The Renaissance in Europe

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The significance of the word Renaissance is rebirth or a regeneration of a period. This period was called the Middle Ages and it began during the fourteenth century. The Renaissance was mainly characterized for the development of learning and thinking. This period also distinguished the discovery and exploration of new continents, system of astronomy, the growth of commerce, and the innovations of paper, printing, compass, art, literature, math and science. During this period, it was primarily the revival where people would learn, think, and invent new things after having a long period of cultural decline. Some of the main concepts during this time were the belief in humanism, the ravishing art that captured this age, the influence of the church, and the formation of the five city states.
The most important literary movement associated with the Renaissance was humanism. This was based on the classical written works of Greece and Rome which was known as the new learning. These works were reused so that the individuals are willing to be more liberal of what is around them as opposed to the spiritual or divine and this is how humanism began to rise. The humanists who studied the humanity such as grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy or ethics, and history are all based on ancient Greek and Roman authors. Humanism would not deny the existence of God because they also were close to the Catholic Church. There are two major factors for the rise of humanism. First, after the decline of Rome the Italian scholars were fascinated by the sources found in Rome that this led them to find more Roman writings. Second were the influences from the Byzantine Empire after their fall the people began to grow more interest in classical Greece. ...

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...Rather than a period with definitive beginnings and endings and consistent content in between, the Renaissance can be seen as a movement of practices and ideas to which specific groups and identifiable persons variously responded in different times and places. It would be in this network of diverse, sometimes converging, sometimes conflicting cultures that the Renaissance changed our imagination and our view of how we see our world for all time.

Works Cited

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. London: Penguin, 1990.
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Corrick, James. The Renaissance. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998.
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Hinds, Kathryn. Everyday Life in the Renaissance. New York: Michelle Bisson, 2010.
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Osman, Karen. The Italian Renaissance. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1996.
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“Renaissance Art”. History.com. A+E Networks, 2010. Web. 30 April 2014.

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