Discussion Questions

• In The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt is essentially making the argument that a poem changed the world. Do you agree that the written word can carry this kind of power? And do you think a literary rediscovery could potentially initiate a new ​“swerve” today?
• Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things appealed to readers in part because it spoke from a lost world. People are still fascinated with the classical past. Why do humans have this nostalgia for the past, and how can this type of preoccupation help us move forward?
• How were the intolerable ideas in Lucretius tolerated, or at least allowed to pass, after the text was copied and circulated?
• Discuss Greenblatt’s ability to bring Poggio Bracciolini and his contemporaries to life for us, despite the very great distance in time — six hundred years — between their world and ours. How does Greenblatt handle the unfamiliarity of their world and its assumptions?
• Greenblatt suggests that book hunting kept Bracciolini from succumbing entirely to the corrosive cynicism of his world. Why should an obsession with uncovering ancient books from a pagan past have meant so much to him?
• What do you make of the fact that Bracciolini didn’t really grasp the importance of his discovery? Was his discovery of Lucretius’s poem just a fortunate accident?
• What parallels do you notice between the world that suppressed Lucretius’s poem and the world in which we live today? What differences?
• How does Greenblatt’s discussion of the loss of books to bookworms and the destruction of libraries (both willful and accidental) speak to current debates over printed versus digital books?
• Did it surprise you that monasteries became havens for — and even producers of — forgotten books at a time when people were censoring books and burning libraries for religious reasons? Discuss the complicated relationship between the church and literary/​scientific endeavors over the years.
• On the Nature of Things could be thought of as a poem that ​“went viral.” How has the dissemination of ideas changed since the Renaissance? Can you think of another book or piece of literature that gained popularity and swayed popular thought in a similar way? Do you think literature is more likely to have a world changing impact, or can music, film, or art generate the same effect?
• Lucretius claimed that the ideas in his work should liberate humans from fear of death, but his contemporary Cicero said that these ideas only made matters worse, since total extinction — a return to atoms colliding in an infinite universe — was more frightening than any punishment in the afterlife. Where do you stand on this debate?
• It seems the term ​“Epicureanism” still conveys rash, indulgent pleasure seeking. Did Greenblatt’s exploration of the true nature of Epicurus and his followers change how you think about our collective pursuit of pleasure?
• What is the significance of the fact that Lucretius conveyed his scientific ideas in the form of a poem? What are the consequences in our own age of the extreme separation of poetry and science?
• How do the atomic ​“swerves” described in Lucretius’s poem mirror the larger ​“swerve” initiated by the poem itself? What might Lucretius have thought of Greenblatt’s ​“co-opting” his term to describe human events much larger than invisible atoms?