Individualism In The Renaissance

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Prior to the European Renaissance, the common individual was forced to remain silent among several other townsfolk in large masses. Any given individual was quited by the existing caste system that pre-determined their social value alongside the common governance of feudalism restricting commoners to work in part for their feudal lords. Additionally, the Church suppressed individualism by closely associating it with arrogance, rebellion, and sin. The Church required complete faith with a firm sense of obedience. Eventually, the repressed individualism gained traction through the re-instatement of expressed words from past great philosophers and poets, such as Plato and Virgil. Their re-discovery brought about the Humanism movement that is …show more content…
“His own world, he felt, would improve only if it tried to emulate the ancients, and believed that education ought to teach what they had done and said … only by restoring the mastery of the written and spoken word that had distinguished the great Romans … could his contemporaries learn to behave like the ancients” (Chambers). Consequently, this led to the vision of perfectibility as Petrarch sought guidance from other individuals as opposed to the Church. No longer were individuals suppressed rather they became celebrated. By adopting Petrarch’s rhetorical education, the common individual contained within themselves the potential to reach novel heights. An echoing of Petrarch’s potential of man can be seen within Richard the III, specifically the ending scene. In the midst of battle, Richard comes to terms with the vile actions that he committed in order to attain the throne. In a plea to escape his impending doom, Richard cries, “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! … I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain to-day instead of him. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” (3881-7). Up to …show more content…
It employs the metre iambic pentameter. The primary focus of the poem revolves around Shakespeare’s love for a young man that resembles a fair woman. A main factor of his eloquence comes directly from the control of voice as he maintains a present tense that more evidently expresses the realism in his love. In the ending couplet, Shakespeare directly addresses his love, essentially saying “ my love is for you, thought your actual sexual love is for women.” As best stated by John D. Bernard, “[Petrarch] defines poetry as a means of either commemorating a lost wholeness or adumbrating its restoration after death, for Shakespeare ... He apprehends in the beloved the living truth that, at least for the moment in which it is experienced, redeems a fallen existence and puts the lover in immediate touch with reality” (78). Petrarch wrote in a fashion that spoke of past events in a glorifying manner, though failed to best convey the emotion by utilizing the present tense in order to best transmit genuine emotion. Shakespeare, however, maintained a present voice that places readers directly into the exact moment as if it were a portal through which audience can travel back in time to experience it firsthand. Another part of Shakespeare’s eloquence comes in the nature of the language in his sonnet. As described by Margreta De Grazia, “when a sonneteer speaks
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