Martin Puchner

The Written World (eBook, ePUB)

The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The story of literature in sixteen acts-from Homer to Harry Potter, including The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they shaped world history In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the how stories and literature have created the world we have today. Through sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature, he shows us how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. We meet Murasaki, a lady from eleventh-century Japan who wrote the first novel, The Tale of Genji, and follow the adventures of Miguel de Cervantes as he battles pirates, both seafaring and literary. We watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. Puchner takes us to Troy, Pergamum, and China, speaks with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, and introduces us to the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa. This delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions-writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself-that have shaped people, commerce, and history. In a book that Elaine Scarry has praised as "unique and spellbinding," Puchner shows how literature turned our planet into a written world. Praise for The Written World "It's with exhilaration . . . that one hails Martin Puchner's book, which asserts not merely the importance of literature but its all-importance. . . . Storytelling is as human as breathing."-The New York Times Book Review "Puchner has a keen eye for the ironies of history. . . . His ideal is 'world literature,' a phrase he borrows from Goethe. . . . The breathtaking scope and infectious enthusiasm of this book are a tribute to that ideal."-The Sunday Times (U.K.) "Enthralling . . . Perfect reading for a long chilly night . . . [Puchner] brings these works and their origins to vivid life."-BookPage "Well worth a read, to find out how come we read."-Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Seitenzahl: 464
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. Oktober 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780812998948
• Artikelnr.: 49542947

Autorenporträt

Martin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His prizewinning books cover subjects from philosophy to the arts, and his bestselling six-volume Norton Anthology of World Literature and his HarvardX MOOC (massive open online course) have brought four thousand years of literature to students across the globe. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: Earthrise 
                                                                                                           
Map and Timeline of the Written World         
                                                                        
 
Chapter 1: Alexander’s Pillow
Book                                                                                      
Chapter 2: King of the Universe: Of Gilgamesh and
Ashurbanipal                                        
Chapter 3: Ezra and the Creation of Holy
Scripture                                                                
Chapter 4: Learning from the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and
Jesus                                  
Chapter 5: Murasaki and The Tale of Genji: The First Great Novel in World
History            
Chapter 6: One Thousand and One Nights with
Scheherazade                                               
Chapter 7: Gutenberg, Luther, and the New Public of
Print                                                    
Chapter 8: The Popol Vuh and Maya Culture: A Second, Independent Literary
Tradition      
Chapter 9: Don Quixote and the
Pirates                                                                                  
Chapter 10: Benjamin Franklin: Media Entrepreneur in the Republic of
Letters         
Chapter 11: World Literature: Goethe in
Sicily                                                                       
Chapter 12: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao: Readers of The Communist Manifesto,
Unite!         
Chapter 13: Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn: Writing Against the Soviet
State              
Chapter 14: The Epic of Sunjata and the Wordsmiths of West
Africa                         
Chapter 15: Postcolonial Literature: Derek Walcott, Poet of the
Caribbean                             
Chapter 16: From Hogwarts to
India                                                                                      
 
Acknowledgements                                                                                                                 
Notes                                                                                                                                       
Illustration
Credits                                                                                                      
            
Index