Stephen Greenblatt
What Shakespeare Actually Wrote About the Plague
In the works of the playwright, who lived his entire life in the shadow of bubonic plague, epidemic disease is present as a steady undertone, surfacing most vividly in everyday exclamations of rage and disgust.
Invisible Bullets: What Lucretius Taught Us About Pandemics
The ancient philosopher contemplates our place in the material world when particles hostile to us begin to move.
The Strange Terror of Watching the Coronavirus Take Rome
In the past few weeks, as the virus spread, the city emptied out.
What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us About Adam and Eve
Closely resembling us, they show us what it is to live without shame and without understanding that they are destined to die.
Shakespeare’s Cure for Xenophobia
What “The Merchant of Venice” taught me about ethnic hatred and the literary imagination.
How St. Augustine Invented Sex
He rescued Adam and Eve from obscurity, devised the doctrine of original sin—and the rest is sexual history.
What Shakespeare Actually Wrote About the Plague
In the works of the playwright, who lived his entire life in the shadow of bubonic plague, epidemic disease is present as a steady undertone, surfacing most vividly in everyday exclamations of rage and disgust.
Invisible Bullets: What Lucretius Taught Us About Pandemics
The ancient philosopher contemplates our place in the material world when particles hostile to us begin to move.
The Strange Terror of Watching the Coronavirus Take Rome
In the past few weeks, as the virus spread, the city emptied out.
What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us About Adam and Eve
Closely resembling us, they show us what it is to live without shame and without understanding that they are destined to die.
Shakespeare’s Cure for Xenophobia
What “The Merchant of Venice” taught me about ethnic hatred and the literary imagination.
How St. Augustine Invented Sex
He rescued Adam and Eve from obscurity, devised the doctrine of original sin—and the rest is sexual history.