r this discussion is that there was a well developed medieval intellectual tradition for the humanists to criticize. Scholars seldom devote their lives to criticizing and refuting the views of Vikings or Magyars, or of illiterate knights or barons. The humanists could go in a new intellectual direction in part because they had greater then before to rediscovered ancient works, but also because the medieval scholastics left them a well developed point of departure.
In many ways, indeed, "the Renaissance" becomes an unclear concept when we try to look closely for it. In Italy it is frequently traced back to the fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth century gave way to the Baroque tradition. Yet in England, the "Renaissance" in literature, art, and architecture hardly began before the time of Henry VIII, and continued well into the seventeenth century.2 Ultimately, what we mean by "Renaissance" is defined in part by a positive: a deliberate adoption or imitation of ancient Greek and Roman models and ideals, and in part by a negative: a deliberate rejection of medieval or "Gothic" ideas and styles.
1Walter Ullman, Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 3.
2Martin Elsky, Authorizing Words: Speech, Writing, and Print in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 1. But see the discussion of Chaucer, below.
Even this rough definition has its problems. Italy was the heart of the Renaissance, and Italy never went through much of the "medieval" experience. Large parts of the peninsula remained under the rule of the Byzantine or "Eastern Roman" until after the year 1000. Nor did feudalism, the most characteristically "medieval" institution, ever take deep root there. Social life never ceased to b
...