Monday, May 20, 2013

June Reading

Just one piece:



Lucretius: On the Nature of Things (Book1-4) link

To prep for this one, I'm reading a book called 'The Swerve' by Stephen Greenblatt (Amazon link).  The book is about how this poem was found after it had been lost for centuries.  Also about the effect it had on various artists and philosophers from then on.

5 comments:

  1. That's funny. I'm reading "The Swerve" as soon as am finished with the first four books of "On the Nature of Things". I may or may no follow it up with a re-read of C. S. Lewis's "Miracles".

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    1. I'm really enjoying The Swerve. It's an excellent history of the humanists that gave us the study of 'humanities'. It's making me excited to crack open 'On the Nature of Things'.

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    2. I'm more or less enjoying it, but I'm a little miffed at the often one-sided presentation of Medieval Europe.

      I found a good review for The Swerve that sums up its flaws really well:

      http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1217&fulltext=1

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  2. Adam, I just finished 'The Swerve' yesterday and found it very interesting. The least convincing part of it was easily the description of the church as a worshiper of pain and cruelty. I'm glad to see that my instinct wasn't wrong there.
    Thank you for the link to the review. Greenblatt really doesn't sound sharp on the history of the period. What a shame! It's good to know that I should treat the book with some skepticism. I'll have to dig in a bit more on the pre-Renaissance era. I'd like to know why it became prominent and what the real conditions were before it.
    As an aside, reading about monastaries and the Papal schism reminds me of one of my all time favorite books, 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco. I would wholly recommend it to you if you find the period interesting at all.

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