What is the Renaissance?
What do you associate with
Renaissance characters?
Renaissance
• How do Renaissance writers portray
characters?
Renaissance characters
• They follow in the tradition of the Middle Ages: they
explore the relationship of their characters to their
social roles (Canterbury Tales)
• Yet the most memorable characters of the Renaissance
enjoy greater autonomy and more fully realized
personalities than Chaucer’s pilgrims
• Broad-minded Gargantua
• Idealistic but mad Quixote,
• Romantic but doomed Othello
• Characters are presented in acts of thought, fantasy,
doubt, and internal debate
Salvadore Dali, Don Quixote
Fabrizio Moraes,Don Quixote
Gargantua
Gustave Dore, Gargantua
Othello
Othello and Desdemona
Hamlet
Renaissance
• What are the reasons for the shift toward
internal, mental portraiture?
Revolutionary changes
• On scientific, geographical, and scholarly
fronts, the world of Renaissance Europe
was undergoing revolutionary change
• Renaissance authors could not passively
receive the traditional wisdom of previous
ages
Revolutionary changes
• As a result of the new discoveries (Copernicus,
Galileo, Columbus), the Renaissance mind had
to reconcieve the nature of the universe
• The new discoveries challenged European and
human centrality in the world
• The compass, the printing press, and the gun
were ‘signs of the union of the entire world’
• For John Donne, the new discoveries amount to a
second creation, so radical is the new theory of
the world’s construction (no firm ground to stand
on)
Renaissance
• What is the meaning of the
term Renaissance?
the term ‘Renaissance’
• ‘rebirth’- one impulse toward creativity
came from the example of ancient culture
• The restoration of ancient canons was
regarded as a glorious achievement
• Machiavelli: rulers should be as keen on
the imitation of ancient virtues as are artists,
lawyers, and the scientists
What is the chronological span of
the movement?
• The peak of the Renaissance can be shown to have
occurred at different times in different countries (elasticity)
• Inception in Italy (visual arts)
• It developed later in England (main achievements in
drama)
• The meaning of the word widened: it conveys artistic
creativity, zest for life and knowledge, sensory delight
• References to classical mythology, philosophy, and
literature are not ornaments or affectations
• E.g. Erasmus speaks in a cluster of classical allusions in
The Praise of Folly
Erasmus
Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
Humanist
• What is the meaning of the
term Humanist?
meaning of the term ‘humanist’
• 14th c. the people who gave new impulse to the
emulation of the classics
• The word is related to what we call the
humanities, and the humanities at that time were
Latin and Greek
• Every cultivated person wrote and spoke Latin,
with the result that a Western community of
intellectuals could exist, a spiritual ‘republic of
letters’ above individual nations
Vocation
• Where does the archetype of
literature as a vocation come
from?
Vocation
• Petrarch – anticipated certain ideals of the high
Renaissance:
• A lofty conception of the literary art, a taste for the good
life, basic pacifism, strong sense of the memories of
antiquity
• Visionary and imaginative element:
• Lack of a scientific sense of history (e.g. Shakespeare’s
Romans)
• Hackneyed, inaccurate notion that the ‘light’ of the
Renaissance broke through a long ‘night’ of the Middle
Ages
Francesco Petrarca
Petrarch
Renaissance
• What is the definition of
Renaissance?
Definition of the Renaissance
• Preoccupation with this life rather than with
the life beyond
• Medieval man; conceives of life on earth as
transient
• Renaissance man: earthly interests,
immediate enjoyment
Renaissance
• What is the Renaissance code of
behavior?
T
The Renaissance code of behavior
• Human action is judged not in terms of right or
wrong, of good and evil, but in terms of its
effectiveness, of the delight it affords (amoral,
aesthetic character?)
• Architecture, sculpture, rhetoric: taste for the
harmonious and the memorable
• Virtue –connotes active power, technical skill,
‘virtuoso’
• Machiavellian prince: efficient management of
princely powers not goodness
Florence
Renaissance architecture
Sculpture
The presence of God in the
Renaissance
• Unrestrained and self-sufficient practice of one’s
virtues (Machiavelli, Rabelais, Cellini)
• such virtues and skills are God's gift
• But the presence of God in the Renaissance is less
dominating than in the Middle Ages (extemporal
design)
• Conflict between the values of worldly goods and
spiritual renunciation
• Church and state inextricably bound together
• Papacy-political as well as spiritual power
Machiavelli
Machiavelli
•
"These methods are very cruel, and enemies to all
government not merely Christian but human, and any man
ought to avoid them and prefer to live a private life rather
than to be a king who brings such ruin on men.
Notwithstanding, a ruler who does not wish to take that
first good way of lawful government, if he wishes to
maintain himself, must enter upon this evil one. But men
take certain middle ways that are very injurious; indeed,
they are unable to be altogether good or altogether bad."
• Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince
Machiavelli
Church and state
• Charles V of Spain united most of Europe under
his rule and declared himself the Holy Roman
Emperor
• Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic
church and declared himself head of the Church
of England
• The Reformist movements (Luther, Calvin) were
rapidly adopted by Renaissance princes bridling
under papal authority
Religion vs. pleasure
• Sensuous appraisal of a woman’s beauties plays
a large part in poetry
• Religious convictions did not hamper poets to
appreciate sensuous beauty
• A woman’s body: a spiritual experience and ‘a
paradise on earth’ to conquer
• E.g. Renaissance Madonnas serve celebrations
of earthly beauty rather than mystical hopes of
salvation
Raphael, Madonna
Raphael, Madonna