Europe and the New World
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Europe and the New World
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Europe and the New World
- 1. Copyright © 2017 W. W. Norton & Company Europe and The New World Volume C
- 2. Renaissance Values • social roles were well defined, usually restrictive • revolutionary changes in education, politics, science, and economics affected all matters of life • increased focus on literacy in “vulgar” languages • resistance to discoveries, e.g., Galileo’s repudiation
- 3. • centrality of Old World started to be questioned • exploitation and enslavement of the New World, i.e., indigenous cultures, was commonplace • attempts to convert inhabitants to Christianity abounded • inflation and new access to social mobility had a destabilizing effect on European economy and rigid social strata Exploration and Change
- 4. Geographical Explorations • Columbus, other navigations • tabula rasa not actually the case
- 5. Major European Explorations by Sea
- 6. Cortés’s “The Second Letter” on Indigenous Populations “I will simply say that the manner of living among the people is very similar to that in Spain, and considering that this is a barbarous nation shut off from a knowledge of the true God or communication with enlightened nations, one may well marvel at the orderliness and good government which is everywhere maintained” (pp. 553–54).
- 8. Important Early Modern Inventions • Gutenberg printing press, 1439 • compass • gun
- 9. Religion in Europe, ca. 1590
- 10. Protestant / Catholic Conflicts • Protestant Reformation • Martin Luther and John Calvin • simony was one among many abuses of the Catholic Church • nationalizing religious authority for political power • monarchies claim power separate from that of Pope
- 11. Machiavelli: The Prince & Absolute Rule “[A]nyone who determines to act in all circumstances the part of a good man must come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence, if a prince wishes to maintain himself, he must learn how to be not good, and to use that ability or not as is required” (p. 173).
- 12. • Renaissance (“rebirth”): reprise of ancient culture • classical texts inspire morality and politics • Latin connected a “republic of letters” • an age of discovery • Motif: life is transitory, so cultivate earthly interests Humanism “My ship laden with forgetfulness passes through a harsh sea, at / midnight, in winter, between Scylla and Charybdis, and at the / tiller sits my lord, rather my enemy // . . . . My two usual sweet stars are hidden; dead among the waves are / reason and skill; so that I begin to despair of the port” (Petrarch, “Sonnet 189,” p. 158).
- 13. Arts during the Renaissance
- 14. “Their lives were not ordered and governed by laws and statutes and rules, but according to their own free will. . . . The constitution of this abbey had only a single clause: DO WHAT YOU WILL —because free men and women, wellborn, well taught, finding themselves joined with other respectable people, are instinctively impelled to do virtuous things and avoid vice” (p. 133). Rabelais: Gargantua & Pantagruel
- 15. “They define virtue as living according to nature; and God, they say, created us to that end. When an individual obeys the dictates of reason in choosing one thing and avoiding another, he is following nature. Now the first rule of reason is to love and venerate the Divine Majesty. . . . The second rule of nature is to lead a life as free of anxiety and as full of joy as possible, and to help all one’s fellow men toward that end” (p. 244). More: Utopia
- 16. “So we may well call these people barbarians, in respect to the rules of reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity. "Their warfare is wholly noble and generous, and as excusable and beautiful as this human disease can be; its only basis among them is their rivalry in valor. They are not fighting for the conquest of new lands, for they still enjoy that natural abundance that provides them without toil and trouble with all necessary things . . .” (p. 335). Montaigne: “Of Cannibals”
- 17. Melancholy • “What is the purpose or ultimate worth of all this activity?” • A sense of futility and skepticism • Tireless examination of the nature of their own world, the problem of power, the vexed relations between princely authority and liberties of the people
- 18. Renaissance Literary Characters • Favor introspection over impulsive or grandiose acts (contemplative rather than active life) • Enjoy greater autonomy • Examples: Hamlet, Don Quixote
- 19. During the Renaissance, which of the following generally took precedence in the arts? a. the skill of the artist b. raw emotion c. religious devotion d. originality Test Your Knowledge 1
- 20. “Melancholy,” as that term was understood during the Renaissance, can best be described as: a. a sense of futility b. a temporary sadness c. a kind of “blue” feeling d. a manic depressive state Test Your Knowledge 2
- 21. The Renaissance was a time of great global exploration, and the discovery of new cultures on the other side of the world from the Europe influenced literature of the time. Which of the following was inspired by reports of newly discovered cultural traditions and social arrangements? a. Thomas More’s Utopia b. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet c. Nicolaus Copernicus’s On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres d. Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince Test Your Knowledge 3
- 22. The term Renaissance means “rebirth.” What literary traditions did European Renaissance writers and thinkers focus on as part of this rebirth? a. Ancient Chinese literature b. New World literature c. Greek and Roman literature d. Classical Spanish literature Test Your Knowledge 4
- 23. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for The Norton Anthology of World Literature For more learning resources, please visit the Digital Landing Page for The Norton Anthology of World Literature at https://digital.wwnorton.com/worldlit4pre1650
Editor's Notes
- Renaissance men and women were born into societies that strictly regulated their actions and clothing—only actors had the right to vary their clothing above their social station. Some authors perceived the established social actions as allowing for playful behavior, while others express resentment over the constraints. More and Rabelais, for example, imagine new social orders in which the educated and aristocratic characters respond to social expectations with liberal and novel methods. With the advent of the printing press, ideas could be transmitted internationally and to larger groups of people in their native languages rather than Latin. Because less emphasis was placed on the afterlife, those who could afford it led a “life well-lived” to enjoy the pleasures of their transient life. As the caption to Lucas van Leyden’s Young Man Holding a Skull (1519) reads, “This young nobleman, a paragon of Renaissance fashion, points to a skull that he cradles in his left arm, reminding the viewer of the inevitable fate that even the best-dressed courtier will face“ (p. 119). © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY
- The tremendous influx of wealth from the New World led to persistent inflation and new possibilities of social mobility. Spain commanded the wealth yielded from the New World, leading to piracy and expeditions from other European nations to combat Spanish success. Europeans assumed that the New World existed for their profit and delectation, an idea commonly expressed in artistic and literary works of the time.
- Columbus considered the New World a tabula rasa—a clean slate ready to be imprinted with Christianity and European ways. However, that was not the case as those areas were already populated by functioning indigenous communities, which forced Europe to grapple with other versions of what culture could mean. The image is Vespucci Discovering America, Jan van der Straet, 1589. The fertility of the New World is represented as a sexualized female body. Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY
- In 1519 King Charles of Spain was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. He took for his motto the Latin phrase plus ultra . . . even further. The lines of major European sea exploration depicted on this map provide ample evidence of Europe extending its reach across the globe—going even further than it ever had before. Magellan, for example, circumnavigated the globe in 1520. And Columbus encountered the New World, arriving to North America in 1492. These extensive sea voyages opened up new territory and resources to European exploitation, though what European explorers discovered, in addition to raw materials and natural resources, were often well-developed civilizations that were completely different than their own. The cultural and material exchanges enabled by European sea exploration often had considerable effect back home as Europe began to reconsider the cultural and historical centrality that it had understood for so long to be its birthright.
- In spite of a sincere belief that indigenous peoples were barbaric and uncivilized, Western writers and travelers increasingly wrote about the simplicity and candor of these peoples, as well as what was perceived to be a better form of government and social hierarchy.
- Around 1532, Copernicus completed his theses on a heliocentric model of the universe, in which he disputes the then-current theory of geocentrism—that the earth is the center of the universe—and replaces it with a new model in which all spheres revolve around the sun; the Catholic Church was interested in this model but reacted strongly against it, given its displacement of earth as a microcosm and man as the center of God’s creation. Fifty years after the presentation of this system, only a dozen astronomers concurred with the theory. In 1633, Galileo was convicted of heresy and placed under permanent house arrest for ascribing to Copernican theory. Among other noteworthy developments, Galileo designed a military compass for gunners and surveyors’ accuracy, created a new thermometer, and made improvements to the telescope and microscope. The image is The Copernican System, by Stefano della Bella (Italian, Florence 1610–1664 Florence). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1967 (67.689.10) The image is Galileo and personifications of Astronomy, Perspective and Mathematics, frontispiece for 'Opere di Galileo Galilei', by Stefano della Bella (Italian, Florence 1610–1664 Florence). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951 by exchange (68.746)
- Despite censorship, the average person’s access to information increased dramatically due to both the printing press and publication of the Bible and other works in vulgar (non-Latin) languages. This created problems for the Catholic Church, especially leading into the Spanish Inquisition. The compass improved navigation and encouraged trade, while the use of guns changed military combat. The image shows a Gutenberg Printing Press.
- Europe of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a continent threatened from without by the Ottoman Empire.* However, the most serious challenge to the unity of post–Reformation Europe arose from political and religious divisions within Europe itself. In many cases, entire countries were dominated by one religious orthodoxy, as was the case for Spain and Italy in which Roman Catholicism held sway. In just as many instances, however, religious beliefs varied within political borders, which led to considerable conflict as religions vied for dominance. Europe of the late sixteenth century was a continent of many major city powers, including Rome, London, Paris, Vienna, and Prague. Each of these urban centers represented political, religious, and cultural power in Europe. * See the Vol. C map “The Ottoman Empire,” NAWOL, Vol. C, p. 115, for more about this powerful and expansive empire, which was a nexus point between the diverse cultures of West Asia, Europe, and North Africa.
- Many European monarchs took up the Protestant cause against the Catholic Church, though they often did so as much out of political interest as religious. For example, looking to throw off papal control of the distant Roman Catholic Church, Henry VIII of England declared himself head of the Church of England. Jean de Léry, in the History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, connects the experience of the New World with the upheavals of the Reformation that he witnessed in the French-Portuguese wars over Brazil, their interaction with the Tupinamba Indians, and the violence he witnessed upon returning to France that made his own civilization appear more savage than the indigenous tribes he had observed in Brazil.
- Henry VIII’s absolutism led to greater efforts on the part of his subjects to contest absolute monarchic control. England provides a good example again: Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and the monarchy was abolished temporarily during the Civil War of 1642–51. Students might look in particular at Guaman Poma de Ayala’s The First New Chronicle and Good Government for suggestions to improve colonial administration in Peru, making it more aligned with Peruvian government and suggesting the election of an indigenous viceroy to rule for the king of Spain. The image is a portrait of Henry VIII. Valerie Leonard/REX/Shutterstock
- Petrarch’s Rime Sparse, a sequence of love poems, explore the theme of “renunciation” for a poet whose earthly desire as a poet-lover are inconsolable in spite of his religious endeavors. The work typifies Renaissance preoccupation with real life rather than a focus on life as mere preparation for the afterlife. Therefore, abstract binaries like right/wrong or good/evil are replaced by concrete ideas of taste, harmony, and effort. “Virtue” is now based on one’s skill rather than an abstract morality. In this excerpt from Petrarch’s poem 189 (p. 158), classical myth, transience, and the emphasis on skill represent humanist aesthetics. Footnote 4 reads that “Scylla and Charybdis are the twinned oceanic dangers through which Odysseus, in Homer’s Odyssey, and Aeneas, in Virgil’s Aeneid, must chart a middle course. Forgetfulness of oneself and of God is sinful in Augustinian terms. The ship, captained by Reason, is a traditional figure for the embodied soul.”
- Similar to the Renaissance individual’s aspiration toward earthly delight and self-competence, art was to make a lasting impression by virtue of its craft, not because it necessarily evoked or expressed raw emotion. Aesthetics were based on harmony, skill, and drew on themes from antiquity and religion for inspiration. The image is Madonna and Child, by Fra Filippo Lippi, ca. 1465. The object of the painting’s devotions is somewhat unclear: is our eye focused on the baby Jesus, or on the beauty of Mary’s face? Bpk Bildagentur/Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich, G/Art Resource, NY
- In his works, Rabelais satirizes the Church by contrasting its antiquated learning with a humanist education. Rabelais’s subversive book Gargantua & Pantagruel coincided with heightened unrest by Protestants in Paris. What Renaissance values are represented in this short excerpt, which describes a utopian society at the Abbey of Thélème, in which educated and elite men and women live, separated from society?
- The second book of More’s Utopia is closely modeled on travel narratives of the New World, thereby contrasting the “certainties” of classic geography and society with the newly acquired knowledge from the New World. Based on the ideal commonwealth of Plato’s Republic, Utopia is ruled by simplified laws that treat everyone equally and attempt to quiet desires like greed and lust, which were realities More had observed in his work as Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII (who eventually executed More in 1535 because of More’s Catholic leanings and refusal to acknowledge Henry VIII’s supremacy over the Church).
- Cortés and Pizarro encountered the great civilizations of the Aztecs and Incas in the 1520s and 1530s, paralleling a trend in European thinking to “ask larger questions about European society, whose peculiarities proved as unintelligible” to the indigenous tribes as their societies were to Europeans. Thomas More’s Utopia calls for social reform on a fantasy island, and Montaigne’s skepticism on European superiority is presented in his essay “Of Cannibals.”
- Melancholy describes not just the feeling of sadness that some Renaissance artists expressed, but rather it points more specifically to the sense of futility that derives from skepticism about the meaning of earthly effort and endeavor. Problems of power, absolute authority, rights and liberties, and consideration of the social contract lead to advances but also, because of the necessity of change, promote a sense of melancholy and skepticism among great thinkers.
- Though it is a drama about characters of superior station and the conflicts and problems associated with men and women of high degree, Hamlet reveals these problems in a particular family, but presents the domestic conflict within the larger world of politics. Shakespeare underscores the humanity and frailty of rulers; the vulnerability of Hamlet, the disproportion between the heroism demanded of him and the response he can muster, and his acute awareness of how he fails all make him a compelling figure. Don Quixote sees the world through the lens of medieval chivalry; Cervantes’ text examines the anachronism of individual heroics: new forms of warfare rendered knighthood futile, Quixote’s motives are applauded in a world lacking integrity, and the relationship between reason and madness, truth and illusion, becomes ambiguous, leading the reader to ask questions about social justice and to place value on the imagination. The image is Hamlet and Horatio Before The Gravediggers, by Eugène Delacroix, 1843. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1922 (22.56.16)
- Answer: A Section: The Well-Lived Life Feedback: Of primary concern across many art forms, from painting to writing to architecture, was that the artistic product showcase the talents of the artist as craftsperson. The goal of any art was very often to delight the reader (or viewer, or listener) by displaying the virtuosity of the artist. It was not, as is true of other artistic time periods, to express raw emotions or to produce challenging, original work that defied tradition.
- Answer: A Section: Skepticism and Melancholy Feedback: “Melancholy,” though an idea dating back to Classical Greek writers like Hippocrates and his theories about our personalities being determined by physical humors within the body, came to denote in the Renaissance a particular feeling of futility. Even as explorers and scientists made new discoveries about the physical world, some artists began to express—and to cultivate—a growing sense of skeptical doubt about the role and purpose of human endeavor in the world. This led to expressions of the fundamental futility of human action in what was becoming an increasingly wide and complicated world, especially given that everything ended in death regardless of how rich, important, or powerful you happened to be. Melancholy was not simply a temporary sadness, nor was it for most a debilitating depression due to which they could no longer function as writers or artists. Melancholy became for some artists, somewhat ironically, a motivating idea behind much of their work. John Donne’s many sonnets about death are good examples.
- Answer: A Section: Encountering the New World Feedback: Global exploration had a profound effect on Renaissance literature, as is reflected particularly in works like Thomas More’s Utopia (NAWOL, Vol C). In his Utopia More imagines a fictitious place that is in the New World. A traveller, Raphael Hythloday, tells of his encounter with the people and institutions of Utopia. And though the work is fiction and Utopia does not actually exist, More’s book was written to address real social problems in Europe.
- Answer: C Section: Humanism Feedback: Renaissance writers and thinkers returned to Classical Greek and Roman literature, including epic works by Homer (e.g. The Iliad and The Odyssey; NAWOL, Vol A) and Virgil (e.g. The Aeneid; NAWOL, Vol A). Equally important were dramatic works by authors such as Sophocles (NAWOL, Vol A) and Euripides (NAWOL, Vol A). And while grounded in Classical literature and philosophy, Renaissance writers endeavored to explore their contemporary world and its challenging variety.