Renaissance Dbq Essay

When translated to english the French word renaissance means rebirth. This is a perfect description of the event. The Renaissance was a time of rebirth for people between the 1300s and the 1600s, in Florence, Italy. A time of education and self discovery. The Renaissance served as a transitional time between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. Without the renaissance people today would not be as highly educated and would be less open-minded. In the Renaissance man’ s view of man changed to one that views itself as perfect, as seen in the art, literature, and scientific discoveries.
If the Renaissance was to be known only for one thing it would be art. The transformation of art from the middle ages to the Renaissance is jarring. The art

As more people dedicated themselves to more complicated trades the need for literacy became apparent. As the people in Europe became literate more of them took on writing as a profession. Through these writings we can gather many works showing the change in man’s perspective from the two ages. In a scene from Hamlet by William Shakespeare he states, “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!” (Doc B). Shakespeare describes man as a perfect figure, who is noble and has great skill and knowledge. In the Renaissance people viewed themselves as precious works with little flaws. However, this could not be farther from the truth for the Middle Ages. In the English play Everyman, Everyman is described as a sinful figure who needs to repent before their day of reckoning comes. “Ye [man] think sin in the beginning full sweet…Both strength, pleasure, and beauty, Will fade from thee as flower in May” (Doc B). This contrasts the Renaissance’s position quite greatly. In the Middle ages man is not seen as perfect, in fact man is seen as almost the opposite. Man is an incredibly flawed figure in need of change. As self discovery became more popular people started to appreciate humans and society as it was, and would even exaggerate it to make man seem better than he really

For most of the Middle Ages the people learned all they knew about the world from the church. Namely the use of a geocentric universe. To be geocentric is to be “earth-centered” meaning the people of the Middle Ages thought that the earth was the center of the universe. But during the Renaissance some people had the courage to go against the beliefs of the church. “The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lived from 1473 to 1543. Relying mostly on mathematics, he developed a very different understanding of the universe” (Doc C). Copernicus created the heliocentric model of the universe proving that the sun was the center of the universe. This theory, while not completely correct, has been the foundation of Astronomy and astronomical sciences for