About the Book
In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known—and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. A torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, like Christopher Marlowe, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism.
What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture. His astonishing literary success will, in turn, nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.
Dark Renaissance illuminates both Marlowe’s times and the origins and significance of his work—from his erotic translations of Ovid to his portrayal of unfettered ambition in a triumphant Tamburlaine to Doctor Faustus, his unforgettable masterpiece about making a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge. Introducing us to Marlowe’s transgressive genius in the form of a thrilling page-turner, Stephen Greenblatt brings a penetrating understanding of the literary work to reveal the inner world of the author, bringing to life a homosexual atheist who was tormented by his own compromises, who refused to toe the party line, and who was murdered just when he had found love. Meanwhile, he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world including Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.
About the Author :
Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has written extensively on English Renaissance literature and acts as general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Swerve, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Will in the World, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Review :
"As was clear from Will in the World, such speculative riffs are not a weakness but a mainspring of [Greenblatt’s] biographical approach.... Greenblatt’s speculations are too well informed to be idle."
"In this thrilling and twisty tale, Greenblatt focuses on Christopher Marlowe, the shoemaker’s son famed for provocative plays like “Doctor Faustus.” With a denouement as propulsive as that of any spy novel, he brilliantly captures 16th-century England."
"In Dark Renaissance,’ Mr. Greenblatt tells this murky but exhilarating tale with pace and gusto... No one can speculate with greater authority than Mr. Greenblatt."
"[A] terrific read… ‘Dark Renaissance’ is a thrilling, twisty tale that brilliantly captures the horror and the possibilities of that lost, crepuscular world."
"Stephen Greenblatt has the rare ability to write vivid narratives for the general public that rest on firm scholarly foundations. This gift is particularly valuable in his new book, Dark Renaissance,’... Greenblatt crafts a brilliant recreation of the world Marlowe inhabited."
"Greenblatt has translated a donnish provocation into the sinews of an unforgettable literary biographical tour de force. Almost single-handed, he has curated a rehabilitation of Marlowe's reputation as the greatest rival, collaborator and exact contemporary of the glover's boy from Stratford."
"This gripping biography focuses on Marlowe's brief, brilliant life."
"[E]legant, engrossing... From aristocrats to shopkeepers to “bawdy baskets” (prostitutes), Greenblatt captures the crowds that cut across classes. His analysis is Shakespearean in spirit, crisp and conversational, tipped with puns and wordplay... Dark Renaissance offers a genial tutorial on the vitality of a humanities education, kindled by Greenblatt’s close readings in an era of declining literacy and the rise of AI."
"[R]iveting... In previous books including Will in the World, his best-selling biography of Shakespeare, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Swerve, Greenblatt emphasized the importance of cultural context in understanding literature, the so-called ‘new historicism.’ In Dark Renaissance, he does so with dazzling effects, evoking England circa 1580 as an almost dystopian backwater”"
"An evocative new biography."
"The magic of Dark Renaissance, the usual Greenblatt magic, is the way he uses the individual life to illuminate corners of the surrounding culture."
"Stephen Greenblatt’s attempt to reconstruct the playwright’s story is brilliant."
"Stephen Greenblatt’s superb skills as a literary historian and critic are thrillingly on display in ‘Dark Renaissance’… With its mix of fastidious scholarship, storytelling chops, and educated guesswork, ‘Dark Renaissance’ illuminates a cause for celebration in an age of darkness."
"[A] brilliant work… Dark Renaissance is not to be missed by scholars or admirers of Marlowe or Shakespeare."
"Greenblatt efficiently traces Marlowe’s improbably journey... Greenblatt writes comfortably for a general audience despite his academic background, skillfully melding conventional biography with accessible and informative literary criticism."
"[I]n Dark Renaissance, Greenblatt provides a rollicking good read, full of cunning conjecture about Marlowe’s life."
"A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist. Essential and addictive reading: Stephen Greenblatt’s Kit Marlowe leaps from the page with all the élan and immediacy of his plays."
"Brilliant and riveting. . . . No critic has done more than Stephen Greenblatt to illuminate Marlowe’s world and work."
"A thrilling portrait of the English theatre’s great transgressor. Stephen Greenblatt gives brilliant life to Marlowe's vaunting intellect, his reckless sexuality, his double-dealing with the security services and above all his theatrical imagination, which exploded out of nowhere to transform the Elizabethan stage."
"The era- and genre-transforming radicalism of Christopher Marlowe’s work has never been examined more cogently. . . . In gorgeous, gracefully authoritative prose, Stephen Greenblatt makes the miracle of artistic genius inhabit a recognizably human plane."
"A staggering achievement in character study, about the man who could have been king of the poets had Shakespeare not supplanted him. . . . From the formidable twenty-first-century mind of Stephen Greenblatt, this is an all-inclusive exploration of one of the sixteenth century’s most consequential and extraordinary talents."
"A vivid back-stage tour of the turbulent world from which Marlowe emerged and what may have been his enduring impact on early modern culture. Essential reading."
"Stephen Greenblatt’s writing is effortless, his humor superb, his arguments unanswerable. He brings to life Marlowe in the way that he did Shakespeare. . . . In short, he has done it again: written a totally engrossing, compelling read."
"Effortlessly gripping and unputdownable."
"As evocative as any novel, Stephen Greenblatt takes the reader into the biting cold and dark of the little ice age of Elizabethan England and explores the network of spies, patrons, poets and fraudsters who copied, exploited and trapped Christopher Marlowe. A triumphant piece of storytelling."
"This is such a gleeful piece of writing. Greenblatt writes with his customary exuberance - which, of course, perfectly suits his principal subject, the life and work of Christopher Marlowe."
"A scintillating biography of Christopher Marlowe."
"A thrilling work of historical excavation, [Stephen Greenblatt] brings to life the distant world of Elizabethan England… and its most fascinating figure."
"A scintillating biography of Christopher Marlowe by one of America’s leading humanities scholars."
"Greenblatt excels at immersing the reader in that time and place and has an ear for the delectable turn of phrase. The rich historical detail, thriller-like pacing, and an abundance of intrigue keep the pages turning."
