“The Swerve” — Challenging Dogma and Igniting the Modern World
Unveiling the Renaissance: embracing reason, and the power of books
So When Did the World Become Modern?
A colleague of mine — Bill Fulton — a smart guy, fellow scholar, and a fellow devotee of The Dude, The Big Lebowski, told me I needed to read The Swerve (2012).
“Such a great book, man!”
Indeed, the book won the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Stephen Greenblatt is a Professor of Humanities at Harvard. He has penned over 13 works. This work is 356 pages.
Two other works I highly recommend are The Renaissance Self-Fashioning and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.
The Swerve concerns a dude — Poggio Bracciolin — a Florentine bibliophile — who used to work for John XXIII — this Pontiff back then was crooked.
“John XXIII and Benedict XIII were deposed by the council, Gregory XII voluntarily resigned. Then Martin V was elected pope on 11 November 1417 and he was regarded as the legitimate pontiff by the church as a whole” (EWTN).
The Pope was defrocked or something happened — so this smart Dude — Poggio — probably smarter than the Pope, well, he lost his…
