Fiero, Gloria K., The Humanistic Tradition, 4rd Edition. Volume 4. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002.
The Age of the Renaissance
Introduction
I. 1300-1600
A. Modernism
1. Economic: manorialism to entrepreneurial capitalism
2. Political: feudalism to centralized forms of government; national states [but not nation-states]
3. Individualism, secularism [as opposed to church-regulation], rationalism
4. Printing press: literacy
5. Navigational science: expansion, cross-cultural contacts
B. The Rebirth of Classicism
1. Europe: born in 14th century Italy; spread northward, 15th-16th centuries; preserved in the Middle East (Islamic)
2. Dynamic
3. Formation of the middle class
4. Classically inspired learning/education and the arts
II. The Fourteenth Century as a Period of Transition (14th = 1300s)
A. Bubonic Plague
B. War between England and France (cross bows to long bow)
C. Decline of the Roman Catholic church
D. Revived self-consciousness, fidelity to nature, gender, class
II. Classical Humanism
A. The study to recover and disseminate ancient Greek/Latin texts, learning, scholarship
B. Stimulated
1. individualism
2. vitality
3. optimistic view of human potential for fulfillment on earth
4. apply classical precepts to education, diplomacy, politics, social life
C. In the arts
1. classical Greece and Rome as sources of aesthetic authority
2. searched for more scientific methods of describing the visual world
3. keen objectivity; heroic individualism; unity of design
4. vernacular song forms, rise of instrumental music, beginnings of choreography = growing secularism
I. Adversity and Challenge: The Fourteenth Century Transition
A. The Black Death
1. destroyed one-third to one-half the population of Europe within 100 years
2. interrupted long-distance trade with China and the Middle East
3. brought by rats bearing fleas and infected persons: bubonic plague
bacillus isolated in 1894
effect on church [lack of clergy], economy [no workers], dispersion of population to the countryside
4. Boccaccio: culture of death; danse macabre; François Villon; woodcuts, engravings, Everyman
5. labor rebellions
B. Europe in Transition
1. England’s Constitutional Monarchy
a. the Magna Carta 1215
b. Parliament 1265
2. The Hundred Year’s War
a. use of the longbow, plate armour
b. gunpowder from China
c. Joan of Arc
C. The Decline of the Church
1. the Avignon Papacy (1309 - 1377) relocation, competition
2. Great Schism (1378 – 1417)
3. increasing need for church revenue: sale of
indulgences
4. anticlericalism and the Rise of Devotional Piety
a. John Wycliffe Oxford, England; Lollards
b. Jan Hus Czech, burned at the stake
c. heightened expressions of personal piety, experience
d. individualism, inner conviction vs. religious authority
D. Literature in Transition
1. The Social Realism of Boccaccio
a. fidelity to nature
b. personal experience in the real world
c. framework of the Decameron: ten people, ten tales, ten days
d. neither allegorical nor stereotypes
2. The Feminism of Christine de Pisan
3. The Social Realism of Chaucer
1. Giotto’s New Realism: Madonna Enthroned chiarascuro
2. Devotional Realism and Portraiture: Sluter’s Well of Moses, Book of the Hours, Limbourgs’ Très Riches Heures
3. The Ars Nova in Music: polyphonic ballades, rounds
F. SUMMARY