Literary Criticism

The Renaissance is generally dated from fourteenth-century Italy to the middle of the seventeenth century. The term renaissance literally means rebirth, and the writers of the Renaissance presented it as an era of new beginnings. Christopher Columbus traveled across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain and landed in the Americas. In astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei determined that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which altered Europeans’ understanding of the cosmos. Such discoveries called for a new era of curiosity and creativity. Like great medieval thinkers before them, Renaissance writers engaged with and imitated works from antiquity, specifically works from the classical Greek and Roman eras. Writers believed that ancient texts could give new life to their own work and that the study of classical texts could help their communities become more broadly educated and more capable of diverse and rational thought. They advocated a broad range of learning reflective of antiquity’s influence, including the fields of literature, philosophy, rhetoric, and history.

A medieval writer credited with beginning the Renaissance, the Italian Francesco Petrarch is best known for his collection of love poems celebrating Laura, Il Canzoniere (or Song Book, c. 1360), written in contemporary Italian vernacular rather than Latin.
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