Petrarch

Both Theodore Rabb and Elizabeth Eisenstein raise valid arguments. Personally, I think Theodore Rabb’s argument was more persuasive. Standing alone, Eisenstein’s argument appeared very strong but once it was criticized by Rabb pieces of her argument began to fall apart. For instance, Eisenstein claimed that the Scientific Revolution could be directly attributed to the printing press, while I agree this certainly helped, I am not so sure that it was as major of a factor as she claimed.…

This tale is a huge contrast to the Wife of Bath tale. Unlike the Wife of Bath, this woman is willing to except that the man is one hundred percent in control of the entire relationship. In fact it was very common in the Middle Ages to have the woman protagonist go through a mental breakdown. With this tale in particular it goes through a woman who goes through the mental confliction by the man who was supposed to protect her. Griselda is supposed to represent the ideal wife. She is a faithful…

 What led up to the Renaissance?  Fall of Rome & the regression back into Feudalism  The Crusades  The Bubonic Plague  Great geological/trade location  Establishing the city-states  New ideas were mostly inspired by the Romans and the Greeks, who were considered trailblazers Economic and Political Developments/Commercial Developments  Florence was the heart of the Art Renaissance  Northern city-states like Venice, Milan, and Genoa grew wealthy because they had access to the seas…

The pivotal effect of modernity spans from everything to a new and skeptical perception on things to an increasing role of science and technology. Modernity is essentially the antithesis of its predecessor; pre-modernity. While pre-modernity values the divine over the individual, modernity values the individual and reason. Modernity is often perceived as the promise of human progress through solely reason and knowledge. Michael Allen Gillespie in ‘The Theological Origins of Modernity’…

sciences helped usher in the Renaissance and the beginning of Humanism (Catling 43). The benefit of their support led to Florence becoming famous for creative master artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Botticelli and writers such as Petrarch and Dante (Italia.it). The Florentine language that dominated these literary works led to it becoming the language used throughout Italy today (Discover Tuscany). As the one time capital of Italy, Florence is now known as the “intellectual…

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is perhaps one of Chaucer’s more widely recognized pieces of work. Significantly influenced by the several cultural movements such as the Knight Code of Chivalry and the Renaissance and by contemporaries such as Petrarch, The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four differing tales of characters embarking on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. There are numerous characters in Chaucer’s work, including the characters the Knight and his son, the Squire. The…

ancient Greco-Roman beliefs are the foundation of the Renaissance. Various other artists during this time also supported humanism in their art such as Michelangelo, who sculpted the statue of David with large hands to represent the power of humans, and Petrarch, who wrote affectionate poems to show the relevance of human…

Over the course of this semester I have read many pieces of literature, and the theme "love" has constantly come up. Inspiring writers both men and women have had their share of expressing their passionate feelings of love throughout history through poetry. Many writers are inspired by experiencing feelings of lust, passion, heartbreak, and lovesick. In Catullus's poems, he expresses his feelings with pure honesty and does not sugarcoat them, in which the book mentions that he "...conveys…

A time of revival and rekindling, this was the Italian Renaissance. The feudal system along with the Catholic Church which ruled in most European countries began having its purpose and ethics questioned. Men started looking elsewhere for answers and inspiration. All aspects of everyday life were affected by this rebirth. Art, religion, politics were seen from new perspectives. Italy’s revival brought about many intellectuals, artists, painters, writers, and philosophers who fueled off this new…

The concept of beauty has been a baffling issue and a bone of contention among thinkers and intellectuals. Such confusion can plausibly be understood through the changeable standards considered in every culture and the many attempts to approach it. Throughout history, it has been glorified and highlighted in many ways. From a philosophical perspective, Kant, in Observation on the Feeling of Beautiful and Sublime , tackles beauty, through the view that women are identified by their beauty, while…