HUMANISM

• Intellectual and social movement

• It lies at the base of the period we call the Renaissance

• It pervade the art, literature, learning, law, and civic life, first in Italy, then in all of Europe

• Rediscovery and re-evaluation of the aspects of classical civilization (ancient Greece and Rome) and the application of these aspects to intellectual and social culture ,they seemed to be vital to them.

• Reaction against scholasticism

• Born in Italy because latin culture had been still known (especially Cicero’s works)

• Petrarch was the first humanist: a man with one foot in the future and one in the past in fact he turned more and more to traditional forms of scholarship, such as biblical commentary, in later life.

• Florence was the most important Italian city of the Renaissance

• The humanists were the first to draw the distinction, seeing classical antiquity as something which was long past, but to be admired and revived--hence the term "Renaissance"

• Many of the humanists undertook large journeys, wandering from monastery to monastery and finding works forgotten for centuries increased interest in manuscripts aided by the invention of the printing press

• The fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought an influx of expatriate Greek scholars to Italy studies of ancient Greek gained tremendous ground

• England was perhaps the last to be touched by the Humanism’s development

Petrarch (Arezzo 1304-1374)

• Italian scholar, poet, and humanist

• fFamous for his poems addressed to Laura, an idealized beloved, identified with the 19-year-old wife of Hugues de Sade. He met her in 1327 in Avignon

• Literature of courtly love

• Spend his early childhood in a village near Florence

• His father was expelled from Florence by the Black Guelfs

• He studied at Montpellier (1319-23) and moved to Bologna, where he studied law in 1323-25

• Primarily interested in writing and Latin literature

• Composed numerous sonnets which acquired popularity

• The latter part of his life he spent in wandering from city to city in northern Italy as an international celebrity

• Regarded as the greatest scholar of his age

• The majority of his works were in Latin, although his sonnets and canzoni written in Italy were equally influential

• Known as a devoted student of antiquity

• Among Petrarch's Latin works are DE VIRIS ILLUSTRIBUS, the epic poem AFRICA, the dialogue SECRETUM, an RERUM MEMORANDARUM LIBRI, DE REMEDIIS UTRIUSQUE FORTUNAE, his most popular Latin prose work, ITINERARIUM and DE SUI IPSIUS ET MULTORUM IGNORANTIA

• “CANZONIERE” (Song Book)was inspired by Laura (with golden hair, and her bearing is modest and dignified) but his love was not returned, her presence causes him unspeakable joy