9/1/07 - English Literature - Reading the Renaissance

Renaissance was about rediscovery and revival of classical values.
Is it a remote period in history? Its other name is 'early modern' and it ranges from 14th to 17th century.
Could be connected to the birth of the modern era as well as a rebirth. Recognising modern concepts of society and how it shapes the self. There are conflicting legacies about the renaissance - no concrete conception of shaping or time.
Renaissance often asserted as a court-dominated society. Alternatively, civic publication is also associated with the period.

Thomas Wyatt the Elder read Whoso list to hunt during the court of Henry VIII.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven in diamonds with letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about:
'Noli me tangere' for Caesar's I am,
And would for to hold though I seem tame.
[Sir Thomas Wyatt (Translation from Petrarch, Rime 189) NEL1: 527]

Simple language, but enigmatic. What does it articulate? Disillusionment, futility. Compares experience of hunting with erotic pursuit.
Ways of understanding the renaissance can also be convened around the poem. Ways of expressing oneself, as if a person is outside of oneself.

"In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness - that which was turned within as well that which was turned without - lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as member of a race, people, party, family or corporation - only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the state of all things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual and recognised himself as such."
[Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (1860; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), p. 98]

Jacob Burckhardt argues that up to the 16th century, Italy offered a highly sophisticated modern society. A new sense of self is what defines the renaissance for him. He depicts the medieval period as a time of sleeping and stupor in The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860. During the renaissance there was an awareness of one's place among other people - family, community - while in Italy individuality was prevalent. Individuals are many-sided, and this is what makes the renaissance. Renaissance people do not accept the world as it is, but can move freely within it. Individuals sense they have the power to transform it.

In light of this, Wyatt's poem can be said to be preoccupied with human feeling, awareness and evaluation. The narrator is undetermined, change view. Personal experience exemplified; no set values.

The state is a work of art. Political organisation, as well as paintings, sculpture and architecture. Political authority could be learned as a skill. Such freedom was admired by Burckhardt. He was awed by Visconti's power over people. Subjects who interfered with his boar hunting were executed and when his wife died the kingdom had to wear mourning garb for a year. Italy was said to reach its peak during the rule of Visconti.

"After all, it's not that awful - you know what the fellow said ... In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce ..? The cuckoo clock."
[Graham Greene and Carol Reed, The Third Man (1949; London: Lorrimer, 1968), p. 114]

[Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 120]

Greenblatt shows Burckhardtian values. The title suggests individuality.

Autonomous individualism is what defined renaissance for Burckhardt. His critic Hans Baron contested his views. Burckhardt was a political reactionary, he says. Burckhardt is terrified by medieval revolutions. He thinks modernity is something born, but of a different temperament, between 1400-1402 in Florence. Free republics were argued to be the definition of renaissance, disputing Burckhardt. Free republic, new views, rebirth of classical culture and citizenship.

"The ever-recurring leitmotifs in the humanistic philosophy of life were the superiority of the vita activa [active life] over 'selfish' withdrawal into scholarship and contemplation; the praise of the family as the foundation of a sound society; and the argument that the perfect life is not that of the 'sage', but that of the citizen who, in addition to his studies, consummates his humanitas [humanity] by shouldering man's social duties, and by serving his fellow-citizens in public office."
[Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 7]

Milan versus Florence in debate over centre of renaissance. Art culture, e.g. Michelangelo, who was most proud of being a Florentine citizen.
Baron - desperate and defined struggle for liberty in artistic and cultural activity.

In Wyatt's poem there is obscure reference to power and possession.

Civic humanism (Burckhardt) versus cultural materialism (Baron).