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The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization - Softcover

Puchner, Martin

 
9780812988277: The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0812988272 ISBN 13: 9780812988277
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

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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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature and reveals 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. Indeed, literature has touched the lives of generations and changed the course of history. At the heart of this book are works, some long-lost and rediscovered, that have shaped civilization: the first written masterpiece, the Epic of Gilgamesh; Ezra's Hebrew Bible; the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus; and the first great novel in world literature, The Tale of Genji, written by a Japanese woman known as Murasaki. Visiting Baghdad, Puchner tells of Scheherazade and the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, and in the Americas we watch the astonishing survival of the Maya epic Popol Vuh. Cervantes, who invented the modern novel, battles pirates both real (when he is taken prisoner) and literary (when a fake sequel to Don Quixote is published). We learn of Benjamin Franklin's pioneering work as a media entrepreneur, watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. We visit Troy, Pergamum, and China, and we speak with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, as well as the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa. Throughout The Written World, Puchner's delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions-writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself-that have shaped religion, politics, commerce, people, 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.

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chapter 1

Alexander’s Pillow Book

336 b.c.e.—­Macedonia

Alexander of Macedonia is called the Great because he managed to unify the proud Greek city-­states, conquer every kingdom between Greece and Egypt, defeat the mighty Persian army, and create an empire that stretched all the way to India—­in less than thirteen years. People have wondered ever since how a ruler from a minor Greek kingdom could accomplish such a feat. But there was always a second question, more intriguing to me, which was why Alexander wanted to conquer Asia in the first place.

In contemplating this question, I found myself focusing on three objects that Alexander carried with him throughout his military campaign and that he put under his pillow every night, three objects that summed up the way he saw his campaign. The first was a dagger. Next to his dagger, Alexander kept a box. And inside the box, he placed the most precious of the three objects: a copy of his favorite text, the Iliad.

How did Alexander come by these three objects, and what did they mean to him?

Alexander slept on a dagger because he wanted to escape his father’s fate of being assassinated. The box he had seized from Darius, his Persian opponent. And the Iliad he had brought to Asia because it was the story through which he saw his campaign and life, a foundational text that captured the mind of a prince who would go on to conquer the world.

Homer’s epic had been a foundational text for the Greeks for generations. For Alexander, it acquired the status of an almost sacred text, which is why he carried it with him on his campaign. It is what texts, especially foundational ones, do: They change the way we see the world and also the way we act upon it. This was certainly the case with Alexander. He was induced not only to read and study this text, but also to reenact it. Alexander, the reader, put himself into the story, viewing his own life and trajectory in the light of Homer’s Achilles. Alexander the Great is well known as a larger-­than-­life king. It turns out that he was also a larger-­than-­life reader.

A Young Achilles

Alexander learned the lesson of the dagger while still a prince, at a turning point in his life. His father, King Philip II of Macedonia, was marrying off a daughter, and no one could afford to decline his invitation. Emissaries from the Greek city-­states would have been sent, along with visitors from recently conquered lands in Thrace, where the Danube met the Black Sea. Perhaps even some Persians were in the crowd, attracted by King Philip’s military successes. Alexander’s father stood on the eve of a major assault on Asia Minor, striking fear in the heart of Darius III, king of Persia. The mood in the old Macedonian capital, Aegae, was exuberant, because King Philip was famous for throwing lavish parties. Everyone had assembled in the great theater, eager for the proceedings to begin.

Alexander must have watched the preparations with ambivalence. He had been groomed to be his father’s successor from an early age, with forced marches and training in the martial arts. He had become a famous horseman, astonishing his father by breaking an unmanageable horse when he was in his early teens. King Philip had also seen to Alexander’s education in public speaking and had made sure that his son would learn proper Greek in addition to the mountain dialect spoken in Macedonia. (Throughout his life, Alexander would revert back to the Macedonian dialect when enraged.) But now it seemed that Philip, who had invested so much in Alexander, might alter his plans for succession. He was marrying his daughter to his brother-­in-­law, who might well become Alexander’s rival. If the marriage produced a son, Alexander could be replaced altogether. Philip was a master at knitting new alliances, preferably through marriage. Alexander knew that his father would not hesitate to break a promise if it served his purpose.

There was no more time for musing: Philip was entering the theater. He came alone, without his usual guards, to demonstrate confidence and control. Never had Macedonia been more powerful and more respected. If the campaign into Asia Minor succeeded, Philip would become known as the Greek leader who had attacked and defeated the Persian Empire on its own shores.

Suddenly, an armed man rushed toward Philip. A dagger was drawn, and the king fell to the ground. People ran toward him. Where was the attacker? He had managed to escape. A few bodyguards spotted him outside and gave chase. He was running toward a horse. But his foot became entangled in vines; he stumbled and fell. His pursuers caught up with him, and, after a short fight, he was put to the sword. Back in the theater, the king was lying in his blood, dead. Macedonia, the Greek alliance, and the army assembled to take on Persia were without a head.

For the rest of his life Alexander would protect himself with a dagger, even at night, to avoid his father’s fate.

Had Darius of Persia sent the assassin to prevent Philip’s assault on Asia Minor? If Darius was behind the murder, he had miscalculated. Alexander used the murder as a pretext to get rid of his potential rivals, seize the throne, and launch an expedition to secure the Macedonian borders to the north and the loyalty of the Greek city-­states to the south. Then he was ready to take on Darius. He crossed the Hellespont with a large force, retracing the path the Persian army had taken when it invaded Greece generations ago. Alexander’s conquest of Persia had begun.

Before he confronted the Persian army, Alexander made a detour to Troy. He didn’t do so for military reasons. Even though Troy was well situated near the narrow waterway between Asia and Europe, it had lost the importance it once had. Nor did he go there to capture Darius. In making Troy his first stop in Asia, Alexander revealed a different motivation for his conquest of Asia, one that could be found in the text he carried around with him everywhere: Homer’s Iliad.

Homer was the avenue by which many people had approached Troy ever since the stories of the Trojan War had become a foundational text. It’s certainly the reason I went to Troy. I had read a children’s version of the Iliad while growing up before graduating to more faithful translations. When I studied Greek in college, I even read parts in the original, with the help of a dictionary. The famous scenes and characters from this text have been in my mind ever since, including the opening, which finds the Greek army having laid siege to Troy for nine years and Achilles withdrawing from battle because Agamemnon had taken Achilles’ female captive, Briseis, for himself. Without their best fighter, the Greeks are hard pressed by the Trojans. But then Achilles returns to battle and kills the most important Trojan, Hector, and drags his body around the city walls. With the help of the gods, Paris manages to retaliate and kill Achilles by aiming his arrow at Achilles’ heel. I also remembered the war among the gods, Athena fighting on the side of the Greeks and Aphrodite on the side of the Trojans. And the strange backstory of Paris crowning Aphrodite the most beautiful goddess and receiving Menelaus’ wife, Helen, as a reward, which sets off the war. The most striking image of them all was of course the Trojan horse with Greek soldiers hidden inside its belly, although I realized, to my surprise, once I read more accurate translations, that the last part of the war was actually not recounted in the Iliad and only briefly in the Odyssey.

When I think of the story of Troy in the Iliad, there is one scene that has stayed in my mind above all others. Hector has returned from the battle that is...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812988272
ISBN 13 
9780812988277
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
464
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

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