The rise and fall of Adam and Eve
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-391) and index.

Stephen Greenblatt explores the enduring story of humanity's first parents. Tracking the tale into the deep past, Greenblatt uncovers the tremendous theological, artistic, and cultural investment over centuries that made these fictional figures so profoundly resonant in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds and, finally, so very 'real' to millions of people even in the present.

"Bolder, even, than the ambitious books for which Stephen Greenblatt is already renowned, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve explores the enduring story of humanity's first parents, and through them, of Western civilization. Tracking the tale into the deep past, to the Hebrews' exile in Babylon, Greenblatt explores the tremendous theological, artistic, and cultural creativity over the centuries that made Adam and Eve so profoundly resonant, and continues to make them, finally, so very "real" to millions of people even in the present. Both a hymn to human responsibility and a dark fable about human wretchedness, their story--told in only a few verses in an ancient book--has served as a mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of human fears and desires. With the uncanny brilliance he previously brought to his depictions of William Shakespeare and Poggio Bracciolini (the humanist monk who is the protagonist of The Swerve), Greenblatt explores the intensely personal engagement of Augustine, Dürer, and Milton in this mammoth project of collective creation, While he also limns the diversity of the story's offspring: rich allegory, vicious misogyny, deep moral insight, and some of the greatest triumphs of art and literature. The biblical origin story, Greenblatt argues, is a model for what the humanities still have to offer: not the scientific nature of things, but rather a deep encounter with problems that have gripped our species for as long as we can recall and that continue to fascinate and trouble us today."--Jacket.