Exploring the Renaissance

Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.

-- Erasmus, 1466-1536, Renaissance thinker

The Renaissance

• The Renaissance celebrated the achievements of individuals in a new movement called humanism

• It valued reason above religious superstition

Artists and thinkers like Leonardo, pictured above,

roamed Florence, the city that spawned the Renaissance

The Amazing Michelangelo

• The Medicis were a wealthy and powerful family of patrons in the city-state of Florence during the Renaissance and beyond. The family sponsored artists such as Michelangelo. In fact, the Medicis created a sculpting school for a young artist who showed ability with a chisel. That artist was Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The Rise of the Individual

The FrenchAmbassadorsby Hans Holbeinthe Younger

Let’s Go To Will Shakespeare’sRenaissance England

• Queen Elizabeth I was monarch, though later in Shakespeare’s career, James I of Scotland reigned

• England was becoming a superpower; the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada created a great sense of national pride

A contemporary of Shakespeare’s wrote: “I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare’s fine filed phrase, if they would speak English.”

• Shakespeare came at just the right time: he did for the English language what Elizabeth did for England politically: he made English a powerful language.

• (Remember: before his time, the church used Latin and the court used French. English was for common folk

For more on Shakespeare’s career,click here

Select a topic for further study:

• Shakespeare’s life• Shakespeare’s times• Shakespeare’s

contribution to the English language

• Shakespeare’s contemporaries– Sir Philip Sidney– Christopher Marlowe– Ben Jonson

• Elizabeth I• James I• The sonnet cycle• The Petrarchan sonnet• The Globe Theater• Shakespeare’s

influences• Shakespeare’s plays