This document summarizes key developments in literature, art, and ideas during the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe, from the 16th to early 18th centuries. It discusses the emergence of essays by Michel de Montaigne, Elizabethan and Jacobean literature by authors like Shakespeare, changing attitudes about race, and the development of the Baroque style in painting, music, and literature by artists like Rubens and Bach.
V. Changing Attitudes and Beliefs C. William Shakespeare and His Influence 1. Works — Comedies, tragedies, and histories. 2. Shakespeare and Race — In Othello , the title character is a black “moor” of Venice (could refer to a Muslim of North African origin or to a sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting confusion over racial and religious classifications).
V. Changing Attitudes and Beliefs A. New Ideas About Race 1. Dehumanizing Africans — In spite of the myth of Prester John, Europeans came to see Africans as pagan heathens, Muslim infidels, or beasts. 2. Racial Inequality —Institution of slavery led to belief in racial inequality (Africans became seen as wholly inferior to Europeans, even to Jews, peasants, and the Irish). 3. Justifications — Aristotle (some people are naturally destined for slavery), the Bible (the curse of Ham), science (“race”). B. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) and Cultural Curiosity 1. Skepticism and Cultural Relativism — Decades of religious strife, war, and the discovery of new peoples led some persons to question whether total certainty is possible and to deny that some cultures are superior to others. 2. Essay — New literary genre developed by the Frenchman Montaigne — in these essays, he inaugurated an era of doubt.
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