Summary Of How The World Became Modern By Stephen Greenblatt

Books have been transformed and changed throughout the history of time. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, written by Stephen Greenblatt, tells of the book hunter, Poggio Bracciolini, and his quest in the discovery a copy of On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius. In Poggio’s journey, the author describes in grave detail the development of books from old monasteries, how they were reproduced during that time, and how they lasted so long. The beginning of the book tells of the man mentioned before, Poggio, who was traveling through Germany on a hunt. At that time, people showed there social status and job occupation on their sleeve, literally. But everyone Poggio had passed had no idea what he was or could identify him. He then

Not only did he know exactly where to go to find old manuscripts but he had the skills needed to get the old manuscripts. Poggio knew that old monasteries were the place to go to find the old manuscripts he was looking for. Monasteries at the time were the only institutions that cared about books themselves. They kept the books and scrolls during the very prosperous times of the Roman Empire as well as during the Dark Ages when the empire fell apart. Poggio was on a book hunt and because of his past, he had to right skills suited to succeed in the hunt. What allowed him to convince the people of the monastery to admit him was first, he was very familiar with the Church, from being the pope’s secretary, but also he had fluency in Church Latin and personal appeal. He was able to then recognize the manuscripts with value because of his knowledge in Roman writing. Finally he had great transcription skills, which allowed him to copy the books he desired there, instead of trying to get the monastery to permit him to take the

St. Benedict created monastic rules that required the monks to read aloud along with manual labor. They therefore needed books to satisfy the necessity of reading. After the continued use and reading of the books, they obviously began to fall apart, no matter how gently the monks were with the books. Books at this time were made from papyrus, a plant that was cut into thin sheets and glued together to make a scroll. Papyrus was very successful in the beginning but like all things, it gradually got brittle and therefore broke. Because of the continued use on the books and them falling apart, the monastic rules required monks to buy new books when they no longer were together. Soon later the book market fell apart. Therefore, the monastic rules then made the monks begin copying the books they possessed mandatory. The monks were to copy the books word for word, because the rules also discouraged them from thinking on their own, and consequently copied the books whether they had errors or knew how to improve the texts. Because they copied them word for word, it allowed the accuracy in future generations to be able to discover them and have the closest to original as