Renaissance

In French it means 'rebirth'. The period following the Middle ages in European History. A vital flowering of the arts and sciences, accompained by thrilling changes in religious and philosophical thought, the Renaissance started in Italy in the late fourteenth century and spread throughout the Europe, reaching England during the reigns of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and James I (1603-1625).

Naturally such a widely diffused shift in values and ideas is conceptually rather vague, and, not surprisingly, some historians doubt whether the label 'Renaissance' is useful, or describes an identifiable phenomenon. Some aspects of the intellectual changes are worth nothing, however. Religion changed redically with the new Protestant reforms (Reformation). The revival of interest in Greek Literature leads to a new breed of Classical scholars called HUMANISTS, of whom Erasmus is one of the most famous. In 1543 Nicolas Copernicus put forward his new and accurate astronomical view of the solar system. Displacing eventually the old PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM, according to which the stars and the sun revolved around the earth. Scientists like Galileo Galilei and Willaim Harvey explored the arold about them and man's physiology, in such a way as to discredit forever the astrological and semi-magical pseudo-sciences which had prevailed in the medieval world. Last, but very significant, the new technology of printing with movable type, developed in the fifteenth century, facilitated and quickened the spread of new ideas and knowledge.

The 'term' Renaissance was a nineteenth century invention, coined by looking back at the period. It is doubtful whether those participants in the burgeoning of arts and ideas had such a clear view of the significance of their own intellectual endeavours, although they were conscious of the intellectual ferment around them.

The word Renaissance can be applied to any equivalent flowering of the arts and scholarship, as occured, for instance, in twelfth century Europe; the revival of Scottish literature in the early twentieth century is called the Scotish Renaissance.

The major literary figures in the English Renaissance include:

Francis Bacon
Thomas Dekker
John Donne
John Fletcher
John Ford
Ben Jonson
Thomas Kyd
Christopher Marlowe
Philip Massinger
Thomas Middleton
Thomas More
Thomas Nashe
William Rowley
William Shakespeare
James Shirley
Philip Sidney
Edmund Spenser
John Webster
Thomas Wyatt