ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Stephen Greenblatt

Okay, so Stephen Greenblatt is a really smart person who likes to study books and stories from a long time ago. He wants to understand how people from a different time and place thought and felt about things. Like, what did they believe in? What did they care about?

He also likes to think about how these old stories might still be important for us today. Even though we live in a different world than the people who first told those stories, there might still be things we can learn from them that can help us understand ourselves and our world better.

To do this, he reads a lot of books and talks to other smart people who also study these old stories. Then he writes his own books to share what he's learned with other people who are interested in this kind of stuff.

So Stephen Greenblatt is kind of like a detective, but instead of solving crimes, he's trying to solve the mysteries of old stories. And he wants to help other people understand these mysteries too.