HSY1020

Renaissance Europe

Peter Howard and Bill Kent

6 points
* 2 lectures and 1 tutorial per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives Students who successfully complete this subject should have an understanding of the changes which took place in society, culture, Church and political institutions between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries. It is expected also that they will not only have mastered normal documentary evidence but will also have learnt to relate visual evidence, in particular architecture, to wider changes in Renaissance society and intellectual life.

Synopsis The subject will cover the social and cultural history of Western Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Particular emphasis will be given to the Italian Renaissance and to the spread of its influence in northern Europe in the sixteenth century. Themes to be treated will include the economic and cultural effects of the black death, war, popular rebellion, and political and religious changes in the later Middle Ages, the emergence of Renaissance humanism, the courtly and civic culture of fifteenth-century Italy, the age of discoveries and inventions, the emergence of the early modern European state system and the dissemination of the civilisation of the Renaissance in Western Europe. Documentary texts will be used extensively in tutorials.

Assessment Essay (1000 words): 20%
* Essay (1500 words): 30%
* Examination (2 hours): 40%
* Class participation/attendance: 10%

Preliminary reading

Brown A The Renaissance Longman, 1988

Prescribed texts

Kohl B G and Smith A A Major problems in the history of the Italian Renaissance Heath, 1995
Ross J B and McLaughlin M M The portable medieval reader Viking or Penguin, 1977
Ross J B and McLaughlin M M The portable Renaissance reader Viking or Penguin, 1978

Recommended texts

Hale J The civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance Harper Collins, 1993
Nauert C G Humanism and the culture of Renaissance Europe CUP, 1995