"The idea that there was a great revival or rebirth of literature and the arts, after a thousand years of cultural sterility, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries originated with the Italian writers of the Renaissance themselves. Finding the feudal and ecclesiastical literature and Gothic art of the Middle Ages uncongenial to their taste, they turned for inspiration to the civilization of Roman and Greek antiquity...Thus, from the beginning, the double conception of medieval darkness and subsequent cultural rebirth was colored by the acceptance of classical standards."
1. List and define any words in the text that you are unfamiliar.
2. Does the author believe that the Renaissance was a unique and distinctive period in time or a continuation of the Middle Ages? Which of the statements best reflects the author's view and supports your opinion?
3. According to Ferguson, how did writers and thinkers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries view themselves? Were they part of the Middle Ages or a different era - the Renaissance?
4. Read two posts by your classmates and comment on their responses.
1. List and define any words in the text that you are unfamiliar.
2. Does the author believe that the Renaissance was a unique and distinctive period in time or a continuation of the Middle Ages? Which of the statements best reflects the author's view and supports your opinion?
3. According to Ferguson, how did writers and thinkers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries view themselves? Were they part of the Middle Ages or a different era - the Renaissance?
4. Read two posts by your classmates and comment on their responses.
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