12/1/07 - English Literature - Renaissance Humanisms

The Renaissance period produced conflicting forms of self-government.

According to humanist theory, humans have a trans-historical existence. Add a structuralist view to humanism and we see the world through the range of our language. Add a feminist or postcolonial view to humanism, and we see that distinctions between language (gendered and cultured language) shape us.

The Renaissance saw a re-evaluation of the human mind. For example, Da Vinci created his Vitruvian Man and stated that buildings should be constructed according to the proportions of the human body because it is a model of perfection. Previously, cathedrals had been built to overpower the human body, e.g. Durham Cathedral, Notre Dame. Vitruvian buildings were subsequently built to accommodate the human body; humans became the centre of their world. Shakespeare also voiced this new perception of humans in Hamlet.

"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god - the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me - no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."
[Shakespeare, William, Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London and New York: Methuen, 1983. 2.2.293-300]

In education there was a movement towards the imitation of classical forms and values and classical texts were widely published.

Milton maintained that men were a fallen race because they were created free. He saw humans as self-fashioning creatures and there were no limits to this. The world became adaptable to human requirements. Sometimes humans could revert to their lower forms (i.e. by acting brutish), but nevertheless they were free. They were also seen as unpredictable, as makers of themselves. The purpose of humanism was to release human potential.

There rose a human interest in language and rhetoric. In dry terms, rhetoric is persuasive speech, but it has material uses so it is practical. Rhetoric is also a set of ideals. It promotes particular understanding between humans; when human potential is released, they can be enlightened by eloquent speech. Rhetoric instructs, entertains and allures. An example of this is the 'mouse trap' in Act III of Hamlet, whose purpose is didactic. It demonstrates a humanist mode of behaviour. Hamlet tries to speak himself into action, yet he hesitates. In this case, humanism does not fully work. To Hamlet, the universe is malign and means nothing, e.g. IIii. Why is he obstructed and disillusioned despite having access to humanism?

The theory of new humanism developed out of humanism. It saw language as a gift. It overcomes the gap between ideals and realities. For some, the gap was impossible to overcome (like Hamlet), and new humanism recognises that. Through the educational system, classical ideals were expounded but the humanist programme was failing. There was violent and coercive teaching (Erasmus) which meant that people were becoming subversive through punishment.

New humanism concerned itself with idealist conceptions and their effect on reality. The integrity of antiquity was questioned, especially after the Reformation. New discoveries in cosmology and anatomy made humanism seem less complete. Classical ideals came to be considered damaging rather than ideal. Societies turned upon each other and themselves. Economic rivalries flared up. Exploitation and enslavement of new worlds took place. Humanists were blamed for all of this, and they could allow it to continue, yet they doubted themselves.

"I have thought it proper to represent things as they are in real truth, rather than as they are imagined. Many have dreamed up republics and principalities which have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation. The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore if a prince wants to maintain his rule he must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not according to need."
[Machiavelli, The Prince (c. 1513-14), trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), ch. XV, pp. 90-1]

Machiavelli states that those who are virtuous and good become destroyed by the world. So people should be cruel out of necessity. The message is that you should be audacious and realistic is you want to be successful.

At this time people were beginning to accept that the world is not equal to humanist ideals; the world is cruel and difficult.

So humanism was about self-interest while new humanism was about self-realisation.

The goal of rhetoric is contingent; it is aimed towards success, not virtue. Rhetoric is the deception and distortion of language, which is particularly explored in Renaissance literature.
In Hamlet, Claudius's speech begs the question: what is the fate of rhetoric?

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy, -
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, -
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.
[Shakespeare, Hamlet. 1.2.1-16]

So Hamlet was an old-fashioned humanist in a Machiavellian world, causing him conflict and struggle in the play.