Audiobooks by Stephen Greenblatt

Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles

"Explorer, soldier, statesman, writer, key to the English Renaissance—Sir Walter Ralegh fashioned his life as a work of art.    Exposing the tensions and contradictions of Renaissance England, Stephen Greenblatt presents Sir Walter Ralegh as a symbol of his age. The interplay between life and art animated both his actions and his writing, and his dramatic life was his masterpiece. From the grim Tower of London to the swamps of Guiana, from the aging Queen Elizabeth’s court back to the Tower, Ralegh’s turbulent career reached its climax with his 1592 disgrace, which culminated in his 1603 conviction for treason and, ultimately, his execution. Blending historical, literary, and psychological insight, Greenblatt brings vivid detail and acute understanding to his twining of Ralegh’s life and work.    In Sir Walter Ralegh, written early in his scholarly career, Greenblatt sows the seeds of his most influential critical ideas—“self-fashioning” in the Renaissance and “the new historicism” as avenue of literary insight. In a revealing new introduction, he offers a glimpse of the personal intellectual journey that would lead him to such masterworks as Marvellous Possessions, Hamlet in Purgatory, Will in the World, The Swerve, and, most recently, Dark Renaissance—in which the character of Sir Walter Ralegh stages a memorable reappearance in the life of Christopher Marlowe.    'If there were an Intellectuals' Book Club (as possibly there should be to enrich the minds of curious men and women with all that is best in other disciplines), my choice for this month would be Greenblatt's book. It is exceptionally intelligent.'—The New York Times "

Stephen Greenblatt (Author), Edoardo Ballerini (Narrator)

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[German] - Dunkle Renaissance. Wie Shakespeares größter Rivale Christopher Marlowe die Konventionen sprengte und die Literatur revolutionierte (Ungekürzt)

"Das England des 16. Jahrhunderts war eine brutale Welt, geprägt von politischen Intrigen, religiösen Kämpfen und grassierenden Seuchen. Und dennoch wurde das elisabethanische Zeitalter zu einer überragenden Blütezeit der englischen Literatur. Ihr Wegbereiter war Christopher Marlowe: Im gleichen Jahr wie William Shakespeare wurde er als Sohn eines Schusters geboren. Allen Widrigkeiten zum Trotz erkämpfte er sich ein Stipendium in Cambridge, ließ sich in den Spionagedienst der Königin verwickeln und schuf einige der spektakulärsten Meisterwerke der englischen Literatur, bevor er im Alter von nur 29 Jahren unter mysteriösen Umständen ums Leben kam. Mitreißend erzählt Pulitzer-Preisträger Stephen Greenblatt vom kurzen, bewegten Leben Christopher Marlowes. Er zeigt ihn als einen Getriebenen, einen Mann voll unbezähmbarer Neugier, mit Lust auf das Fremde und einem Hang zur Selbstzerstörung, der gerade deshalb Revolutionäres denken und Außergewöhnliches schaffen konnte."

Stephen Greenblatt (Author), Dirk Jacobs (Narrator)

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Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe

"Brought to you by Penguin. Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. From one of the greatest writers on the Elizabethan era, Dark Renaissance is the thrilling and subversive life story of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s inspiration and rival, who helped to bring England out of the cultural darkness and into the light. In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry – which to him is a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism. What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of many others, including his youthful collaborator William Shakespeare. By the time of his murder in a Deptford tavern in 1593, the 29-year-old Marlowe will be the most celebrated dramatist of his time. Stephen Greenblatt grippingly reconstructs the involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his masterpieces about power and its costs. And 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 – involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still. Dark Renaissance is a scintillating combination of narrative flair, historical insight and literary criticism about a writer whose blazing talent catapulted England from cultural backwater to crucible of creativity. ’A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist …. Essential and addictive reading’ MAGGIE O'FARRELL © Stephen Greenblatt 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025"

Stephen Greenblatt (Author), Edoardo Ballerini (Narrator)

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Second Chances: Shakespeare & Freud

"A powerful exploration of the human capacity for renewal, as seen through Shakespeare and Freud In this fresh investigation, Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips explore how the second chance has been an essential feature of the literary imagination and a promise so central to our existence that we try to reproduce it again and again. Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realization or failure of second chances—outcomes that depend on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone. Through a series of illuminating readings, the authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter. Both Shakespeare and Freud believed that we can narrate our life stories as tales of transformation, of momentous shifts, constrained by time and place but often still possible. Ranging from The Comedy of Errors to The Winter’s Tale, and from D. W. Winnicott to Marcel Proust, the authors challenge readers to imagine how, as Phillips writes, “it is the mending that matters.” “In this scintillating collaboration between our leading Shakespearean and our most trenchant interpreter of Freud, the concept of the second chance keeps gathering momentum and reach. Second Chances is intellectually nimble and emotionally wise.”—Christopher Benfey, author of A Summer of Hummingbirds"

Adam Phillips, Stephen Greenblatt (Author), Donald Corren, Steven Crossley (Narrator)

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