New Releases by Stephen Greenblatt

El nuevo libro de Stephen Greenblatt, autor de El giro, arroja luz a la enigmática figura de Christopher Marlowe, el genio del Renacimiento inglés que rivalizó con el mismo Shakespeare. Pobre, espía, transgresor, genio. Stephen Greenblatt, el autor de El giro, revela la vida fascinante y subversiva de Christopher Marlowe, inspiración y rival de Shakespeare. En una Inglaterra isabelina asfixiada por la represión, la censura y el miedo, el hijo de un zapatero de Canterbury logró escapar de su destino a través de las palabras. Dotado de un oído prodigioso para la poesía en latín que le abriría las puertas hacia la imaginación visionaria, la belleza, el deseo transgresor y un escepticismo peligroso, Marlowe encabezó una explosión espectacular en la literatura, la lengua y la cultura inglesas que allanaría el camino al éxito de muchos otros, incluido su joven colaborador William Shakespeare. Con una prosa ágil y deslumbrante, Stephen Greenblatt, autor ganador del Pulitzer y referente absoluto en estudios literarios, reconstruye la turbulenta vida de Marlowe y la trascendencia de su obra, desde sus traducciones eróticas de Ovidio, hasta Tamerlán el Grande y Doctor Fausto. Al mismo tiempo, explora cómo las personas que rodearon a Marlowe, y las transformaciones que impulsaron, dieron origen al poder económico, científico y cultural del mundo moderno.

A New York Times Book Review Editors'' Choice A Kirkus Reviews, The Economist, The New Yorker, Library Journal, BookPage, Christian Science Monitor, and Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2025 One of the Washington Post''s "Notable Works of Nonfiction" of 2025 One of NPR''s "Books We Love" of 2025 One of Bookbub''s Best Nonfiction of 2025 Featured in the Wall Street Journal Guide to Holiday Gift Books “A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist. Essential and addictive reading.” —Maggie O''Farrell, author of Hamnet Poor boy. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known—and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. A torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, like Christopher Marlowe, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture. His astonishing literary success will, in turn, nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare. Dark Renaissance illuminates both Marlowe’s times and the origins and significance of his work—from his erotic translations of Ovid to his portrayal of unfettered ambition in a triumphant Tamburlaine to Doctor Faustus, his unforgettable masterpiece about making a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge. Introducing us to Marlowe’s transgressive genius in the form of a thrilling page-turner, Stephen Greenblatt brings a penetrating understanding of the literary work to reveal the inner world of the author, bringing to life a homosexual atheist who was tormented by his own compromises, who refused to toe the party line, and who was murdered just when he had found love. Meanwhile, he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world including Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Über das Ende der religiösen Vielfalt und Akzeptanz im alten Rom - eingeläutet durch das Christentum. Das alte Rom war in vielerlei Hinsicht fortschrittlich. Unzählige Götter und Religionen lebten in der Millionenstadt am Tiber nebeneinander - es war eine politische Strategie des Weltreiches, andere Kulturen und deren Rituale zu integrieren, aber auch Religionskritik und Skepsis zu akzeptieren. Wie sich das mit dem Aufkommen des Christentums änderte und wie religiöse Intoleranz und Toleranz entstanden, zeichnet Stephen Greenblatt in seinem Essay nach. Damit zeigt er auch, wie sich aus der kultischen Vielfalt der Antike eine Gesellschaft entwickelte, die auf Reinheit und Einheitlichkeit, auf Zerstörung und Zensur setzte. Vor allem die materialistische Vorstellung völlig unbeteiligter Götter erwies sich bald als etwas, das unter keinen Umständen toleriert werden konnte und dessen Träger (ob Bücher oder Menschen) vernichtet werden musste.

How does a truly disastrous leader - a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant - come to power? How, and why, does a tyrant hold on to power? And what goes on in the hidden recesses of the tyrant''s soul? For help in understanding our most urgent contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no peer. As an ageing, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social and psychological roots and the twisted consequences of tyranny. What he discovered in his characters remains remarkably relevant today. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues and imagined how they might be stopped. In Tyrant, Stephen Greenblatt examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeare''s most famous plays -- from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found in Measure for Measure and The Winter''s Tale. Tyrant is a highly relevant exploration of Shakespeare''s work that sheds new light on the workings of power.

Stephen Greenblatt, autor de El giro, estudia en este libro la historia del relato bíblico de la creación de Adán y Eva, que ha marcado nuestras concepciones sobre el origen y destino de la especie humana. Nacido en Babilonia en la época del exilio del pueblo judío, e influido por los mitos de viejas religiones, el cristianismo convirtió el mito en un dogma y los artistas del Renacimiento lo encarnaron a semejanza de los hombres y mujeres de su tiempo. Este hilo conductor le sirve a Greenblatt para guiarnos en un fascinante recorrido por la historia de la cultura y de las creencias, desde el relato de la «Vida de Adán y Eva» descubierto en Nag Hammadi en 1945, pasando por San Agustín, por Milton o por las dudas de Darwin, hasta un presente en que, pese a los avances de la paleontología y de la biología evolutiva, millones de nuestros contemporáneos siguen considerándolo una verdad histórica.

"A marvelous book . . . a compelling and a powerful one. Nothing so original has ever been written on European responses to ''the wonder of the New World.''" —Anthony Pagden, Times Literary Supplement Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author A masterwork of history and cultural studies, Marvelous Possessions is a brilliant meditation on the interconnected ways in which Europeans of the Age of Discovery represented non-European peoples and took possession of their lands, particularly in the New World. In a series of innovative readings of travel narratives, judicial documents, and official reports, Stephen Greenblatt shows that the experience of the marvelous, central to both art and philosophy, was manipulated by Columbus and others in the service of colonial appropriation. Much more than simply a collection of the odd and exotic, Marvelous Possessions is both a highly original extension of Greenblatt''s thinking on a subject that has permeated his career and a thrilling tale of wandering, kidnapping, and go-betweens—of daring improvisation, betrayal, and violence. Reaching back to the ancient Greeks, forward to the present, and, in his new preface, even to fantastical meetings between humans and aliens in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Greenblatt would have us ask: How is it possible, in a time of disorientation, hatred of the other, and possessiveness, to keep the capacity for wonder—for tolerant recognition of cultural difference—from being poisoned? "Greenblatt writes with sophistication, wit, and considerable grace. I was intrigued throughout by the many flavors of his erudition, intelligence, and style." —Ronald Wright, The Globe and Mail "For the most engaging and illuminating perspective of all, read Marvelous Possessions ." —Laura Shapiro, Newsweek

Selected as a book of the year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times What is it about Adam and Eve’s story that fascinates us? What does it tell us about how our species lives, dies, works or has sex? The mythic tale of Adam and Eve has shaped conceptions of human origins and destiny for centuries. Stemming from a few verses in an ancient book, it became not just the foundation of three major world faiths, but has evolved through art, philosophy and science to serve as the mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires. In a quest that begins at the dawn of time, Stephen Greenblatt takes us from ancient Babylonia to the forests of east Africa. We meet evolutionary biologists and fossilised ancestors; we grapple with morality and marriage in Milton’s Paradise Lost; and we decide if the Fall is the unvarnished truth or fictional allegory.

Stephen Greenblatt argued in these celebrated essays that the art of the Renaissance could only be understood in the context of the society from which it sprang. His approach - ''New Historicism'' - drew from history, anthropology, Marxist theory, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis and in the process, blew apart the academic boundaries insul

Shakespeare ist wohl der bekannteste Dramatiker aller Zeiten, doch über sein Leben wissen wir so gut wie nichts. Kein Brief blieb von ihm erhalten, wir kennen nur ein paar dürre Lebensdaten, vereinzelte Schriftsätze aus Prozessen, die er betrieb – und ein überaus nüchternes Testament, in dem er seiner Frau sein zweitbestes Bett vermacht. In seiner hochgelobten Biographie versucht Stephen Greenblatt mit detektivischem Scharfsinn, die Lücken dieser Lebensgeschichte zu füllen und hinter das Geheimnis zu kommen, wie aus einem talentierten Jungen aus einer englischen Kleinstadt der größte Dramatiker aller Zeiten werden konnte, kurz: wie Shakespeare zu Shakespeare wurde.

Setting out to explain his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet''s father, Stephen Greenblatt provides an account of the rise and fall of purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution - as well as a new reading of the power of Hamlet.

Ausgezeichnet mit dem Pulitzerpreis und dem National Book Award Bestsellerautor Stephen Greenblatt führt uns in seinem neuen Buch an die Zeitenwende zwischen dem Ende des Mittelalters und dem Beginn der Renaissance. Er folgt dabei den Spuren von Lukrez'' „De rerum natura” – einem antiken Text, der zu Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts wiederentdeckt wurde, das Denken der Menschen radikal veränderte und die Welt in die Moderne führte. An einem kalten Januartag des Jahres 1417 fällt dem Humanisten Poggio Bracciolini in einem deutschen Kloster ein altes Manuskript in die Hände. Damit rettet er das letzte vorhandene Exemplar von Lukrez’ antikem Meisterwerk „De rerum natura” vor dem Vergessen, nicht ahnend, dass dieses Buch die damalige Welt in ihren Grundfesten erschüttern wird. Denn der antike Text mit seinen unerhörten Gedanken über die Natur der Dinge eröffnet den Menschen des ausgehenden Mittelalters neue Horizonte, befeuert die beginnende Renaissance und bildet die Basis unserer modernen Weltsicht. Farbenfroh und spannend beschreibt Stephen Greenblatt, wie die Verbreitung des Buches die Renaissance beeinflusste und bedeutende Künstler wie Botticelli und Shakespeare, aber auch Denker wie Giordano Bruno und Galileo Galilei prägte. Greenblatt bietet einen neuen Blick auf die Geburtsstunde der Renaissance, der zugleich zeigt, wie ein einzelnes Buch dem Lauf der Geschichte eine neue Richtung geben kann.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction • Winner of the National Book Award • New York Times Bestseller • A Kirkus Reviews "Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far)" Renowned scholar Stephen Greenblatt brings the past to vivid life in what is at once a supreme work of scholarship, a literary page-turner, and a thrilling testament to the power of the written word. In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery, Lucretius’ ancient poem On the Nature of Things, had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years. It was a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions. Its return to circulation changed the course of history. The poem’s vision would shape the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein, and—in the hands of Thomas Jefferson—leave its trace on the Declaration of Independence. From the gardens of the ancient philosophers to the dark chambers of monastic scriptoria during the Middle Ages to the cynical, competitive court of a corrupt and dangerous pope, Greenblatt brings Poggio’s search and discovery to life in a way that deepens our understanding of the world we live in now. “An intellectually invigorating, nonfiction version of a Dan Brown–like mystery-in-the-archives thriller.” —Boston Globe

Renaissance Self-Fashioning is a study of sixteenth-century life and literature that spawned a new era of scholarly inquiry. Stephen Greenblatt examines the structure of selfhood as evidenced in major literary figures of the English Renaissance—More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare—and finds that in the early modern period new questions surrounding the nature of identity heavily influenced the literature of the era. Now a classic text in literary studies, Renaissance Self-Fashioning continues to be of interest to students of the Renaissance, English literature, and the new historicist tradition, and this new edition includes a preface by the author on the book''s creation and influence. "No one who has read [Greenblatt''s] accounts of More, Tyndale, Wyatt, and others can fail to be moved, as well as enlightened, by an interpretive mode which is as humane and sympathetic as it is analytical. These portraits are poignantly, subtly, and minutely rendered in a beautifully lucid prose alive in every sentence to the ambivalences and complexities of its subjects."—Harry Berger Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz

The Ninth Edition offers more complete works and more teachable groupings than ever before, the apparatus you trust, and a new, free Supplemental Ebook with more than 1,000 additional texts. Read by more than 8 million students, The Norton Anthology of English Literature sets the standard and remains an unmatched value.

"A book ahead of its time. . . . revolutionized the ways that Shakespeareans thought of comedy in relation to its social setting—especially festive comedy." —James Shapiro, Columbia University In this classic work, acclaimed Shakespeare critic C. L. Barber argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare''s comedies. Brilliantly interweaving anthropology, social history, and literary criticism, Barber traces the inward journey—psychological, bodily, spiritual—of the comedies: from confusion, raucous laughter, aching desire, and aggression, to harmony. Revealing the interplay between social custom and dramatic form, the book shows how the Elizabethan antithesis between everyday and holiday comes to life in the comedies'' combination of seriousness and levity. This new edition includes a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt, who discusses Barber''s influence on later scholars and the recent critical disagreements that Barber has inspired, showing that Shakespeare''s Festive Comedy is as vital today as when it was originally published. "A first-rate work of impressive imagination." — Modern Philology "The best book on the subject that I know. . . . Indispensable for students of Shakespeare''s comedy." —Francis Fergusson "Far and away the most illuminating yet to appear on its subject." —Arthur M. Eastman, in A Short History of Shakespearean Criticism

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author''s "analysis of both Shakespeare and the Renaissance is informative and often original" ( Financial Times ). Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes—of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. With the elegance and verve for which he is well known, Stephen Greenblatt, author of the bestselling Will in the World, shows that Shakespeare was strikingly averse to such absolutes and constantly probed the possibility of freedom from them. Again and again, Shakespeare confounds the designs and pretensions of kings, generals, and churchmen. Greenblatt explores this rich theme by addressing four of Shakespeare''s preoccupations across all the genres in which he worked. He first considers the idea of beauty in Shakespeare''s works, specifically his challenge to the cult of featureless perfection and his interest in distinguishing marks. He then turns to Shakespeare''s interest in murderous hatred, most famously embodied in Shylock but seen also in the character Bernardine in Measure for Measure. Next Greenblatt considers the idea of Shakespearean authority—that is, Shakespeare''s deep sense of the ethical ambiguity of power, including his own. Ultimately, Greenblatt takes up Shakespearean autonomy, in particular the freedom of artists, guided by distinctive forms of perception, to live by their own laws and to claim that their creations are singularly unconstrained. A book that could only have been written by Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare''s Freedom is a wholly original and eloquent meditation by the most acclaimed and influential Shakespearean of our time.

Cultural Mobility offers a model for understanding the patterns of meaning that human societies create. It has emerged under the very distinguished editorial guidance of Stephen Greenblatt and represents a new way of thinking about culture and cultures with which scholars in many disciplines will need to engage.

This biography enables readers to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world''s greatest playwright.

For almost twenty years, new historicism has been a highly controversial and influential force in literary and cultural studies. In Practicing the New Historicism, two of its most distinguished practitioners reflect on its surprisingly disparate sources and far-reaching effects. In lucid and jargon-free prose, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on five central aspects of new historicism: recurrent use of anecdotes, preoccupation with the nature of representations, fascination with the history of the body, sharp focus on neglected details, and skeptical analysis of ideology. Arguing that new historicism has always been more a passionately engaged practice of questioning and analysis than an abstract theory, Gallagher and Greenblatt demonstrate this practice in a series of characteristically dazzling readings of works ranging from paintings by Joos van Gent and Paolo Uccello to Hamlet and Great Expectations. By juxtaposing analyses of Renaissance and nineteenth-century topics, the authors uncover a number of unexpected contrasts and connections between the two periods. Are aspects of the dispute over the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist detectable in British political economists'' hostility to the potato? How does Pip''s isolation in Great Expectations shed light on Hamlet''s doubt? Offering not only an insider''s view of new historicism, but also a lively dialogue between a Renaissance scholar and a Victorianist, Practicing the New Historicism is an illuminating and unpredictable performance by two of America''s most respected literary scholars. "Gallagher and Greenblatt offer a brilliant introduction to new historicism. In their hands, difficult ideas become coherent and accessible."—Choice "A tour de force of new literary criticism. . . . Gallagher and Greenblatt''s virtuoso readings of paintings, potatoes (yes, spuds), religious ritual, and novels—all ''texts''—as well as essays on criticism and the significance of anecdotes, are likely to take their place as model examples of the qualities of the new critical school that they lead. . . . A zesty work for those already initiated into the incestuous world of contemporary literary criticism-and for those who might like to see what all the fuss is about."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review