You guys don't think the Renaissance actually happened, do you? Ugh

You guys don't think the Renaissance actually happened, do you? Ugh.

you know Renaissance just means "rebirth of classical culture"

they found a bunch of books and techniques that was lost from Western Europe after Rome's collapse and decided to reinstall them.

Best wishes, John Green.

Except that had been going on right through the middle ages. Where do we draw the line between "Medieval" and "Renaissance"?

>John "you can fuck my wife, nut on her face, make her call you daddy, but at the end of the night I'm the one cuddling with her. Who really wins?" Green

political, clerical, and martial structures the middle ages continued from Rome, but cultural and economic techniques from Rome was lost and didn't resurface until the Renaissance (due to trade, takeover of Byzantium, autonomy of Italian communes, opportunism of Italian of said communes, etc.)

is the renaissance not considered a thing anymore?

how do we refer to that period in history in these new uncertain times? post-high-middle-ages?

When a bunch of Italians decided that emulating classical antiquity was cooler than just referring to it.

>This Machine Kills Fascists

This man does not understand the internet

The Fall of Constantinople, 1453.

Early modernity or the late MA.
The Renaissance is basically limited to Italy. England, France, Spain, and Germany didn't benefit from the Renaissance until a century or two later.

Dante=Last Man of the Italian Middle Ages
Petrarch=First Man of the Renaissance

I am not wrong

That was happening back in the 1100s.

Where's the tipping point.

You haven't answered my question.

If nothing changed, why did so many people, much closer to the time than you, feel so strongly that something had?

There isn't, it's a catch-all term for the transition from the MA to modernity.

Other answers in close with the invention of the printing press and the commissioning of the doors of the Baptistry of It Duomo.

And even then one can easily talk about a Renaissance in the 9th century in Byzantium.

All of those are too late.

Renaissance sculpture begins with the Pisanos.

The Printing Press and the Fall of Constantinople are way too late.

Everybody thinks the time they inhabit is the most meaningful in human history. A brief overview of predicted dates for Judgement Day will prove that.

Exactly. There wasn't a "Renaissance", it's just a tool used by those looking backwards to understand the past more easily.

>The Printing Press and the Fall of Constantinople are way too late.

I'd agree, but that doesn't stop others from feeling they are.

>A brief overview of predicted dates for Judgement Day will prove that.

It'll show that dates for Judgement Day exhibit a much wider spread than dates for the Renaissance.

WE WUZ ROMANS N GREEKS

Their feelings are objectively wrong.

Petrarch brought new light onto Cicero and Classicism, bringing the Renaissance idea to life.

I love how people just ignore the Golden Age that occurred in the Middle East. As if the preserving and building upon of ancient texts by Arabs, Persians, and Berbers didn't catalyze the Renaissance.

>hey we should define an era of the west by an era of a cultural sphere it touched but wasn't part of

It's already been established all the start dates for the Renaissance are fairly arbitrary.

Middle ages is mostly a western European term

I already said that the techniques that were lost in the west were still big in Byzantium, but west of that it was simply those who fought, those who sowed, and those who prayed.

those who prayed were literate but had their dogmas so they can record knowledge but didn't really build upon it.

>hey we should define an era of the west by an era of a cultural sphere it touched but wasn't part of

When did I talk about defining anything? I simply said that it's kinda funny how people avoid talking about it. It's okay to admit that knowledge was passed down at one point.

It didn't, the Aristotelian texts the Arabs preserved entered Europe in the 12th Century.

The High Renaissance, more than 100 years after the Renaissance began, was marked by the reintroduction of Platonism brought in by the Greeks who fled Constantinople.

The Renaissance was born when Roman writers, basically Cicero, were rediscovered by Petrarch

One can easily say the same of Dante, or Psellos, or the works associated with Constantine VII Porphyrigennitos.

The Renaissance happened and it held back Western science for 200 years.

By the late Middle Ages, scholars were going beyond Greek theories on physics and developing ideas that would later kickstart the scientific revolution, like calculus and inertia. People like Thomas Bradwardine, Jean Buridan and Nicholas Oresme began this process. Giovanni di Casali tried to introduce it in Italy, but everyone was too busy masturbating over Greek texts to notice.

Not to mention the retreat from rationalism. While late medieval scholars like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Robert Grosseteste were developing empiricism, the Renaissance went back to the worst kind of mysticism with people like Paracelsus, Marsilio Ficin and Pico della Mirandola.

Even the literature is shit. What good book has been produced in the 15th century, the climax of the Renaissance? In previous centuries there was the Arthurian romances, the Nibelungenlied, the Canterbury Tales, the Divine Comedy. Again, Renaissance writers were too busy masturbating over Cicero letters to produce anything decent.

The paintings are really pretty though.

And yet they all fall in about the same time period, unlike the arbitrary dates for Judgement Day. Also, going back to
>Everybody thinks the time they inhabit is the most meaningful in human history

Belief in the renaissance persisted for many generations.

user, almost all periodization is an arbitrary tool used to understand the past, that doesn't make it not real

Also your requirement for "when" the renaissance began for confirming it as real also doesn't make sense when you think about it.
You can't objectively determine when red turns to purple to blue, but they still definitely exist. Lines of demarcation of periodization are tools as much as periodization itself is, they can be shifted and changed within reason to fit the arbitrary needs of the situation.

Dante was solidly Medieval, if not a proto-Modernist.

He championed the vernacular, not the Ancient. Being inspired by Virgil is not a Renaissance characteristic, since Virgil was highly influential to Medieval writers.

>There wasn't a "Renaissance

Yes there was, Vasari notes it while living in it. It's not some academic invention

This is mostly right, I would only add that it was precisely the addition of everything in the classical cannon besides Cicero
Cicero had long been the standard for learning and reading Latin for centuries. Petrarch himself writes about how he would wish people would stop dick riding Cicero

He notes a particular upswing in a phenomenon that had been occurring for centuries prior to that point.

One could call it A renaissance. But to call it THE Renaissance is fairly arbitrary.

>Being inspired by Virgil is not a Renaissance characteristic

I never claimed it was, but all of the examples display a classicising element to their works which IS characteristic of the "Renaissance" (as it is commonly understood).

>But to call it THE civil rights movement is fairly arbitrary

Etc ad infinitum

You seem to be implying this point proves me wrong in some way.

Ah right, Petrarch didn't rediscover Cicero, but some of his lost works.

I got carried away. Petrarch is the key figure in The Renaissance.

This is just Pedantic. It may not be the first Renaissance, but it's certainly the most significant, considering Modern Europe's impact on the world.

What I'm implying is that you've conceded that something happened, and arguing about whether the article is definite or indefinite doesn't make a difference.

...

He was an edgelord.

Literally the George R.R Martin of his day.

>but it's certainly the most significant, considering Modern Europe's impact on the world

I'd disagree, since it was dependent upon the "Arab Renaissance", and the "Carolingian Renaissance", and the Encyclopaedising Movement/"Makedonian Renaissance". Surely that means those "Renaissances" were just as importsnt?

>What I'm implying is that you've conceded that something happened,

You assume, falsely, I was arguing that nothing happened. Not true in the slightest.

I was arguing the Renaissance didn't happen inasmuch as the period known as "the Renaissance" is just that, a period of time arbitrarily defined as "The Renaissance".

It's a provocative and, hence, effective way of drawing attention to the fact that "the Renaissance" was merely a part of process that had been in motion for centuries prior. It encourages people, particularly students and those with an introductory understanding to de-compartmentalise history.

Renaissance is an artistic/cultural movement and not a historical period. It occurred during the transitory period from Medieval to Early Modern, depending on how one defines those transition dates

The Arab and Carolingian Renaissances were important to the Medieval Cultures they influenced.

The Italian Renaissance was a break from that culture

I fail to see how all the events and changes we consider to make up the Renaissance during a period of time we define as the Renaissance, is not, in fact, the Renaissance happening

Nobody is arguing the Renaissance is a discreet event.
If the Renaissance never happened, did the Middle Ages happen? How about Late Antiquity? Or the Age of Sail?
It seems like you take issue with the whole idea of periodization as a whole, which seems pointless to me.

Not in the slightest. Both of those were attempts to lay claim to Classical Greek and Roman culture respectively.

Yes, and they influenced the Middle Ages, but not the Renaissance.

The Renaissance actually brought Classicism back, where the Arab Renaissance brought in Aristotelian Empiricism and eastern Mathematics, while the Carolingian Renaissance brought about minor aesthetic movements, which were soon surpassed.

>I fail to see how all the events and changes we consider to make up the Renaissance during a period of time we define as the Renaissance, is not, in fact, the Renaissance happening

Because that is an arbitrary definition. If we suddenly all feel that those events over that period of time didn't constitute "the Renaissance" then the entire period simply disappears.

And? What the fuck are you suggesting?

>It seems like you take issue with the whole idea of periodization as a whole, which seems pointless to me

I'd argue it promotes a very flawed and disjointed understanding of history. It also implies the events and ideas characteristic of a certain period did not occur in any meaningful way prior to that period.

One might think that, prior to "the Renaissance", there was no real knowledge of classical texts in Western Europe which simply is not true.

>Yes, and they influenced the Middle Ages, but not the Renaissance

Simply not true. For a start the Carolingian Renaissance set the groundwork for the entire German monastic scholarship, which is were the Medicis got most of their manuscripts in the first place.

Secondly both the Carolingian and Arab renaissances both directly encouraged the Byzantine Encyclopaedising Movement/"Makedonian Renaissance" and I really hope I don't have to explain how that was simply essential to the Italian renaissance.

So that means that "The Renaissance" is an arbitrary construction, and hence did not happen (on a certain level).

See

Name some things that did happen on a certain level

You mean the classical culture that Byzantium injected into Europe after its collapse?

Name a period of History that Objectively happened that doesn't require general consensus

>You can't objectively determine when red turns to purple to blue, but they still definitely exist

Not to a colour-blind person. Why is my perception of reality any more valid than theirs?

I can't prove ANYTHING definitely exists and neither can you.

>Why is my perception of reality any more valid than theirs
Because you perceive that correctly. Their worldview is caused by a malfunction

What point are you trying to make here?

Your argument is one of possible misconceptions

People might run into trouble with assumptions but I would argue that at a base level periodization is the easiest way for people to group events trends and dates and form a reasonable historical opinion.

If periodization was so flawed at a non-base level, why would literally thousands of historians still subscribe to it as a meaningful way of examining history? Don't get me wrong there are other modes of examining history, but periodization is by far the most dominant.

None.

But I've already explained why I feel the very concept of periodisation is problematic, so what are you trying to prove?

Your objection to the Renaissance applies to most things, yet you aren't objecting to most things as far as anyone can tell.

>Because you perceive that correctly

How can this be demonstrated without an objective understanding of reality/ what is "correct"?

How can one have an objective understanding of reality when one can only percieve reality subjectively?

There we go. The argument has reached the point where nothing is real.

You've literally reduced to the absurd, an accusation someone made earlier

there was a 12th century "renaissance" to be sure (brith of romances, church reforms increasing literary output of clergy, advent of courtly love, etc) but that italians of the 14th century THEMSELVES thought there was a big gap between what they were doing and what the rest of feudal europe had been doing for centuries.

>People might run into trouble with assumptions but I would argue that at a base level periodization is the easiest way for people to group events trends and dates and form a reasonable historical opinion

I'd agree, at a base level.

>If periodization was so flawed at a non-base level, why would literally thousands of historians still subscribe to it as a meaningful way of examining history?

Because it's what they're used to? Because it's an easy way of structuring an academic course or article? But that doesn't mean that it provides the most accurate view of the past, or that we shouldn't challenge that system once and while.

As far as YOU can tell.

You are wrong for doing so.

So what?

What replacement do you offer? What method of organizing history into something meaningful do you endorse?

I know there are others besides periodization, but I'd like to know what your arguments for a particular one being categorically better than it is

>but that italians of the 14th century THEMSELVES thought there was a big gap between what they were doing and what the rest of feudal europe had been doing for centuries

That does not necessarily make it so.

>I simply said that it's kinda funny how people avoid talking about it.
Because it means fuckall to this thread.

You've turned this into an epistemological debate when it shouldn't be.
You've shifted the goal post so far that the question is now if knowledge and truth are real. And I'm not going to argue about that.

This is where people would "agree to disagree"
You've made this an intractable conversation

If you were in every thread objecting to the idea of classical antiquity or the golden age of comic books or whatever like you're objecting to the renaissance, I wouldn't have to assume, it would be visible. But you don't.

>I know there are others besides periodization, but I'd like to know what your arguments for a particular one being categorically better than it is

Define "categorically better".

If I'm explaining it to a child or a layman then periodisation is the most useful because it easier to teach and to understand.

If you're wanting to understand the past in a more accurate way then I think one can understand "the Renaissance" as a period of particular upswing in a process of discovery and reinvention of classical Roman and Greek culture which in many ways had been a constant within Europe, the Near East and North Africa since about AD 750.

He wants to waste much time and ink constantly explaining that Historical Periods are actually in spectra with one another.

Like a Faggot pedant would

That just sounds like you can't think of a way to disprove my original point, that the idea of "The Renaissance" is an arbitrary construction. I wasn't the one who brought perception and objective reality into this.

>Not to a colour-blind person
A person being color blind or not doesn't change light wavelengths.

Because this thread is precisely about periodisation as a concept and it's shortcoming.

Just because I'm not literally autistic about the problematic nature of periodisation doesn't mean I'm a hypocrite.

That's what the past is. If you find people talking about it pedantic, then leave Veeky Forums.

Or just leave the thread where we're specifically talking about that one aspect of history.

A non-colour blind's perception of light wavelengths doesn't either.

It's the difference between the thing itself and our idea of the thing.

actually there was no dark ages

On a certain level, no there wasn't.

all that you have done is reintroduced a new period beginning in 750 AD that the Renaissance is a sub-period of.
In the same way The Italian Wars can be considered a sub-period of the Renaissance.

The idea of "Classical" Roman and Greek culture is itself is a periodization, so how does you account for that?

Periods are a tools not laws

The reddit opinion is that there were no dark ages? Rather than evil christianity and the pope sucking all the progress out of Europe?

As much as I hate to admit it I agree on this one

>Periods are a tools not laws

That is precisely my point. I am using periodisation there as a self-confessed simplification. Because it makes it easy for me to explain the limitations of the tools with specific reference to "the Renaissance".

Hell, one can easily point out how I'm only really referencing Byzantine literary history and how the period didn't see a significant break with the past in other aspects of Byzantine art and culture.

Reddit is on to the next contrarian opinion.

I think this is the biggest change in Veeky Forums since about 2008. Veeky Forums used to be self-confessed contrarians, despising normalfags.

Now, they're reactionary.

Not to mention the fact that for most of the workers in the fields it mattered bugger all what the literary salons in Constantinople were reading.

2016 Veeky Forums is like the Ottoman empire.

The cancer spread, killed the host body, and then grew into a new body, which then died of cancer.

>it's just a tool used by those looking backwards to understand the past more easily.
I'm pretty sure you just defined periodization.

Periodization is *not* simplification. It can be used to simplify things, like "during X, Y happened."
But in real historiographical discourse it is more often used to draw connections between different, but related, developments into larger trends over a period of time, it is acutally used to make things *more* interconnected and *more* complex.
The way these relationships are exactly configured changes with each historiographical actor, but they generally link together so most everyone is on the same page when someone says "Norman England"
Just because they are modifiable does not mean they don't exist

>the Arthurian romances, the Nibelungenlied, the Canterbury Tales
>Good

>15th century, the climax of the Renaissance
Do you mean the 16th? Because the 15th century is the late Middle Ages and the very beginnings of Renaissance, Francois Villon and Christine de Pizan are understood as a medieval figures for example.

>16th century
Rabelais, Ronsard and la Pleiade, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and other Elizabethan figures, Cervantes, Ercilla, Vega, Gongora and Quevedo?
Not to mention Machiavelli, Montaigne, More, and even Castiglione and della Casa for etiquette and decorum.
Not even counting people like Luis de Leon and Suarez who represented the former period better.

Comparing demanding historical periods to demanding colors is a reasonable comparison
My point was not to "prove" that periods aren't arbitrary, my point was that just because something is has arbitrary boundaries doesn't mean it doesn't exist as a core idea

>What good book has been produced in the 15th century, the climax of the Renaissance?
>What good book has been produced in the 15th century
>15th century
>the climax of the Renaissance

Also, you abject fucking retard, Dante's Divine Comedy was written in the 14th century but wasn't printed till the 15th