Themes

Antiquity

The Renaissance was sparked by a return to a classical style of learning, which had largely been ignored during the Middle Ages, when most writers glorified the Catholic Church and its teachings. As cities began to prosper, religious corruption increased and the influence of the Church waned; however, writers rediscovered the classics and began to incorporate them into their own works. "My father was neither the Chaos, nor Orcus, nor Saturn, nor Jupiter," says Erasmus's personified Folly in The Praise of Folly, referring to four gods, who were figures from the stories of the successions of the gods in Greek and Roman mythology. With the advent of the printing press in the 1450s, the age of mass-market print distribution began, and more writers were able to receive a classical education.

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Individualism

Study of the classical languages and values moved Renaissance writers to incorporate the classical style into their own works and encouraged a more worldly view than that of Middle Age religious writings, so that writers and scholars began to look beyond the Church's teachings and to take matters into their own hands, including the interpretation of the scriptures. This dramatic shift in thought, from relying totally on the wisdom of the Church to developing understanding through scholarship, led to the intense examination and appreciation for the human individual. This movement was called Humanism. The glorification of humans and human experience eventually led to the idea that humans could achieve perfection in this life as opposed to only in a divine paradise. Shakespeare's Danish prince Hamlet echoes this sentiment in a famous passage from Hamlet: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties!" (Faculties in this sense means "abilities.") Othello, from Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name, was unable to rise to this perfection. Millicent Bell argues that contemporary beliefs about race dictated that he be characterized as a man who was seriously flawed. Race determined his character despite his evident honorable bearing.

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Faith in Reason

With the resurgence in classical learning and the focus on more secular, or nonreligious, human issues, scholars and writers embraced a spirit of skepticism and began to place a greater importance on reason. This belief was directly contrary to Church teachings, which encouraged people to have faith in the Church alone. However, it is important to note that the humanists were not against the Church. On the contrary, most humanists believed their faith was strengthened by reason, and when they used rational or skeptical arguments against the Church, it was in an attempt to inspire reform of the Church practices. In addition to their application of reason to Church practices, humanists also used reason to rebel against the unrealistic ideals popular in medieval literary works, most notably the chivalric romances. Cervantes's Don Quixote embodied this application. The old man in the story is so blinded by the idealism he has read about in medieval romances that he can no longer see the truth, thinks he is a knight, and goes seeking adventures. In one of the most famous examples from the story, Quixote attempts to fight a number of windmills, which he mistakes for giants. Says Quixote: "This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."