The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

By: Stephen Greenblatt

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Stephen Greenblatt - Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award- winning author of The Swerve and Will in the World - investigates the life of one of humankind's greatest stories.

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. Comprising only a few ancient verses, the story of Adam and Eve has served as a mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole long history of our fears and desires, as both a hymn to human responsibility and a dark fable about human wretchedness.

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. 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.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2017 Stephen Greenblatt (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Excellent Scholarship and Deeply Appreciated Discussion

This author is serious about his scholarship and it shows. His books are always a pleasure.

The logic of the presentation

The entire presentation was great… sent me back to my art history books. It was a joy to be so engaged

Well Worth Reading

Very interesting history of the story and similar ideas. As well as the people who the story inspired. The book is very well written and researched. I highly recommend

superb treatment of Augustine & John Milton

excellent literary treatment of augustine and John Milton. ties together life and art brilliantly. the movement from pre biblical myth to biblical myth was also fluid and deep. exploring the rich trade offs in different systems of thought.

Read by AI voice?

This is not a living reader, but obviously a computer voice. Whether that consists of ai is not known to me. But it is very distracting and disappointing. Did they think we wouldn’t notice? .