The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization

by Martin Puchner

Overview

The story of literature in sixteen acts—from Homer to Harry Potter, including The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they shaped world history

In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the how stories and literature have created the world we have today. Through sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature, he shows us how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs.

We meet Murasaki, a lady from eleventh-century Japan who wrote the first novel, The Tale of Genji, and follow the adventures of Miguel de Cervantes as he battles pirates, both seafaring and literary. We watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. Puchner takes us to Troy, Pergamum, and China, speaks with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, and introduces us to the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa. This delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped people, commerce, and history. In a book that Elaine Scarry has praised as “unique and spellbinding,” Puchner shows how literature turned our planet into a written world.

Praise for The Written World

“It’s with exhilaration . . . that one hails Martin Puchner’s book, which asserts not merely the importance of literature but its all-importance. . . . Storytelling is as human as breathing.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Puchner has a keen eye for the ironies of history. . . . His ideal is ‘world literature,’ a phrase he borrows from Goethe. . . . The breathtaking scope and infectious enthusiasm of this book are a tribute to that ideal.”—The Sunday Times (U.K.) 

“Enthralling . . . Perfect reading for a long chilly night . . . [Puchner] brings these works and their origins to vivid life.”—BookPage

“Well worth a read, to find out how come we read.”—Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812998931
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	942,384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Martin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His prizewinning books cover subjects from philosophy to the arts, and his bestselling six-volume Norton Anthology of World Literature and his HarvardX MOOC (massive open online course) have brought four thousand years of literature to students across the globe. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Earthrisk xi

Map and Timeline of the Written World xxiv

Chapter 1 Alexander's Pillo Book 3

Chapter 2 King of the Universe: of Gilgamesh and Ashurbanipal 24

Chapter 3 Ezra and the Creation of Holy Scripture 46

Chapter 4 Learning from the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus 62

Chapter 5 Murasaki and the Tale of Genji: The First Great Novel in World History 98

Chapter 6 One Thousand and One Nights with Scheherazade 121

Chapter 7 Gutenberg, Luther and the New Public of Print 145

Chapter 8 The Popol VUH and Maya Culture: A Second, Independent Literary Tradition 171

Chapter 9 Don Quixote and the Pirates 193

Chapter 10 Benjamin Franklin: Media Entrepreneur in the Republic of Letters 211

Chapter 11 World Literature: Goethe in Sicily 232

Chapter 12 Marx, Engels, Lenin, MAO: Readers of the Communist Manifesto, Unite! 252

Chapter 13 Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn: Writing Against the Soviet State 273

Chapter 14 The Epic of Sunjata and the Worldsmiths of West Africa 290

Chapter 15 Postcolonial Literature: Derek Walcott, Poet of the Caribbean 306

Chapter 16 From Hogwarts to India 326

Acknowledgments 339

Notes 341

Illustration Credits 389

Index 393

Editorial Reviews

Puchner explains it all with brio. By Page 50 Ashurbanipal is a name the reader will feel able to drop knowingly into any conversation on literary matters…There is a joyous personality in this book. Puchner gives more of himself to the reader than most literary historians…Puchner describes himself, modestly, as a "teacher"…In fact he occupies an endowed chair at Harvard. But he doesn't sit on it. Fieldwork for The Written World takes him to every continent, digging inexhaustibly into cultures for their foundational and sacred stories. Martin Puchner's score on RateMyProfessors.com must be sky-high. I suspect he is as enlightening at the lectern as on the page.

The New York Times Book Review - John Sutherland

05/22/2017
In this timely chronicle, Puchner, a professor of English and comparative literature at Harvard University, tells the story both of the ideas that shaped civilization and the equally crucial technology that transmitted and preserved those ideas. Literature here means more than just fiction: it encompasses publication platforms, such as newspapers, and various formats of political speech, such as the manifesto and the pamphlet, as well as poetry and foundational religious texts. Puchner sweeps from the ancient civilizations that produced The Epic of Gilgamesh to contemporary fascination with the invented world of Harry Potter, with stops along the way in classical Greece, the insular court of 11th-century Japan, 16th-century Mayan culture, the turmoil of 19th-century Europe, and the violent repression of 20th-century totalitarian regimes, among other settings. The technological revolutions he explores include the rise of paper, the book’s ascendancy over the scroll, and the development of printing from early wood blocks to the extraordinary process perfected by Gutenberg. Finally, he comes to the digital present, leaving the reader curious to see the next, still-to-be-written chapter of the written word. By providing snapshots of key moments in the written word’s evolution, Puchner creates a gripping intellectual odyssey. Agent: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim & Williams. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

[Puchner] emphasises the ubiquity of storytelling across human history, elevating it in the manner of the historian Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind into perhaps the defining human trait, necessary to instil the trust on which so much else is built. . . . The book builds a convincing case that writing technologies are more foundational in major historical moments than we may have otherwise thought.”—Financial Times
 
“If you love literature (and if you are reading this column you probably do), then you are likely to find Martin Puchner’s The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization enthralling. . . . Puchner is a generous, natural teacher who brings these works and their origins to vivid life. . . . Education and enthusiasm combine seamlessly in Puchner’s sweeping narrative, which comprises history, biography, technology and ideas. And while it is a cliché to say he brings literature to life, he does exactly that, connecting the dots of civilization in new and interesting ways. The Written World is perfect reading for a long chilly night, and it will leave you thinking in new ways about the wondrous thing called literature that, perhaps, we sometimes take for granted.”—BookPage
 
“Puchner has a keen eye for the ironies of history. . . . [His] seemingly boundless curiosity propels him not just through the world of books but around the globe. . . . His ideal is ‘world literature,’ a phrase he borrows from Goethe, who was impatient with cultural frontiers, read Chinese novels and Persian poetry and knew a dozen languages. The breathtaking scope and infectious enthusiasm of this book are a tribute to that ideal.”—The Sunday Times
 
“In this timely chronicle, Puchner, a professor of English and comparative literature at Harvard University, tells the story both of the ideas that shaped civilization and the equally crucial technology that transmitted and preserved those ideas. . . . By providing snapshots of key moments in the written word’s evolution, Puchner creates a gripping intellectual odyssey.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Puchner doesn’t just tell us about the important works of literature that have shaped civilization over four thousand years, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Don Quixote to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. He tells us about the people whose personal persuasions led them to create those works. It’s literature not as mirror, then, but as potent force.”—Library Journal

“Well worth a read, to find out how come we read.”—Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
 
“The Written World is not only an expansive, exuberant survey of the central importance of literature in human culture but also a great adventure story—a story of letters and paper and rocket ships, of ruthless conquerors and elegant court ladies and middle-class entrepreneurs, of the will to power and the dream of freedom.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

From the Publisher

09/01/2017
Puchner (English & comparative literature, Harvard Univ.; The Drama of Ideas; coeditor, Norton Anthology of World Literature) looks at a number of diverse and influential works of world literature, from the Iliad and Epic of Gilgamesh through The Tale of Genji and the Popol Vuh to Derek Walcott's Omeros and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. He examines how these stories are refracted through the effects of writing and writing technologies in various cultures: from scribes marking clay tablets to the development of papyrus to paper, printing, and the Internet. The author is also interested in the influence of prominent readers in shaping the concept of literature and literacy: for example, Ezra on the Bible, Benjamin Franklin on popular media, Goethe on world literature, or Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh on The Communist Manifesto. Puchner's work frequently reads like a book meant to accompany a television series on world literature, offering personal accounts of his visits to the historical sites associated with the works he discusses. VERDICT Informative and engaging, Puchner's work provides a substantive but accessible account of the culture of writing and the transmission of literature. Of value to both general readers and specialists. [See Prepub Alert, 5/22/17.]—Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Library Journal

2017-08-30
The world is shaped by books, and human history by texts sacred and profane: so this thoughtful treatise by the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature."Literature isn't just for book lovers," writes Puchner (English and Comparative Literature/Harvard Univ.; The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy, 2010, etc.), after opening with a thesis that isn't quite novel but bears thinking about nonetheless: we gain much of our sense of history, morality, ethics, and religion through works of the imagination. Thus it's no surprise that the astronauts who landed on the moon in 1969 couched their expressions of wonder in the words of the Bible or that Alexander the Great patterned his wars against the backdrop of the Homeric epics ("he wanted to meet Darius in a traditional battle and defeat him in single combat, the way Achilles had met and defeated Hector"). Sometimes, Puchner wanders into gods-for-clods territory, and his take is a little old-fashioned in its mistrust of technology and hints of disdain for mass culture of the Harry Potter variety; still, it's all to the greater good of recognizing the significance of literature and its study. The book provides a nice collection of oddments of the bibliophilic nature, fitting neatly alongside works by Nicholas Basbanes and Alberto Manguel: it's illuminating to know that the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was once an accountant and "realized that his store of knowledge was useful only if it was organized," giving birth to the world's first known scheme of library classification; it's also well to recognize that we know so much more about the Heian court of medieval Japan than about almost any other government of the time thanks to The Tale of Genji. In mounting a learned and, yes, literate defense for literature as an instrument of mind and memory, Puchner also argues against literary fundamentalism, allowing texts to be seen as living things and allowing "readers of each generation to make these texts their own." A lucid entertainment for the humanists in the audience.

Kirkus Reviews