The Renaissance Man between Antiquity and Modernity:
A Pendular Movement
The Renaissance Man, “the firstborn son of modern [emphasis added] Europe” (Burckhardt 88), who eighty years later, in 1940, becomes “the most intractable problem child of historiography” (Ferguson 2), has always wavered between antiquity and modernity. He was unable to situate himself between the past and the future or to cope with his rising sense of historical consciousness. He was also unable to situate himself in a tongue; between Latin and the rise of the vernaculars. In the vernaculars, he found a wide readership and appeal and was able to isolate himself from the preceding dark ages. Whilst in Latin, as Petrarca puts it: “He sought refuge in an idealized past, access to which was denied to the mass of the people” (Martin 55). In hindsight, historians could not decisively situate the Renaissance Man either.
However, in order to define the Renaissance Man —regardless of where he stands— the picture that Burckhardt painted of the Renaissance must be questioned. His picture: “full of delicacy and mystery” (Burckhardt 186), painting the age and its results as “enough to fill us with everlasting thankfulness” (Burckhardt 188), neglects the layman of the Renaissance. Therefore, it is important to note that when the Renaissance Man is mentioned, it is meant for those who were privileged enough to have light shed on and/or to dictate history. The Renaissance Man then was constantly fluctuating between an imitation of the antiquity he so much admired, and the modernity he yearned for. This essay aims to trace his fluctuation as a pendular movement that never chose a side and never settled.
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Revival, Imitation, Modernity, and Sense of Historical Distance in Renaissance Europe:
The Renaissance in Europe marked a revival of antiquity in various fields. Most notably the Arts like architecture, painting, and portraiture —and the studio humanitatis: an ancient Roman phrase to describe an academic package of five subjects: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, ethics, and history; roughly what is known today as humanities. According to Leonardo Bruni, these humanities “perfect man”, as they focus on language which is what distinguishes man from animal. The Italian Renaissance Man, in particular, added a familial sense to his imitation and revival of Romans. “In a metaphorical sense, the humanists were discovering their ancestors” (Burke 23), they were reviving their fathers’ days; some noble families even claimed literal descent from ancient Romans. This imitation, however, was imbued with modernity. It was not slavish, its aim was not to ape the ancients but was rather assimilation and remodeling.
With the rise of humanities, rose literature encompassed the revival and imitation of many ancient literary genres: the epic, the comedy, the ode, the pastoral, etc. This imitation, like that of the arts, was also imbued with modernity. In secular translations, for example, the more domesticized, modernized, or assimilated, the better: “The less faithful the translations, the more valuable they are” (Burke 33). Imitation in original texts was more complicated, not only was slavish copying the only concern but also the growing sense of historical distance from the imitated while feeling strongly related to them. This historical distance in itself was problematic, for the Renaissance Man saw himself closer to the ancients than he was to the dark ages (Burke 18); which is chronologically illogical. He was so strongly appalled by the idea of closeness to the dark ages that he only referred to this closeness with irony. Yet, this irony and strong resentment unintentionally proved the closeness more than anything else: “Ironic detachment is the only possible stance for someone with a foot in both camps” (Gombrich). This idea of a foot in both camps —echoing the idea of a pendular movement— reflects how the Renaissance Man couldn’t situate himself between both ends.
Political Purpose of Imitation in England and Market Economy’s Influence on Writing (and its Language):
Imitation of antiquity in England, unlike the aforementioned in Italy and parts of Europe, was purely related to politics. It was the desire to create a national image à la that of the Romans and Greeks. Poets were encouraged by many English rulers and patrons to write epics of England like those written of ancient Rome and Greece (Burke 9), partially because it was the zeitgeist and partially because of a desire for glory. In English architecture for example, Maurice Howard, a British art historian examines it saying: “In England too the imitation of Serlio, […] involved modifications for practical reasons as well as to express the architect's own creativity or the patron's self-image” (Burke 34). This imitation —regardless of its cause— also fluctuated between both antiquity and modernity.
In literature, the epics and texts, in general, were not written in English vernaculars, but mostly in Latin as per the patrons’ request. Patronage was not the only factor affecting the production of English literature —considering the influence of the printing press, the rise of the vernaculars (vis-à-vis Latin), a new erudition, and a much wider circulation of books— an awareness of the market economy also began to be influential. In the introduction to Utopia, Thomas More writes:
“For men's tastes are so various, the tempers of some are so severe, their minds so ungrateful, their tempers so cross, that there seems no point in publishing something […] The pedant dismisses as mere trifling anything that isn't stuffed with obsolete words. Some readers approve only of ancient authors.”
Although seemingly revolting against the ancients and leaning towards modernity, More wrote Utopia in Latin to reach a wider humanist audience. He was aware of the hegemony of Latin and its far reach. This applies in general to the stance of imitation in Renaissance England: fluctuating and unsettled. Moreover, intellectuals of the time (who influenced England) were divided into two parties that resemble the pendular movement: the first fully admiring Latin’s complexity: “Petrarch wrote letters to Cicero and others, while Machiavelli described himself as conversing with the ancients.” (Burke 16). While the others, like Lorenzo Valla, longing for modernity, protested Latin’s hegemony saying that: “'Not only has no one spoken Latin correctly for many centuries, but no one has even understood it properly when reading it” (Burke 19).
Conclusion:
The Renaissance Man, evidently, struggled to situate himself between the ancients and a more modern calling. Whether exalted or renounced by historians, he remains an influential mark in history that has served a tangible advancement in many ways. The confusion he felt embodied in the historical distance, assimilation, and a spirit of revival —in England and all over Europe— produced a discourse of the classics that is empirically affected by the spirit of modernity and experimenting.
Works Cited
- Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Edited by Irene Gordo. Translated by S.G.C Middlemore, The New American Library of World Literature, 1960.²
- Ferguson, Wallace K. The Renaissance. H. Holt and Company, 1940.
- Martin, Alfred Von. Sociology of the Renaissance. Edited by Karl Mannheim. Translated by W. L. Luetkens. Butler & Tanner Ltd, 1944.
- Schapiro, Meyer, et al. Gombrich. “Criteria of Periodization in the History of European Art.” New Literary History, vol. 1, no. 2, 1970, pp. 113–125. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/468623.
- Burke, Peter. The Renaissance. 2nd ed., Macmillan, 1997.
- More, Thomas. Letter Prefacing Thomas More's Utopia: Thomas More to Peter Giles, http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/hum-more-to-giles.html.
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