Some further thoughts while reading:
No doubt Greenblatt is a raconteur. I thoroughly enjoy his descriptions of how the book, as we know it today, developed, the scrolls-papyrus-vellum and the copying of manuscripts in the monasteries.
But I keep questioning him; not a bad thing for a writer like Greenblatt I think. A good book can stand some 'pummeling' around.
I find that he walks over history with very light feet.
Spoiler:
P.49.'Between the sixth century and the middle of the eighth century, Greek and Latin classics virtually ceased to be copied at all. What had begun as an active campaign to forget—a pious attack on pagan ideas—had evolved into actual forgetting. The ancient poems, philosophical treatises, and political speeches, at one time so threatening and so alluring, were no longer in anyone’s mind, let alone on anyone’s lips. They had been reduced to the condition of mute things, sheets of parchment, stitched together, covered with unread words.'
P.52.'Who knew what was sitting on those shelves, untouched perhaps for centuries? Tattered manuscripts that had chanced to survive the long nightmare of chaos and destruction, in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire, might well have found their way to remote Fulda. Rabanus’s monks could have made the scratching or gagging sign for pagan books to copy, and those copies, having fallen into oblivion, would be awaiting the humanist’s revivifying touch.'
What about the Arab expansion into Spain during the Umayyad Caliphate, A.D. 661–750? This will lead to the Islamic Golden Age (ca. 850-1250) which precedes and contributes to the Italian Renaissance (ca 1200-1600) in Europe. A period of great cultural changes that marks the beginning of the early modern Europe.
After the Islamic conquests in Andalusia (Spain), famous Islamic scientists work and live in the great cities of Andalusia: Cordoba, Sevilla, Granada and also in Toledo. Hellenic philosophy, science, medicine and literature is translated into Latin and gradually changes the medieval science, till then dominated by the ideas of the Catholic Church.
And this swerve of the world....which world does Greenblatt mean? His narration till now seems to center on Germany and Italy. What about the rest of the Western world?
I'm only halfway through this book, but I hope to see some of my questions answered. I find I cannot read this book only on the superficial level of the search for a manuscript.
