What is the origin of the Renaissance?

Renaissance is an ideological and cultural movement that rose in Europe from14th century to16th century. It brought a period of scientific and artistic revolution and opened the curtain of modern European history. It is considered as the dividing line between the Middle Ages and the modern times. Marxist historians believe that it is the dividing line between feudalism and capitalism.

It is generally believed that the Renaissance originated in Italy in the14th century (the word Renaissance comes from the Italian word Rinascimento, which means regeneration or revival), and then spread to western European countries, reaching its peak in the16th century. 1550, vasari officially took it as the name of the new culture in the biography of the celebrity of the Art Garden. This word is transliterated as Renaissance in French, and is widely used in European countries after17th century. 19th century, western historians further regarded it as the floorboard of western European culture from 14 to16th century. Western historians once thought that this was the revival of culture and art in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.

/kloc-in the 0/4th century, with the development of workshop handicraft industry and commodity economy, the capitalist relationship gradually formed within the European feudal system; Politically, the feudal regime caused widespread dissatisfaction, the national consciousness began to awaken, and the masses of European countries showed a strong desire for national unity. As a result, a new era reflecting the interests and demands of emerging capitalist forces began to appear in culture and art. The emerging bourgeoisie thought that medieval culture was a retrogression, while Greek and Roman classical culture was a bright and developed model, and they tried to revive classical culture-and the so-called "revival" was actually an unprecedented liberation and creation of knowledge and spirit.

At that time, Italy was in a multi-city state, and each city was an independent or semi-independent country. /kloc-After 0/4th century, cities gradually moved from * * * harmony to dictatorship. Dictators indulge in pleasure and believe in neo-Platonism, hoping to get rid of the shackles of religious asceticism and vigorously protect artists' descriptions of secular life. At the same time, the religious radicalism of Franciscans tried to abandon the scholasticism of orthodox religion and praise the beauty of nature and the spiritual value of human beings. The Vatican is also moving towards corruption. The pope's enjoyment is more severe than that of secular dictators. They are also protecting artists and allowing art to deviate from orthodox religious dogma. Philosophy and science are gradually developing in a relatively relaxed atmosphere, and are also brewing the prelude to the religious reform.

The Renaissance originated in northern Italy. It is generally believed that Dante was the first representative, and his masterpiece was The Divine Comedy. His works criticized and exposed the corruption and stupidity of medieval religious rule in an implicit way for the first time, and were written in local dialect instead of Latin, the official literary language of medieval Europe.

Another representative figure is Petrarch, who believes that ancient Greece and Rome were the most perfect times of human nature, and it was against nature to suppress human nature in the Middle Ages. Although he studied Latin literature deeply and extensively, he wrote a large number of lyric poems in the form of sonnets in Italian dialect, which were warmly welcomed by the rulers of various cities and countries.

Another important reason for the Renaissance was 1453, when the Ottoman Turkish Empire captured Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire perished. Influenced by oriental culture, a large number of talents who still retained the spirit of the Roman Empire fled to Italy, brought back many fresh ideas and arts, and set up schools in Rome to teach Greek, which promoted the formation of the Renaissance.

Thought of Renaissance Works

Renaissance works embody humanism: advocating individual liberation and opposing asceticism and religious views in the Middle Ages; Advocate scientific culture, oppose obscurantism, and get rid of the shackles of the church on people's thoughts; Affirm human rights, oppose theocracy, and abandon all authority and traditional dogma as the basis of theology and scholasticism; Supporting centralization and opposing feudal separatism are the main ideas of humanism. The representative works include Dante's Divine Comedy, Boccaccio's decameron, Machiavelli's The Prince, and rabelais's Biography of the Giant.

Renaissance art praised the beauty of the human body, claiming that the proportion of the human body is the most harmonious in the world, and applied it to architecture. Although a series of paintings and sculptures still focus on religious stories, they all show the scenes of ordinary people and pull God to the ground.

Humanists began to study the Bible by studying classical literature and translated it into the national language, which led to the rise of the Reformation.

Humanism praises the secular and despises the heaven, flaunts rationality rather than the revelation of God, affirms that "man" is the creator and enjoyer of secular life, requires literature and art to express people's thoughts and feelings, scientifically seeks for the welfare of people, educates and develops people's personality, and requires people's thoughts, feelings and wisdom to be liberated from the shackles of theology. Advocating individual freedom has played a great role in historical development.

Achievements of the French Renaissance:

Symbolic algebra was founded by the French mathematician Veda in the16th century. He published "Introduction to Analytical Methods" at 159 1, systematically arranged algebra, and for the first time consciously used letters to represent unknowns and known numbers. In his other book, On the Identification and Correction of Equations, David improved the solutions of cubic and quartic equations, and established the relationship between the roots and coefficients of quadratic and cubic equations, which is known as Vieta's theorem in modern times.

In France, the Renaissance obviously formed two factions, one is optimates represented by Seven Star Poetry Society, and the other is Democrats represented by rabelais. The Seven Star Poetry Society, represented by Longsha and Du Beilai, has made outstanding contributions to language and poetry theory. They first put forward the idea of unifying national languages, which promoted the development of French national languages and national literature. But they rejected folk poetry and only served a few nobles. Rabelais is an outstanding humanist writer after Boccaccio and a representative of the French Renaissance Democrats. The Biography of the Giant, which he created in 20 years, is a realistic work interwoven with reality and fantasy, and occupies an important position in the history of European literature and education.

France and its representatives

In France: free thinking and skeptical thinking are quite developed.

Representative figures: essayist: Montaigne, novelist: rabelais, etc.