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Quote by Stephen Greenblatt

“Romans had nearly abandoned serious reading." Barbarian and Christian raids were in the background of the phenomena that struck. As the empire slowly crumbled, as a loss of cultural moorings, a descent into febrile triviality, In place of the philosopher, the singer is called in. And in place of the orator, the teacher of stagecraft.”

Quote by Stephen Greenblatt

Book:The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
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Work

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

This book delves into the significance of the rediscovery of classical texts, particularly Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things, and its influence on the intellectual and cultural shifts that marked the beginning of modernity. more

Author

Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt is a renowned literary critic born on November 7, 1943. His research focuses on Renaissance literature, particularly the works of Shakespeare. Known for his innovative research methods and interdisciplinary approach, Greenblatt has had a profound impact on the field of literary criticism. more

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“By the middle twentieth century, few European nation-states had not at one time or another figured themselves as 'the outpost of Western Christian civilisation': France, imperial Germany, the Habsburg Reich, Poland with its self-image as przedmurze (bastion), even tsarist Russia. Each of these nation-state myths identified "barbarism" as the condition or ethic of their immediate eastward neighbour: for the French, the Germans were barbarous, for the Germans it was the Slavs, for the Poles the Russians, for the Russians the Mongol and Turkic peoples of Central Asia and eventually the Chinese.”

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“Chen pointed to the cub. "There's your brute." Then he pointed to the pups. "And there's your domestication. For the most part, Westerners are descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. They burst out of the primeval forest like wild animals after a couple of thousand years of Greek and Roman civilization, and sacked ancient Rome. They eat steak, cheese, and butter with knives and forks, which is how they've retained more primitive wildness than the traditional farming races. Over the past hundred years, domesticated China has been bullied by the brutish West. It's not surprising that for thousands of years the Chinese colossus has been spectacularly pummeled by tiny nomadic peoples.”

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