Textuality » 4BLS Interacting
THE RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance is a cultural movement developed in Italy during the fourteenth century and then spread in North Europe.
Renaissance literally means "rebirth" especially of learning. Renaissance people had a different way of thinking than Middle Ages ones: during the Middle Ages, the most important value was religion and people watched to salvation. God gave sense of life, he was everything. In the Renaissance soul was integrate with body and people understood human's importance.
The Renaissance is characterized by five interrelated issues:
- The Great Chain of Being, a philosophy that says everything has a precise place in the Universe following a divinely planned hierarchical order. An"object" place depended on the relative portion of "spirit" and "matter" it contained. The doctrine of "correspondences" held that different segments of the Chain reflected other segments (human being -> world being). When everything was in the his right place, reason ruled emotions, but if something departed from his own place it would betray one's nature and there would be disorder: renaissance people still needed a direction to follow.
- The Great Chain of Being was applied in policy too: the implication was that civil rebellions caused the Chain to be broken. In the Middle Ages the social and political organization was Feudalism. Feudalism was structured according to different social classes. Differently from the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance the consolidation of the Monarchy was recorded and it became a stronger power.- The transition from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is called Humanism. People understood the importance of human being and that human's role is as important as God's role. The highest cultural values were associated with an active life, such as involvement in public life, in moral, political and military action and in service to the state. Those values coexisted with traditional religious values.
- Imitation is a doctrine practiced by writers of the time that translated for present readers the moral vision of the past imitating great works and adapting them to a Christian prospective. Imitation was considered important because it allowed to learn a lesson to the classic world and to avoid chaos.
- The Protestant Reformation was acted by Martin Luther, a German monk, who reacted against Church corruption. The Reformation seemed to reject the medieval form of Christianity, just as Renaissance Humanists rejected medieval learning. Luther's disagreement led him to challenge some of the most fundamental doctrines of the Church, which led him to break with the Catholic Church in protest: he and his followers rejected the Pope as spiritual leader and priest as mediators between men and God. They though only God and a careful read of Bible could grant salvation to man.
- Literary Ramifications involved the translation of Bible into the vernacular languages so all the layman could read it. In the Middle Ages it would not possible because Catholic Church would preserve the Bible in Latin.
The "Rebirth" it is embodied in the works of the greatest English writer, William Shakespeare.