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Definition: Renaissance from Encyclopedia of Environmental Change

The movement of cultural renewal, which started in Italy in the fourteenth century. It marks the end of the middle ages and the rediscovery of classical civilisation and its models in art, literature and science.

JAM

[See also scientific revolution]

  • Brotton, J (2006) The Renaissance: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Weiss, R (1988) The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
John A. Matthews
Swansea University

Renaissance

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(rĕnӘsäns', –zäns') [Fr.,=rebirth], term used to describe the development of Western civilization that marked the transition from medieval to modern times. This article is concerned mainly with general developments and their impact in the fields of science, rhetoric, literature, and music. For a discussion of developments in the arts see Renaissance art and architecture . In the 12th cent. a rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature occurred across Europe that eventually led to the development of the humanist movement in the 14th cent. In addition to emphasizing Greek and Latin scholarship, humanists believed that each individual had significance within society. The growth of an interest in humanism led to the changes in the arts and sciences that form common conceptions of the Renaissance. The 14th cent. through the 16th cent. was a period of economic flux in Europe; the most extensive changes took place in Italy. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, emperors lost power in Italy…
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Full text Article Renaissance

From Chambers Dictionary of World History
From the French for ‘rebirth’, the term is applied to several significant revivals of interest in the classical past which punctuate European history. One such revival is identified with the age of the Emperor Charlemagne (hence ‘Carolingian Renaissance’), another with the Emperor Otto I, the Great…
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Full text Article RENAISSANCE

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
Literally ‘re-birth’ (re ‘again’ and naissance ‘birth'; renovatio , German Wiedergeburt ). The period in Western history - the Quattrocento - that marked the separation of the modern world from the Middle Ages, particularly associated with the return to classical forms of thought, the renewal of…
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Full text Article Renaissance

From The Classical Tradition
I. Byzantium Byzantium did not experience a rebirth of the classical tradition after an intermediate period of obscurity, in the way the Italian Renaissance self-consciously revived the art, literature, and thought of Roman (and, to some extent, Greek) antiquity after what had been declared a…
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Full text Article Renaissance

From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms
The classically inspired revival of European arts and letters which began in Italy in the 14th c. Intellectually it was inspired by the ideas of humanist scholars, and in the visual arts its progress was marked by greater and greater command of anatomy and of the techniques of linear and atmospheric…
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Full text Article Renaissance

From Philip's Encyclopedia
(Fr. 'Rebirth') Period of European history lasting from the mid-l5th century to the end of the 16th century. Late 15th-century Italian scholars used the word to describe the revival of interest in classical learning. It was helped by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, resulting…
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Full text Article renaissance

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
pronunciation (1845) 1 cap a :  the transitional movement in Europe between medieval and modern times beginning in the 14th century in Italy, lasting into the 17th century, and marked by a humanistic revival of classical influence expressed in a flowering of the arts and literature and by the…
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Full text Article renaissance / Renaissance

From The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style
This 19th-century borrowing from French, which literally means “rebirth,” is usually stressed on the first and third syllables in American English. In British English the word is usually stressed on the second syllable, which is pronounced with a long a sound, as (rə-nāˈsəns). The American English…
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Full text Article RENAISSANCE, The

From The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales
A word coined in 1869 to describe the developments, evident in Italy from the 14th century onwards, which offered a wider perspective on life than that provided by the feudal system and the medieval Church. (The Welsh equivalent, Dadeni Dysg , first appeared in the early 20th century.) Delighting in…
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Full text Article Renaissance.

From The Oxford Companion to British History
(rebirth) characterizes the impulse, initiated in Italy, towards improving the contemporary world by discovering and applying the achievement of classical antiquity. The movement was at its strongest from the time of Petrarch (1304–74) through the ‘long 16th cent.’ (1450–1625). ‘Renaissance’ is now…
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Full text Article Renaissance

From Encyclopedia of World Religions: Encyclopedia of Catholicism
French: “rebirth.” The era of European history from around 1350 to 1550 is known as the Renaissance, when the arts and sciences were “reborn” and flourished, first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thanks to increased exposure to classical Greco-Roman writing, painting, sculpture, and…
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