinating\u00a0Poggio Bracciolini. \u00a0The story is told mostly as a narrative focused on the main character of Poggio, a 15th century Humanist, book hunter, papal secretary, social climber [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidclausen.org\/tower\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}