The Characteristics Of The Reinassance

Renaissance means rebirth. It refers especially to the rebirth of learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth century spread to the north including England by the sixteenth century and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth.During this period there was an enormous renewal of interest in and study of classical antiquity.

But it was not just a rebirth of the old to the new it was also an age of new discoveries (in land) and intellectually. Both of the discoveries offered a tremendous change for the western civilization. In science Copernicus attempted to prove that the sun was the center of the universe not the earth. In religion Martin Luther challenge and ultimately caused a division in one of the most important and major institution of times the church.

 Study of the Renaissance might well center on five interrelated issues.First although Renaissance thinkers often tried to associate themselves with classical antiquity and to dissociate themselves from the Middle Ages important continuities with their recent past such as belief in the Great Chain of Being were still much in evidence.Second during this period certain significant political changes were taking place. Third some of the noblest ideals of the period were best expressed by the movement known as Humanism.Fourth and connected to Humanist ideals, was the literary doctrine of imitation important for its ideas about how literary works should be created.Finally what later probably became an even more far-reaching influence both on literary creation and on modern life in general, was the religious movement known as the Reformation.