Renaissance Research Paper

The Renaissance was an important part of the history of literature. The Renaissance period was the time when the world was moving on after the Middle ages. Renaissance means “Rebirth” (Introduction to the Renaissance). The Renaissance was “the rebirth of learning that began In Italy in the fourteenth century, spread to the north, including England, by the sixteenth century, and ended in the north in the mid seventeenth century” (Introduction to the Renaissance). Renaissance literature was different from other literature, as it was inspired by “classic Greek and Roman Literature” (Renaissance Literature). William Shakespeare was the most famous of all renaissance writers, and he wrote a lot of his works about historical and social problems.

Humanism began in Italy in the fourteenth century, and then spread to England as renaissance literature began to become more current after the Middle Ages. Humanists “placed great emphasis upon the dignity of man and upon the extended possibilities of human life in this world” (Renaissance). Renaissance writers, such as William Shakespeare, were more focused on world issues, and thus less focused on religious beliefs, unlike during the medieval era. Another important aspect of the Renaissance was the Protestant Reformation. As the world was switching from the Middle ages to the Renaissance era, Renaissance humanists were rejecting the learning practices of the medieval period. The same was happening with the church as “the [Protestant] Reformation seemed to reject the medieval form of Christianity” (Renaissance). The reformation was trying to reform the beliefs and the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. The political leaders at the time wanted to extend their power and their control, at the expense of the Church. (Protestant Reformation) As well, there was the “Great Chain of Being”. The great chain of being was the thought that an “object's "place" depended on the relative proportion of "spirit" and "matter" it contained” (Introduction to

These three events were important parts of the Italian and English Renaissance. One example of a poem from the Renaissance Era is William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds”. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 was published for the first time in 1609, and is perhaps his most famous poems ever written. The title, Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds, which makes the reader believe that the poem is going to be about love in some form. It is a poem is about an older person telling a younger person everything he has learned about love in his lifetime, and how that loves is a feeling that does not change. The theme of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 is that love is a feeling that does not change for anything, no matter the circumstances. One example of this is when the speaker says that “love is not love / which alters when it alteration finds” (Shakespeare 2-3). The speaker is saying that love that is always changing due to changing circumstances is not love at all. Another example of this is when the speaker says “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks / But bears it out even to the edge of doom” (Shakespeare 11-12). The speaker is saying that love does not alter with time, but yet bears it out,