To world-renowned literary critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Stephen Greenblatt, the story of Adam and Eve is a prism refracting our most primitive fears and the inspiration for our most glorious works of art. In a richly illustrated talk, he shows how this myth has shaped understanding of our origins and destiny since time immemorial. This most iconic of stories stems from a few verses in an ancient book, yet continues to hold artists, philosophers and theologians in thrall and is the source of perennial contention.

Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, is the author of 12 books, including The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize; the New York Times bestseller, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; and the classic university text Renaissance Self-Fashioning. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare and has edited seven collections of literary criticism.