Download Segment Four

Segment Four
The Renaissance
Renaissance Overview
• 1485-1660 (Counting the English Renaissance)
• Period of intellectual, scientific, and artistic
growth
• Means “rebirth” in French
• Return to Greek/Roman ideals
• Renewed emphasis on studying human
beings and human accomplishments
Background Information
• Roman Empire: Jesus? Or Zeus?
• Began to distance themselves from old gods, old
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ways, old texts
This practice spread to all of Rome’s “children”
countries, to all of Europe
Throughout the Middle Ages, many studied
Latin (to study Church texts) but all the old
stories and theories had been forgotten
Aristotle’s Poetics, Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey
Renaissance Timeline (1300-1500)
• Increased trade with Asia/Middle East creates a
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surplus of money in the Mediterranean Region
Extra money=need to decorate your oceanfront villa with
pretty things
Artistic movement begins in the Kingdom of Florence
(now part of Italy)
1414—A series of religious scandals culminate in the
Western Schism: three men simultaneously claimed to
be Pope
1492—One of the many people looking for more trade
routes and more money, Columbus, “discovers” North
America
Renaissance Timeline (1500-1550)
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1503—Leonardo da Vinci paints Mona Lisa
1513—Machiavelli writes The Prince
1516—Thomas More publishes Utopia
1517—Protestant Reformation begins:
Martin Luther nails to a church door 95 ways he
believes the Church needs to be fixed
1521—Magellan circumnavigates the globe
1533—Henry VIII Declares himself head of the
Church of England
1534-1541—Michelangelo paints the Sistine
Chapel
1543—Copernicus publishes theory that planets
orbit the sun
1550-1600
• 1557—Tottel’s Miscellany helps to popularize
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sonnets in England
1558—Elizabeth I becomes Queen and so
begins “Elizabethan Era,” or “English
Renaissance”
1564—William Shakespeare born
1588—Christopher Marlowe writes Dr. Faustus
1590—Edmund Spenser writes The Faerie Queen
1599—Globe Theatre built in London
1600-1660
• 1606—Shakespeare has published Macbeth,
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King Lear, and his sonnets
1609—Galileo is first to study the stars with a
telescope
1611—King James Bible published, changing
the English language forever
1658—John Milton begins Paradise Lost 16421660—Puritans close all the theatres in London
5 Useful Lenses Through Which To
View Renaissance Art
• Classical—Art sought to associate itself with
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texts from classical antiquity, i.e. Sophocles
Political—Art reflects the shifting political arena
of Renaissance Europe
Humanism—Art reflects increasing belief in
human intelligence and achievements
Imitation—Art did not endeavor to create
something new, but to imitate predecessors
Reformation—Art reflects the growing religious
movement known as the Reformation
Classical
• Greece and Rome invented, philosophized, and wrote
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about all sorts of cool things we’d forgotten
During the Renaissance, scholars searched for ancient
texts, dusted them off, and started rediscovering ideas
that had been lost for centuries
Rome and Greece were “in”
Therefore, allusions to Roman/Greek mythology abound
in Renaissance literature
Allusion—an indirect reference to something else
Like an inside joke, allusions indicate that you are
knowledgeable about something, that you’re “in the
know,” an educated and cultured individual
“Venus smiles not in a house of tears” —Shakespeare
Political
• In the Middle Ages, most believed in the Great Chain
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of Being
The hierarchy of God > King > Noble > Peasant was changing
A new group, the “merchant class,” was on the rise
The emergence of a new class of rich (and therefore
powerful) people who weren’t nobles or churchmen
challenged traditional power structures
Like all art, Renaissance art reflects the world around it
Several famous examples of satire emerge in this period
such as Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly
Satire—Humorous works that point out human
flaws/shortcomings/errors through exaggeration
Humanism
• The idea of a being a Renaissance Man, someone who
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excelled in multiple activities, stems from humanist
ideals
“What does it mean to be an ideal human?”
“How do I lead a good life?”
Humanists sought to answer these questions by
looking to Greek and Roman texts
Before humanism, people believed the Bible was the sole
source of answers to the above questions
Humanists believed the Bible was a source of answers,
but believed other important answers lay in human
history (i.e. Greek texts)
Sought to create harmony between the Bible and
classical texts
Imitation
• Generally speaking, artistic communities today
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put an emphasis on originality, avoiding clichés
In Renaissance Literature, the goal was not
usually to create something completely new, but
to imitate the classics (in a new way)
Sometimes, this involved updating classic ideas
to suit the Christian ideals of the time period
Of Shakespeare’s 36 plays, only The Tempest is
not an imitation of an older tale or historical
event
Reformation
• The Catholic Church was the most powerful organization
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in the world
By 1517, much corruption had developed
There was still good: St. Francis of Assisi disliked the
materialism he saw around him, and gave up his own
wealth
But many people were churchmen for the wrong
reasons: to sell indulgences: “Hey! Slip me twenty
bucks and God will forgive your sins!”
Martin Luther made a list of things he disagreed with,
like indulgences, and called them his Ninety-Five Theses
Because there was no such thing as the internet, he did
what anyone would do to spread information quickly:
nailed them to a church door
Reformation
• Luther and other Protestants wanted to take power out
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of the hands of the Church officials, encouraging people
to interpret the Bible themselves
This was quickly becoming possible because a new
technology, the printing press, was allowing more
people to own Bibles in their own language
Helped legitimize vernacular languages (like English
and Italian)
Protestants realized, however, that understanding the
Bible in its original context was important to truly
understanding it
Encouraged many to learn Greek, helping to fuel the
growing fascination with Greece