'The Written World' with Martin Puchner

Feb 19, 2018

Claudia Cragg (@KGNU @KGNUClaudia) speaks here with Harvard Professor Martin Puchner (@martin_puchner) on his latest book, The Written World. This is the story of how literature has shaped world history in sixteen acts, from Alexander The Great and the Iliad to Do Quixote and Harry Potter.

As Puchner has been extensively interviewed, and as Puchner is himself a 'modernist' by persuasion, this interview starts very late in the 4,000 year old catalogue that the book represents. 

The author leads the reader on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today.

Beyond The Axial Age, Puchner tells of Cervantes, who invented the modern novel, battles pirates both real (when he is taken prisoner) and literary (when a fake sequel to Don Quixote is published). We learn of Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering work as a media entrepreneur, watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. He speaks with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott in the Caribbean, as well as Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, as well as the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa.

Throughout The Written World, Puchner’s narrative also chronicles the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped religion, politics, commerce, people, and history.