Question

What is one significant way the Renaissance represents "rediscovery" of classical antiquity? Please identify your example as well as the author/artist/architect responsible for it, and explain exactly how it was inspired by antiquity. For example, was your author imitating a certain literary style from the ancient world, or discussing a subject germane to it?

Answer 1

Renaissance refers to the great flowering of art, architecture, politics and the study of literature, usually treated as the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern world that came under the influence of Greek and Roman models. the Renaissance has also been defined broadly as the 'rebirth' of culture throughout in Europe in the later Middle Ages.

it was, in fact, a seemingly dramatic revival of interest in the humanities, in science and in exploration. It begin in Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries and by the 15th century had spread through most of Europe. It was both a period of renewed scientific interest in classical learning and also a time of intense creative activity. Galileo, Erasmus, Gutenberg and Columbus indicate some of the kind of activity Renaissance man participated in. Galileo was the Italian mathematician, astronomer and physicist who is considered to be founder of experimental method. Erasmus was the Dutch humanist generally regarded as the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance. He was the first editor of the New Testament. Machiavelli, the Italian writer and statesman, was a florentine patriot and original political theorist whose principal work The Prince brought him reputation of amoral cynicism. Gutenberg was the German craftsman and inventor who originated a method of printing from marble type that was used without any important change until the 20th century.

The Classical Renaissance, or rediscovery of classical thought and literature, implied both in knowledge of the classical writers and ability to use the Greek and Latin languages. Though Italy gave it birth, it gradually spread beyond the Alps into Germany, France and England. It created a kind of cosmopolitan republic in a Europe almost savage, supremely war like and comparatively untaught. the Cosmopolitan character of Renaissance becomes evident if one follows briefly the career of Erasmus, the Dutch scholar who visited England for the first time in the summer of 1499.

The European Renaissance showed all its characteristics in England. Thought was liberated and broadened so that it broke its scholastic framework. Men looked with new wonder at the heavens and the earth as they were revealed by the rediscovery of the navigator and astronomy. Superior beauty was perceived in literature as the classical antiquity, particularly in the recently recover works of ancient Greece. It is observed that the Renaissance had in England certain additional characteristics which were so special that they gave rise to a truly national literature. Two wonderful literary creations of the Renaissance are Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Bacon's Instauratis Magna.