Renaissance Humanism

Renaissance humanism points to the aims of the cultural, social, and educational reforms undertaken by students, artisans, and officials in Europe around 1400-1500s. Renaissance humanism emerged in response to the frequently antiquated and inadequate ideas of ancient academics that saturated Europe during the preceding era. Instead of merely providing experts such as physicians, people of the law, and scholastics with the firm dictates of tradition for their professions, humanists tried to introduce within the system of education a powerful spirit of purity and wisdom through the detailed examination of the humanities and especially the skills of speech, history, writings, and philosophy. As more humanist writings began to emerge, the subject of thoughtful internal or external contemplation was made popular. Renaissance writers also demonstrated humanist views that indicated an aptitude of Classical tradition but also a new era of innovation. This worldview made many in the Renaissance to see their society as higher than any other, as the essence of rational thinking. A humanist was recognized not merely as one holding a great love for mankind, but rather as a person who had mastered the arts to obtain a finer level of intelligence, humor, rhetoric, and speech, as well as a further understanding of the world and the past.

Francesco Petrarca, renowned as the Father of Humanism, was also one of the earliest Italians to develop domesticated poetry. The impact of Petrarch's sonnets was not only of importance in form, but also of content, not merely a way of writing, but also a method of thought. 'I am a citizen of no place, everywhere I am a stranger," stated the poet, making known fully the feeling of isolation and angst that would later win him the name of "the first modern man." In many sonnets, he wrote of a mysterious woman, called Laura. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Petrarch, along with is love for literature, also was deeply religious and during his younger years cultivated a desire to be virtuous as well as "an unusually deep perception of the transitory nature of human affairs" (Whitfield). Following this period of Petrarch's life was a time of reaction and indulgence, occurring at the same time as the poet's well-known love for Laura (Whitfield). From this passion sprang some of his most famous works, such as "the Italian poems," such as Sonnet 1, "which he affected to despise as mere trifles in the vulgar tongue but which he collected and revised throughout his life" (Whitfield). This poem is as follows: "You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,// of those sighs on which I fed my heart,// in my first vagrant youthfulness,// when I was partly other than I am,// I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,// for all the modes in which I talk and weep,// between vain hope and vain sadness,// in those who understand love through its trials.// Yet I see clearly now I have become// an old tale amongst all these people, so that// it often makes me ashamed of myself;// and shame is the fruit of my vanities,// and remorse, and the clearest knowledge// of how the world’s delight is a brief dream" (Puchner 168). In this downcast poem, Petrarch laments to Laura, who cannot hear him, that he may not be able to live up to her expectations and that his sonnet is just a dream that may never come true. This internal conversation of Petrarch's demonstrates the pedestal that the author puts on even just one human, in this case, Laura, and makes her his whole world. This reflects the larger idea that humanity is the center of the universe and all other aspects of the earth, including intellectual and physical skill, exist to be used in order to serve the greater needs of humankind. The poems to Laura and on other topics began to create a long road of unprecedented introspection, consisting of an unceasing mental dialogue to describe the poet's thoughts in verse form. Here can be found the sense of exile and loneliness that began the spiral into what is now post-modernism, where all is relative, and everyone must create their own reality because the world is no longer home. Simultaneously, his poetry cleverly apprehends humanism's improvised and unpredictable appreciation for nature, which aided in forming the natural world as one of the highest issues of poetry.

Also deeply introspective and passion-filled were the sonnets of William Shakespeare during the English Renaissance. Throughout the writings of Shakespeare rest complicated evidence and intimate ideas for the writers' social goals. Reflective of courtly romance, Shakespeare's sonnets are actually about something vastly different. While some are powerful expressions of homosexual lust, others point to misogyny. Don Paterson of The Guardian attempts to get at what Shakespeare truly meant in his sonnet in his online newspaper. Paterson notes that these sonnets are so famous, they have almost lost their meaning, which is where he finds the need to get back to the original intent of the poet. He writes, "When something becomes proverbial, it almost disappears; and worse, we're allowed to think we know it when we really don't" (Paterson). In the famous Sonnet 130, the author illustrates his humanist views, which prove evidence of the vast influence of the Renaissance period. Here is a partial selection from Sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red, than her lips red: / If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head . . . " (Puchner 279). While the words Shakespeare uses seem to praise the woman's "earthly womanhood," Paterson points out that "Shakespeare almost fails to remember to pay the poor woman any kind of compliment at all." In this way, the poem can seem dull and negative; however, the humanism present in this piece is only hidden under a clever approach to a human-focused world. While the words seems an ode to misogyny, the humanism

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