renaissance period essay

Renaissance Period Essay

The Renaissance is one of the most fascinating periods in European history. It was a time of great rebirth and cultural flowering, as well as political and social change.

The Renaissance began in Italy in the 14th century and spread to the rest of Europe over the following two centuries. This period marked a dramatic change from the preceding Middle Ages. People began to value individualism and reason more than tradition and religion. Art and literature flourished, as did scientific discoveries.

During the Renaissance, Europeans made significant advances in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and anatomy. The Printing Press was invented, which allowed for widespread dissemination of knowledge. New ideas about government and society emerged, including concepts such as democracy and human rights.

The French term renaissance means “rebirth.” The Renaissance was a period in European history that took place between 1300 and 1600, according to modern historians. Significant changes occurred during the Italian Renaissance, which is when I began studying art.

The Renaissance was a time of significant innovation and change. This era was characterized by substantial contrasts with the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, the church dominated politics and had a primarily agricultural economy. Exploration and learning came close to being halted entirely.

Renaissance means rebirth, everything starts to reborn during Renaissance. means people were full of energy and ambitions. They wanted to achieve something great in their life. This era was different from the Middle Ages in many ways such as art, literature, science, religion, and ways of thinking.

In the Renaissance, artists used light and shadow to give more realistic depictions of their subjects. Renaissance painters also began using a technique called perspective to create the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. Renaissance writers created works that celebrated individual achievement and humanity’s potential for greatness.

During the Renaissance, Europeans became more interested in studying classical texts from Greece and Rome. Renaissance scholars rediscovered the writings of Aristotle, who had a major influence on scientific thought during this time. The Renaissance was also a time of religious reform. Protestant leaders such as Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. They believed that people could have a personal relationship with God without the help of priests.

This period of time was also a time of exploration and discovery. European explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama sailed to new parts of the world in search of wealth and new trade routes. The Renaissance was an exciting time to be alive! There were many changes happening and people were eager to learn and explore new things.

During the Renaissance period, society was revolutionized into a society that became more and more dominated by central political institutions with an urban commercial mentality. Furthermore, people’s interest overcame their anxiety, and many individuals began to explore the new world. Many rich Italian cities, such as Florence, Ferrara, Milan, and Venice, started the Renaissance.

Some of the most famous Renaissance artists were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Renaissance art was often very detailed and realistic. Renaissance architects also designed beautiful buildings, such as the Florence Cathedral and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Renaissance scholars studied ancient Greek and Roman texts and came up with new ways of thinking about the world. They believed that people could improve their lives through education and hard work. This period is known as the rebirth or Renaissance because many new things were invented or discovered during this time.

The Renaissance was a time of rebirth for Europe’s culture, art, politics, and economy following the Middle Ages. The term “Renaissance” is used to describe a period that spanned roughly the 14th century to the 17th century.

It also saw the development of new technologies in fields such as banking, navigation and printing. Renaissance thinkers championed humanism – an emphasis on the value of the individual – and scientific inquiry, laying the groundwork for the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

The Renaissance was a time of great creativity and change. Artistic movements like the Renaissance Mannerist and Baroque evolved, as did architectural styles like Gothic and Renaissance. In literature, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare were among the most famous authors of the period.

Science advanced with discoveries such as Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion and Harvey’s discovery of blood circulation. Banking became more sophisticated with the invention of double-entry bookkeeping, and exploration expanded with the discovery of new continents.

Despite its many achievements, the Renaissance was not without its problems. Inequality and social unrest increased, as did religious tensions. The period also saw a number of devastating natural disasters, including the Black Death pandemic and the Great Fire of London. Nevertheless, the Renaissance remains one of the most significant periods in European history. It heralded a new era of creativity, intellectualism and progress that would have a lasting impact on the world.

Artisans discovered that mathematics and art could be combined to make their measurements more accurate and ensure that an item was adequately supported both logically and proportionally.

Painters, in order to make their works “a window into the world,” frequently attempted but rarely succeeded. Artists also studied how light hits objects and how our eyes perceive light. Oil paint was introduced as a new type of paint. This permitted the artist to create texture, combine hues, and give themselves more time for adjustments before it dried.

Renaissance artists also started to create paintings with perspective. This gave the illusion of depth and made their paintings more realistic.

The Renaissance was a time when people were questioning everything that had been done in the past and looking for new ways to do things. They started to explore the world around them and learn about other cultures. This was also a time of great advances in science and technology. People began to use reason and observation instead of relying on what they were told by the church. The Renaissance was a time of great change and progress.

The Renaissance Period was a time of rebirth and new beginnings in European history. It was a time when people started to question the old ways of thinking and explore new ideas. This led to many advancements in art, science, and other fields. The Renaissance Period is often considered to be one of the most important times in human history.

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Italian Renaissance

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 17, 2020 | Original: October 18, 2010

Toward the end of the 14th century A.D., a handful of Italian thinkers declared that they were living in a new age. The barbarous, unenlightened “ Middle Ages ” were over, they said; the new age would be a “rinascità” (“rebirth”) of learning and literature, art and culture. This was the birth of the period now known as the Renaissance. 

For centuries, scholars have agreed that the Italian Renaissance (another word for “rebirth”) happened just that way: that between the 14th century and the 17th century, a new, modern way of thinking about the world and man’s place in it replaced an old, backward one. In fact, the Renaissance (in Italy and in other parts of Europe) was considerably more complicated than that: For one thing, in many ways the period we call the Renaissance was not so different from the era that preceded it. However, many of the scientific, artistic and cultural achievements of the so-called Renaissance do share common themes, most notably the humanistic belief that man was the center of his own universe.

The Italian Renaissance in Context

Fifteenth-century Italy was unlike any other place in Europe. It was divided into independent city-states, each with a different form of government. Florence, where the Italian Renaissance began, was an independent republic. It was also a banking and commercial capital and, after London and Constantinople , the third-largest city in Europe. Wealthy Florentines flaunted their money and power by becoming patrons, or supporters, of artists and intellectuals. In this way, the city became the cultural center of Europe and of the Renaissance.

Did you know? When Galileo died in 1642, he was still under house arrest. The Catholic Church did not pardon him until 1992.

The New Humanism: Cornerstone of the Renaissance

Thanks to the patronage of these wealthy elites, Renaissance-era writers and thinkers were able to spend their days doing just that. Instead of devoting themselves to ordinary jobs or to the asceticism of the monastery, they could enjoy worldly pleasures. They traveled around Italy, studying ancient ruins and rediscovering Greek and Roman texts.

To Renaissance scholars and philosophers, these classical sources from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome held great wisdom. Their secularism, their appreciation of physical beauty and especially their emphasis on man’s achievements and expression formed the governing intellectual principle of the Italian Renaissance. This philosophy is known as “humanism.”

Renaissance Science and Technology

Humanism encouraged people to be curious and to question received wisdom (particularly that of the medieval Church). It also encouraged people to use experimentation and observation to solve earthly problems. As a result, many Renaissance intellectuals focused on trying to define and understand the laws of nature and the physical world. 

Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci created detailed scientific “studies” of objects ranging from flying machines to submarines. He also created pioneering studies of human anatomy. 

Likewise, the scientist and mathematician Galileo Galilei investigated one natural law after another. By dropping different-sized cannonballs from the top of a building, for instance, he proved that all objects fall at the same rate of acceleration. He also built a powerful telescope and used it to show that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun and not, as religious authorities argued, the other way around. (For this, Galileo was arrested for heresy and threatened with torture and death, but he refused to recant: “I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use,” he said.)

However, perhaps the most important technological development of the Renaissance happened not in Italy but in Germany, where Johannes Gutenberg invented the mechanical movable-type printing press in the middle of the 15th century. For the first time, it was possible to make books–and, by extension, knowledge–widely available.

Renaissance Art and Architecture

Michelangelo’s “David.” Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” During the Italian Renaissance, art was everywhere. (Just look up at Michelangelo’s “The Creation” painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!) Patrons such as Florence’s Medici family sponsored projects large and small, and successful artists became celebrities in their own right.

Renaissance artists and architects applied many humanist principles to their work. For example, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi applied the elements of classical Roman architecture–shapes, columns and especially proportion–to his own buildings. The magnificent eight-sided dome he built at the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence was an engineering triumph–it was 144 feet across, weighed 37,000 tons and had no buttresses to hold it up–as well as an aesthetic one.

Brunelleschi also devised a way to draw and paint using linear perspective. That is, he figured out how to paint from the perspective of the person looking at the painting, so that space would appear to recede into the frame. After the architect Leon Battista Alberti explained the principles behind linear perspective in his treatise “Della Pittura” (“On Painting”), it became one of the most noteworthy elements of almost all Renaissance painting. Later, many painters began to use a technique called chiaroscuro to create an illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat canvas.

Fra Angelico, the painter of frescoes in the church and friary of San Marco in Florence, was called “a rare and perfect talent” by the Italian painter and architect Vasari in his “Lives of The Artists.” Renaissance painters like Giotto, Raphael and Titian and Renaissance sculptors like Donatello, Michelangelo and Lorenzo Ghiberti created art that would inspire generations of future artists.

The End of the Italian Renaissance

By the end of the 15th century, Italy was being torn apart by one war after another. The kings of England, France and Spain, along with the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, battled for control of the wealthy peninsula. At the same time, the Catholic Church, which was itself wracked with scandal and corruption, had begun a violent crackdown on dissenters. In 1545, the Council of Trent officially established the Roman Inquisition . In this climate, humanism was akin to heresy. The Italian Renaissance was over.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Music in the renaissance.

ex "Kurtz" Violin

Andrea Amati

Double Virginal

Hans Ruckers the Elder

Cornetto in A

possibly Georg Voll

Sixtus Rauchwolff

Claviorganum

Lorenz Hauslaib

Tenor Recorder

Rectangular Octave Virginal

Rebecca Arkenberg Department of Education, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

Music was an essential part of civic, religious, and courtly life in the Renaissance. The rich interchange of ideas in Europe, as well as political, economic, and religious events in the period 1400–1600 led to major changes in styles of composing, methods of disseminating music, new musical genres, and the development of musical instruments. The most important music of the early Renaissance was composed for use by the church—polyphonic (made up of several simultaneous melodies) masses and motets in Latin for important churches and court chapels. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, patronage had broadened to include the Catholic Church, Protestant churches and courts, wealthy amateurs, and music printing—all were sources of income for composers.

The early fifteenth century was dominated initially by English and then Northern European composers. The Burgundian court was especially influential, and it attracted composers and musicians from all over Europe. The most important of these was Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474), whose varied musical offerings included motets and masses for church and chapel services, many of whose large musical structures were based on existing Gregorian chant. His many small settings of French poetry display a sweet melodic lyricism unknown until his era. With his command of large-scale musical form, as well as his attention to secular text-setting, Du Fay set the stage for the next generations of Renaissance composers.

By about 1500, European art music was dominated by Franco-Flemish composers, the most prominent of whom was Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450–1521). Like many leading composers of his era, Josquin traveled widely throughout Europe, working for patrons in Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Milan, Rome, Ferrara, and Condé-sur-L’Escaut. The exchange of musical ideas among the Low Countries, France, and Italy led to what could be considered an international European style. On the one hand, polyphony or multivoiced music, with its horizontal contrapuntal style, continued to develop in complexity. At the same time, harmony based on a vertical arrangement of intervals, including thirds and sixths, was explored for its full textures and suitability for accompanying a vocal line. Josquin’s music epitomized these trends, with Northern-style intricate polyphony using canons, preexisting melodies, and other compositional structures smoothly amalgamated with the Italian bent for artfully setting words with melodies that highlight the poetry rather than masking it with complexity. Josquin, like Du Fay, composed primarily Latin masses and motets, but in a seemingly endless variety of styles. His secular output included settings of courtly French poetry, like Du Fay, but also arrangements of French popular songs, instrumental music, and Italian frottole.

With the beginning of the sixteenth century, European music saw a number of momentous changes. In 1501, a Venetian printer named Ottaviano Petrucci published the first significant collection of polyphonic music, the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A . Petrucci’s success led eventually to music printing in France, Germany, England, and elsewhere. Prior to 1501, all music had to be copied by hand or learned by ear; music books were owned exclusively by religious establishments or extremely wealthy courts and households. After Petrucci, while these books were not inexpensive, it became possible for far greater numbers of people to own them and to learn to read music.

At about the same period, musical instrument technology led to the development of the viola da gamba , a fretted, bowed string instrument. Amateur European musicians of means eagerly took up the viol, as well as the lute , the recorder , the harpsichord (in various guises, including the spinet and virginal), the organ , and other instruments. The viola da gamba and recorder were played together in consorts or ensembles and often were produced in families or sets, with different sizes playing the different lines. Publications by Petrucci and others supplied these players for the first time with notated music (as opposed to the improvised music performed by professional instrumentalists). The sixteenth century saw the development of instrumental music such as the canzona, ricercare, fantasia, variations, and contrapuntal dance-inspired compositions, for both soloists and ensembles, as a truly distinct and independent genre with its own idioms separate from vocal forms and practical dance accompaniment.

The musical instruments depicted in the studiolo of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino (ca. 1479–82; 39.153 ) represent both his personal interest in music and the role of music in the intellectual life of an educated Renaissance man. The musical instruments are placed alongside various scientific instruments, books, and weapons, and they include a portative organ, lutes, fiddle, and cornetti; a hunting horn; a pipe and tabor; a harp and jingle ring; a rebec; and a cittern .

From about 1520 through the end of the sixteenth century, composers throughout Europe employed the polyphonic language of Josquin’s generation in exploring musical expression through the French chanson, the Italian madrigal, the German tenorlieder, the Spanish villancico, and the English song, as well as in sacred music. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation directly affected the sacred polyphony of these countries. The Protestant revolutions (mainly in Northern Europe) varied in their attitudes toward sacred music, bringing such musical changes as the introduction of relatively simple German-language hymns (or chorales) sung by the congregation in Lutheran services. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26–1594), maestro di cappella at the Cappella Giulia at Saint Peter’s in Rome, is seen by many as the iconic High Renaissance composer of Counter-Reformation sacred music, which features clear lines, a variety of textures, and a musically expressive reverence for its sacred texts. The English (and Catholic) composer William Byrd (1540–1623) straddled both worlds, composing Latin-texted works for the Catholic Church, as well as English-texted service music for use at Elizabeth I ‘s Chapel Royal.

Sixteenth-century humanists studied ancient Greek treatises on music , which discussed the close relationship between music and poetry and how music could stir the listener’s emotions. Inspired by the classical world, Renaissance composers fit words and music together in an increasingly dramatic fashion, as seen in the development of the Italian madrigal and later the operatic works of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). The Renaissance adaptation of a musician singing and accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, a variation on the theme of Orpheus, appears in Renaissance artworks like Caravaggio’s Musicians ( 52.81 ) and Titian ‘s Venus and the Lute Player ( 36.29 ).

Arkenberg, Rebecca. “Music in the Renaissance.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/renm/hd_renm.htm (October 2002)

Additional Essays by Rebecca Arkenberg

• Arkenberg, Rebecca. “ Renaissance Violins .” (October 2002)
• Arkenberg, Rebecca. “ Renaissance Keyboards .” (October 2002)
• Arkenberg, Rebecca. “ Renaissance Organs .” (October 2002)

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List of Rulers

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• Central Europe (including Germany), 1400–1600 A.D.
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• France, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Great Britain and Ireland, 1400–1600 A.D.
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Artist or Maker

• Amati, Andrea
• Amati, Nicolò
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• Hauslaib, Lorenz
• Rauchwolff, Sixtus
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Online Features

• The Artist Project: “Cory Arcangel on the harpischord”
• MetMedia: “Double” from the Sarabande of Partita no. 1 in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Gigue from Partita No. 2 in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

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Europe 1300 - 1800

Course: europe 1300 - 1800   >   unit 4, toward the high renaissance, an introduction.

• The Sack of Rome in 1527
• Renaissance woman: Isabella d’Este
• The Medici collect the Americas
• Toward the high Renaissance: Verrocchio and Leonardo
• A failed experiment: Medici porcelain
• Preparatory drawing during the Italian renaissance, an introduction
• Galileo Galilei
• Galileo and Renaissance Art
• Conservation: portrait miniatures

How is the High Renaissance different from the Early Renaissance?

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1. The Impact of Technology on Art: A Modern Renaissance

2. Europe’s Cultural Mosaic: Exploring the Diverse Traditions and Beliefs

3. Renaissance: Niccolo Machiavelli and Galileo Galilei

4. The Invention Of The Pocket Watch During The Renaissance Period

5. Impact of The Crusades During the Renaissance Period

6. Analysis of Hans Holbein’s The French Ambassadors

7. Hans Holbein’s The French Ambassadors: A Masterful Legacy of the Renaissance Period

8. Characteristics of the Work The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein

9. Philosophy of Humanism In Renaissance Period

10. The Renaissance Value of Humanism

11. Michelangelo Buonarroti And His World Famous Works

12. Michelangelo As A Great Figure Of Renaissance

13. The Renaissance: the Defining Era of Art

14. The Renaissance and the Humanists: Revival of Classics

15. Italy as the Birthplace and Center of Renaissance

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Causes and Effects of The Renaissance

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Causes of the renaissance, effects of the renaissance.

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Humanism of Renaissance Era Essay

Introduction, the meaning of humanism, the influential humanists.

Bibliography

The Western history of humanism traces its origin from the 16 th century renaissance period when thinkers suddenly deviated from the Platonic perception of the universe to Aristotelian realism. Focus shifted to the importance of human as the central being in the universe. This paper discusses humanism as conceived in the renaissance era and the influential personalities whose works sustained it.

Humanism stems from a philosophic reflection that was majorly practiced by thinkers in the West, though some thinkers also came from the East. The underlying crux of their thought was the essence of the human person in the universe. Consequently, thoughts were advanced on the primary end of human life as working for the happiness of humans on the earth. [1] They propounded the thought of enjoying, developing, and availing to human beings the copious material, spiritual, and cultural goods extracted from the natural world.

The profundity of the implications of this gesture is indescribable yet congenial and common sensical. It is this human-centered theory of life that is referred to as humanism [2] . Humanism as a philosophy therefore, emanates from the enduring need of human beings to make their lives significant, “integrate their personalities around some clear, consistent, and compelling views of existence, and to seek definite and reliable methods in the solution of their problems. [3]

In the previous medieval era before the renaissance period, the thought system revolved around the Church as a custodian of immaterial truths. Platonic philosophy, precisely the concept of world of forms, had dominated the medieval era that subjected the human body, as a shadow of a real body in the world of forms, to little or no attention at all. [4]

However, towards the end of 16 th century there was a paradigm shift towards Aristotelianism that advocated the importance of the actual object of reality from which Plato had abstracted his ideas. [5]

Humanism consequently, developed as the central theme of the renaissance period. Scholars shifted their focus to the human person whose needs were to be satisfied instead of spending much time on ideal truths promulgated by the Church. Even though God was retained into the picture, people became inquisitive about their beliefs attempting to replace ridiculous teachings of the Church with more plausible theories such as the Copernicus revolution.

There were many scholars from a plethora of fields who shaped the renaissance era, but this paper will be limited to a few of them. They include Francesco Petrarca, Niccolo Machiavelli, Baldassare, Dante, Boccaccio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Cervantes.

Francesco Petrarca has been referred to as the “Father of Humanism” due to the spectacular work he did to the modern Italian language. He was a prolific writer with a bias on poetry using the Latin language to do most of his writings. Petrarca’s poems included Canzoniere and Trionfi, which he wrote in his native Italian language. [6]

Among the scholarly works he wrote in Latin are Secretum, a secretive manuscript fraught with guilt, which is an account of his imaginary talk with St. Augustine of Hippo; Rerum Memorandum Libri, which details cardinal virtues; De Vita Solitaria, an exaltation of solitary life; Itinerarium, among other works. Using the knowledge of Cicero’s letters, he compiled his letters into two copies of books: Epistolae familiars and Seniles [7] .

Niccolo Machiavelli is credited for his political masterpiece, The Prince, in which he gave a completely different conception of a government. The book was originally written in Italian, his vernacular, a tradition that characterized writers in the renaissance era. Using the term ‘state’ (status) to ground the jurisdiction of a prince, Machiavelli unknowingly bequeathed the subsequent eras with a term that would be used to refer to political territories [8] .

In The Prince, Machiavelli gives different types of princedoms totally unrelated to the Aristotelian models of democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, et cetera. He uses the terms ‘tyrant’ and ‘prince’ interchangeably and describes personalities that he should adopt depending on the state of their subjects. Machiavelli made a greater impact with his book on the political dynamics that would follow his generation.

Baldassare Castiglione also stands out as one of the gifted renaissance writers with his fictional debut, The Book of Courtier, written in his native Italian. In this book, Baldassare organizes a chain of dialogue between the courtiers of the Duke of Urbino, when he was a member of this court [9] .

A cool mind, melodious voice exuding elegant and courageous words, is the picturesque created by the author as attributed to the courtier. However, the courtier is expected to have a warrior spirit, have good knowledge of the humanities, classics, and be athletic [10] . This piece of writing has remained the undisputed account of the renaissance court life owing to its usage at the time as a manual of perfect courtier.

Dante Alighieri wrote his poem The Divine Comedy during the medieval era. The work has been praised as a masterpiece of Italian literature earning its position using Tuscan dialect that is the standard Italian. Dante creatively allegorizes the afterlife in a typical medieval world view as conceived by the Church. He divides the poem in three sections, namely: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso [11] . In the poem, Dante describes his journey from hell through purgatory to heaven, which figuratively depicts the soul’s path to God. [12]

Giovanni Boccaccio is another prolific writer whose collection of novels, The Decameron, has made him one of the influential writers in the medieval period. In The Decameron, Boccaccio describes how the Black Death ( Bubonic Plague) brought a bevy of seven women and three men together as they flee the villas of Florence which was the epicenter of the plague.

The book details the physical, social, and psychological effects that the plague had on the people of that region. It combines tragedy and love in a more articulate manner with a degree of allegorism. For instance, the seven women are said to represent the four cardinal and the three theological virtues while the three men represent the tripartite division of the soul. [13]

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is credited for having written a literary masterpiece that extolled the power of human intellect and wittingly expressing the centrality of humans’ relation to the divine. His Oration on the Dignity of Man forcefully and polemically articulates the endeavor to focus all attention on the capabilities of human.

In this writing, Pico combined Aristotelianism, Platonism, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism, thus, giving it a humanistic outlook. Human vocation is portrayed as a mystical vocation realizable in three stages: moral transformation; intellectual research, and identity with the absolute reality. [14]

Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish writer of the renaissance era popular known by his novel, Don Quixote, which is the most influential literary work of the Spanish Golden Age. The novel is divided in two parts where the first part narrates stories revolving around two main characters.

The best known of such stories is El Curioso Impertinente where Anselmo is preoccupied by the temptation of testing his wife’s faithfulness and trapping her with his friend Lothario [15] . However, the scenario turned out to be disastrous to all the players. In the second part of the novel, Cervantes does acknowledge his critics concerning the digressions he made in the first part.

Humanism that characterized the renaissance period focused on the human capacity for greater intellectual growth that makes his relationship with God central. Consequently, the needs of man become so special and needed to be satisfied. During this period literature emerged as a medium of expressing the human social activities. Many writers with powerful creativity authored literary works that have remained the trademark of this period such as Pico’s Oration and Machiavelli’s The Prince.

• Alighieri, Dante & Appelbaum, Stanley. The divine comedy: selected cantos. Chicago, IL: Courier Dover Publications, 2000.
• Bloom, Harold. Miguel de Cervantes. Boston, MA: Infobase Publishing, 2005.

Bori, P. Cesare. The Italian Renaissance. An Unfinished Dawn ?Pico Della Mirandola. Web.

• Byfield, Ted. God in Man, A.D. 1300 to 1500: But Amid Its Splendors, Night Falls on Medieval Christianity. New York, NY: Christian History Project, 2010.

Canning, Ferdinand & Schiller, Scott. Studies in Humanism. Detroit, Michigan: Elibron.com, 1998.

Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Florida, USA: Courier Dover Publications, 2003.

Davies, Tony. Humanism. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, p. 128; and Reese, W. Curtis. The meaning of humanism. London, UK: Prometheus Books.

Frost, Martin. The Book of the Courtier: Renaissance Man: Polymath. Web.

Garber, Daniel & Ayer, Michael. The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy: Volume 1, Volume 2. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Heidegger, M. The meaning of “Humanism”. New York, NY: Hulton Press, 1949.

• Hetherington, c. Stephen. Reality? Knowledge? Philosophy!: an introduction to metaphysics and epistemology. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2003.
• Kleinhenz, Christopher & Barker, W. John. Medieval Italy: an encyclopedia, Volume 2. New York, NY: Routledge, 2001.

Lamont, Corlis. The Philosophy of Humanism . New York, NY: Humanist Press. Web.

Mary, Julia & Ady, Cartwright. New York, NY: John Murray, 1908.

Miller, David & Coleman, Janet. The Blackwell encyclopedia of political thought. New York, Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.

• Paetow, J. Louis. A guide to the study of medieval history for students, teachers, and libraries. California, USA: University of California, 1917.
• Tyre, Michelin. Italy, Volume 1992. New York, NY: Michelin Apa Publications, 2007.

Viroli, Maurizio. Machiavelli. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Zimmerman, Dean. Oxford studies in metaphysics, Volume 2. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006.

• Canning, Ferdinand & Schiller, Scott. Studies in Humanism. Detroit, Michigan: Elibron.com, 1998; and Heidegger, M. The meaning of “Humanism”. New York, NY: Hulton Press, 1949.
• Davies, Tony. Humanism. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, p. 128; and Reese, W. Curtis. The meaning of humanism. London, UK: Prometheus Books, 1973.
• Lamont, Corlis. The Philosophy of Humanism. New York, NY: Humanist Press.
• Zimmerman, Dean. Oxford studies in metaphysics, Volume 2. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006; and Garber, Daniel & Ayer, Michael. The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy: Volume 1, Volume 2. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Miller, David & Coleman, Janet. The Blackwell encyclopedia of political thought. New York, Wiley-Blackwell, 1991; and Viroli, Maurizio. Machiavelli. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Florida, USA: Courier Dover Publications, 2003; and Mary, Julia & Ady, Cartwright. New York, NY: John Murray, 1908.
• Frost, Martin. The Book of the Courtier: Renaissance Man: Polymath.
• Bori, P. Cesare. The Italian Renaissance. An Unfinished Dawn ?Pico Della Mirandola.
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, hundreds of thousands of African Americans newly freed from the yoke of slavery in the South began to dream of fuller participation in American society, including political empowerment, equal economic opportunity, and economic and cultural self-determination.

Unfortunately, by the late 1870s, that dream was largely dead, as white supremacy was quickly restored to the Reconstruction South. White lawmakers on state and local levels passed strict racial segregation laws known as “Jim Crow laws” that made African Americans second-class citizens. While a small number of African Americans were able to become landowners, most were exploited as sharecroppers, a system designed to keep them poor and powerless. Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) perpetrated lynchings and conducted campaigns of terror and intimidation to keep African Americans from voting or exercising other fundamental rights.

With booming economies across the North and Midwest offering industrial jobs for workers of every race, many African Americans realized their hopes for a better standard of living—and a more racially tolerant environment—lay outside the South. By the turn of the 20th century, the Great Migration was underway as hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world. Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.

The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds and brightest talents of the day, an astonishing array of African American artists and scholars. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation’s history—the Harlem Renaissance. Yet this cultural explosion also occurred in Cleveland, Los Angeles and many cities shaped by the great migration. Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated writer, critic, and teacher who became known as the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, described it as a “spiritual coming of age” in which African Americans transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.”

The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves,” as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.

Among the Renaissance’s most significant contributors were intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, and Walter Francis White; electrifying performers Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora Neale Hurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee Cullen; visual artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; and an extraordinary list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and countless others.

Josaphine Baker

At the height of the movement, Harlem was the epicenter of American culture. The neighborhood bustled with African American-owned and run publishing houses and newspapers, music companies, playhouses, nightclubs, and cabarets. The literature, music, and fashion they created defined culture and “cool” for blacks and white alike, in America and around the world.

As the 1920s came to a close, so did the Harlem Renaissance. Its heyday was cut short largely due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression, which hurt African American-owned businesses and publications and made less financial support for the arts available from patrons, foundations, and theatrical organizations.

However, the Harlem Renaissance’s impact on America was indelible. The movement brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience.

Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance instilled in African Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination and pride, a new social consciousness, and a new commitment to political activism, all of which would provide a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it validated the beliefs of its founders and leaders like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes that art could be a vehicle to improve the lives of the African Americans. 

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