Scribd
Upload
124 views2 pages

UK US: Longue Durée

The Renaissance was a period between the 14th and 17th centuries in Europe that was a bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It began in Italy as a cultural movement that emphasized humanism and rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy and art. This new perspective was reflected in developments in painting, architecture, science, politics and literature. While the printing press helped spread ideas, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe. Major centers included Italian city-states like Florence, Venice, and Rome. Historians debate the usefulness of the term "Renaissance" and whether it was truly a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages or instead a period of nostalgia.

Uploaded by

Brinzei Lucian
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
124 views2 pages

UK US: Longue Durée

The Renaissance was a period between the 14th and 17th centuries in Europe that was a bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It began in Italy as a cultural movement that emphasized humanism and rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy and art. This new perspective was reflected in developments in painting, architecture, science, politics and literature. While the printing press helped spread ideas, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe. Major centers included Italian city-states like Florence, Venice, and Rome. Historians debate the usefulness of the term "Renaissance" and whether it was truly a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages or instead a period of nostalgia.

Uploaded by

Brinzei Lucian
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

The Renaissance (UK /rnesns/, US /rnsns/)[1] was a period in European history, from the

14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern
history. It started as a cultural movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to
the rest of Europe, marking the beginning of the Early Modern Age.

The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its own invented version of humanism, derived
from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said that
"Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture,
politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in oil
painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal
movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the
Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe.

As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and


vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical
sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the development of linear perspective and
other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting; and gradual but
widespread educational reform. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of
the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science to an increased reliance on
observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many
intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its
artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da
Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".[2][3]

The Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century.[4] Various theories have been proposed
to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social
and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its political structure; the patronage of its dominant
family, the Medici;[5][6] and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of
Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.[7][8][9] Other major centres were northern Italian city-
states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, and finally Rome during the Renaissance
Papacy.

The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general scepticism of
discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-
century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men",
questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation.[10] The art
historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance":

It is perhaps no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously
questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects
of civilizationhistorians of economic and social developments, political and religious situations,
and, most particularly, natural sciencebut only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly
ever by historians of Art.[11]

Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance"
from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical
antiquity,[12] while social and economic historians, especially of the longue dure, have instead
focused on the continuity between the two eras,[13] which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a
thousand ties".[14]
The word Renaissance, literally meaning "Rebirth" in French, first appeared in English in the
1830s.[15] The word also occurs in Jules Michelet's 1855 work, Histoire de France. The
word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as
the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.[16]

You might also like