Spain's Early Explorations. The Causes of European Exploration. The Impact of Exploration on Europe. Tenochtitlan: A City of Wonders. The Aztec Empire. The Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico. The Eastern Orthodox Church. The Reign of Justinian I. West African Music. West African Visual Arts. Political Developments in England. The Bubonic Plague. The Hundred Years' War. Feudalism: Establishing Order. Knights During Feudal Times.
Monarchs During Feudal Times. Peasants During Feudal Times. Western Europe During the Middle Ages. Cesare Beccaria: The Rights of the Accused. John Locke: Natural Rights. Montesquieu: Separation of Powers. The Impact of the Enlightenment on Government.
The Roots of the Enlightenment. Thomas Hobbes: Absolute Rule by Kings. Women of the Enlightenment. Relations with Other Peoples. The Rise of the Inca Empire. Architecture: Adapting Temple Designs.
Cultural Influences on Japan. Government: Imitating the Chinese System. Literature: Adapting Chinese Poetic Form. Religion: Buddhism Comes to Japan. Sculpture: Carving Techniques Travel to Japan. An Emphasis on Education. Islamic Architectural Styles. The popular image of ignorant peasants and sequestered monks living in ignorance and superstition while the world fell into darkness is largely fiction. What marked the Middle Ages in Europe more than anything else was the dominance of the Catholic Church and political instability at least compared to the centuries of stable Roman dominance.
The Church, viewing Greek and traditional Roman philosophy and literature as Pagan and a threat, discouraged their study and teaching, and the disintegration of a unified political world into many small kingdoms and duchies.
One result of these factors was a shift from a human-centered intellectual focus to one that celebrated the things that held society together: shared religious and cultural beliefs.
The Renaissance was a period beginning in the later 14th century and lasting until the 17th century. Far from a sudden lurch back towards scientific and artistic achievement, it was really a rediscovery of the human-centric philosophies and art of the ancient world, coupled with cultural forces driving Europe towards social and intellectual revolutions that celebrated the human body and reveled in near-nostalgia for Roman and Greek works that suddenly seemed modern and revolutionary again.
Far from a miraculous shared inspiration, the Renaissance was sparked in large part by the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. The massive influx of people fleeing from the East into Italy most notably Florence, where political and cultural realities made for a welcoming environment brought these ideas back into prominence.
At almost the same time, the Black Death decimated populations across Europe and forced the survivors to contemplate not the afterlife but their actual physical existence, shifting intellectual focus to earthbound concerns. Outside of the arts, the Renaissance saw the decline of the political power of the Papacy and the increased contact between European powers and other cultures through trade and exploration.
The world became fundamentally more stable, which in turn allowed people to worry about things beyond basic survival, things like art and literature. Some of the writers who emerged during the Renaissance remain the most influential writers of all time and were responsible for literary techniques, thoughts, and philosophies that are still borrowed and explored today.
One does not discuss literature without mentioning Shakespeare. His influence simply cannot be overstated.
He created many words still in common English usage today including bedazzled , which might be his greatest achievement , he coined many of the phrases and idioms we still use today every time you try to break the ice , say a short prayer to Bill , and he codified certain stories and plot devices that have become the invisible vocabulary of every story composed.
Heck, they still adapt his plays into films and other media on a yearly basis. There is literally no other writer who has had a bigger influence on the English language, with the possible exception of It served as an extended defense for the studies of ancient literature and thought.
Despite the Pagan beliefs at the core of the Genealogia deorum gentilium , Boccaccio believed that much could be learned from antiquity. Thus, he challenged the arguments of clerical intellectuals who wanted to limit access to classical sources to prevent any moral harm to Christian readers. The revival of classical antiquity became a foundation of the Renaissance, and his defense of the importance of ancient literature was an essential requirement for its development. A depiction of Giovanni Boccaccio and Florentines who have fled from the plague, the frame story for The Decameron.
A generation before Petrarch and Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri set the stage for Renaissance literature. In the late Middle Ages, the overwhelming majority of poetry was written in Latin, and therefore was accessible only to affluent and educated audiences. In De vulgari eloquentia On Eloquence in the Vernacular , however, Dante defended use of the vernacular in literature. He himself would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life and the aforementioned Divine Comedy ; this choice, though highly unorthodox, set a hugely important precedent that later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow.
As a result, Dante played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy. Dante, like most Florentines of his day, was embroiled in the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. Although the split was along family lines at first, ideological differences arose based on opposing views of the papal role in Florentine affairs, with the Blacks supporting the pope and the Whites wanting more freedom from Rome.
He was condemned to perpetual exile; if he returned to Florence without paying a fine, he could be burned at the stake. At some point during his exile he conceived of the Divine Comedy , but the date is uncertain. The work is much more assured and on a larger scale than anything he had produced in Florence; it is likely he would have undertaken such a work only after he realized his political ambitions, which had been central to him up to his banishment, had been halted for some time, possibly forever.
Mixing religion and private concerns in his writings, he invoked the worst anger of God against his city and suggested several particular targets that were also his personal enemies. Leonardo Bruni c. He has been called the first modern historian. He was the earliest person to write using the three-period view of history: Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modern. The dates Bruni used to define the periods are not exactly what modern historians use today, but he laid the conceptual groundwork for a tripartite division of history.
Bruni argued that Italy had revived in recent centuries and could therefore be described as entering a new age. He was also the author of biographies in Italian of Dante and Petrarch.
As a Humanist Bruni was essential in translating into Latin many works of Greek philosophy and history, such as those by Aristotle and Procopius. Christine de Pizan was an Italian-French late medieval author who wrote about the positive contributions of women to European history and court life. Christine de Pizan — was an Italian-French late medieval author.
She wrote both poetry and prose works such as biographies and books containing practical advice for women. She completed forty-one works during her thirty-year career from to She married in at the age of fifteen, and was widowed ten years later. Much of the impetus for her writing came from her need to earn a living to support her mother, a niece, and her two surviving children. She spent most of her childhood and all of her adult life in Paris and then the abbey at Poissy, and wrote entirely in her adopted language, Middle French.
Certain scholars have argued that she should be seen as an early feminist who efficiently used language to convey that women could play an important role within society. Christine de Pizan: A painting of Christine de Pizan, considered by some scholars to be a proto-feminist, lecturing four men. Christine de Pizan was born in in Venice, Italy. In this atmosphere, Christine was able to pursue her intellectual interests. The rewriting process was both tedious and risky; texts could easily lose their authenticity and be altered.
The printing press did not solve all of the difficulties in the book industry because the technology was new and errors were made, but it was the first step in increasing readership and establishing writers. The invention of the printing press transformed society by making information and literature more available. However, it took time for the printing press to develop the book industry and distribute texts throughout society.
William Caxton was determined to learn the art of printing so that he could sell books in English to the English nobility. The first book that Caxton printed was his translation of The History of Troy , which was finished in or Not only was this the first printed book to be in circulation in England, but it was also the first book printed in English. At this point, Caxton was still in Cologne, Germany.
This is a reflection of how Caxton printed what was in demand and what the people in power wanted. Once Caxton established the printing press in England, writers began to sell their manuscripts to the printer for a low price Norton Unlike today, these printers legally owned the texts that they printed Norton However, the printers were not the only ones that created the books.
After the work on the printing press was done, the book in progress was sent to specialists, who worked to emphasize certain aspects of the pages. Illuminators inserted formal initials, and rubricators added text by hand in red.
Furthermore, the books were intentionally made to look like manuscripts, with intricate type faces that appeared like handwriting First Impressions. The process was time consuming and involved numerous contributors, yet the printers were the ones who literally marked the printed books with their name. Renaissance Humanism Humanism, as an umbrella term, is any beliefs, methods, or philosophies that have a central emphasis on humans.
In the scope of the Renaissance, humanism was a educational, social, and philosophical movement that began in Italy and was brought to western Europe and England by government officials and prominent thinkers.
Prominent Italian humanists include Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati and Poggio Bracciolini, all of whom had notability and power in the Italian sociopolitical landscape. These Italian humanists collected antique texts and based their philosophy on intellectual advancement through rigorous study in subjects they considered vital.
After humanism had been successfully implemented and accepted in upper-class Italian societies, it moved even more rapidly to the rest of Europe. The humanist movement was aimed mostly at young men from wealthy families, and its focus was to teach them subjects thought to best prepare them for public service. English humanists had a particular focus on teaching citizens how to communicate intellectually and effectively with each other, which would allow them to be integral parts of an informed society.
With a particular focus on Latin, which was widely considered the language of diplomacy and higher learning, humanists sought to use classic literature and ideas to better educate and improve their pupils. As this movement progressed, humanist thinkers had to decide whether they would write their own works in Latin, the highly revered academic language, or English, the common language.
They ultimately decided on English, as it was gaining nationalist support as the accepted vernacular and became a point of pride for the nation.
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