Renaissance in the North

1. Renaissance in the North

2. Northern European Renaissance • Italian origins • Conservative morals and education • Mercantilism • Northern Humanism • Linked to religion (man can find God) • Classics (pagan) less important than in Italy

3. Erasmus • But to speak of arts, what set men's wits on work to invent and transmit to posterity so many famous, as they conceive, pieces of learning but the thirst of glory? With so much loss of sleep, such pains and travail, have the most foolish of men thought to purchase themselves a kind of I know not what fame, than which nothing can be more vain. And yet notwithstanding, you owe this advantage to folly, and which is the most delectable of all other, that you reap the benefit of other men's madness. – Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

4. Michel de Montaigne • French writer • Invented essay genre • Spirit of the Renaissance • Morality theme

5. To the Reader This book was written in good faith, reader. It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one. I have had no thought of serving either you or my own glory. My powers are inadequate for such a purpose. I have dedicated it to the private convenience of my relatives and friends, so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habits and temperament, and by this means keep the knowledge they have had of me more complete and alive.

6. If I had written to seek the world's favor, I should have bedecked myself better, and should present myself in a studied posture. I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject. So farewell. Montaigne, this first day of March 1580.

7. “Were I not to follow the straight road for its straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in the end it is commonly the happiest and most useful track.” – Montaigne quoted by Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America

8. "So we may call these people [cannibals] barbarians, in respect to the rules of reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity." – Of Cannibals, Michel de Montaigne

9. English Literature • More’s Utopia • Described an ideal world • Critical of English society • Supported war for preservation only (no aggression) • Supported Christian religion

10. RAPHAEL: I’m convinced that you’ll never get a fair distribution of goods, or a satisfactory organization of human life, until you abolish private property altogether. So long as it exists, the vast majority of the human race, and the vastly superior part of it, will inevitably go on labouring under a burden of poverty, hardship, and worry. MORE: I disagree. I don’t believe you’d ever have a reasonable standard of living under a communist system. There’d always tend to be shortages, because nobody would work hard enough. In the absence of a profit motive, everyone would become lazy, and rely on everyone else to do the work for him. Then, when things really got short, the inevitable result would be a series of murders and riots, since nobody would have any legal method of protecting the products of his own labour – especially as there wouldn’t be any respect for authority, or I don’t see how there could be, in a classless society. – Thomas More from Utopia

11. They have very few laws, because, with their social system, very few laws are required… For, according to the Utopians, it’s quite unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code which is too long for an ordinary person to read right through, or too difficult for him to understand. What’s more, they have no barristers [lawyers] to be over-ingenious about individual cases and points of law. They think it better for each man to plead his own cause, and tell the judge the same story as he’d otherwise tell his lawyer. Under such conditions, the point at issue is less likely to be obscured, and it’s easier to get at the truth – for, if nobody’s telling the sort of lies that one learns from lawyers, the judge can apply all his shrewdness to weighing the facts of the case, and protecting simple-minded characters against the unscrupulous attacks of clever ones. – Thomas More from Utopia

12. I then refer to an incident in the history of Nolandia, a country just south-east of Utopia. On the strength of some ancient marriage, the king of Nolandia thought he had a hereditary claim to another kingdom, so his people started a war to get it for him. Eventually they won, only to find that the kingdom in question was quite as much trouble to keep as it had been to acquire. There were constant threats of internal rebellion and external aggression. – Thomas More from Utopia

13. The Utopians strongly disapprove of make-up. Actually, they’ve found by experience that what husbands look for in their wives is not so much physical beauty, as modesty and a respectful attitude towards themselves. – Thomas More from Utopia

14. Visual Arts: Dürer • Albrecht Dürer • Woodcuts and engravings • The Apocalypse

15. Dürer • Knight, Death, and the Devil

16. Dürer • St. Jerome in his Cell • Note the strong perspective • See also the symbolism

17. Dürer: Self-Portraits

18. Dürer • Study of hands • Memorial to brother

19. Tilman Riemenschneider

20. Brueghel • Pieter Brueghel the Elder • Peasant Life (Peasant Wedding Feast)

21. Brueghel • Landscapes (The Hunters in the Snow)

22. Brueghel • The Triumph of Death

23. Thank You

24. “We’ll never get human behaviour in line with Christian ethics,” these gentlemen must have argued, “so let’s adapt Christian ethics to human behaviour. Then at least there’ll be come connexion between them.” – Thomas More from Utopia

25. And now just think how few of these few people are doing essential work – for where money is the only standard of value, there are bound to be dozens of unnecessary trades carried on, which merely supply luxury goods or entertainment. Why, even if the existing labour force were distributed among the few trades really needed to make life reasonably comfortable, there’d be so much over-production that prices would fall too low for the workers to earn a living. Whereas, if you took all those engaged in non-essential trades, and all who are too lazy to work, if you put the whole lot of them on to something useful, you’d soon see how few hour’s work a day would be amply sufficient to supply all the necessities and comforts of life – to which you might add all real and natural forms of pleasure. – Thomas More from Utopia

26. “You see, I’m extremely anxious to get my facts right, and, when in doubt, any lies that I tell will be quite unintentional, for I’d much rather be honest than clever.” – Thomas More from Utopia

27. There’s also a rule in the Council that no resolution can be debated on the day that it’s first proposed. All discussion is postponed until the next well-attended meeting. Otherwise someone’s liable to say the first thing that comes into his head, and then start thinking up arguments to justify what he has said, instead of trying to decide what’s best for the community. – Thomas More from Utopia

28. Well, fighting is a thing they absolutely loathe...In fact, the Utopians are practically the only people on earth who fail to see anything glorious in war. Of course, both sexes are given military training at regular intervals, so that they won’t be incapable of fighting if they have to do it. But they hardly ever go to war, except in self-defense, to repel invaders from friendly territory, or to liberate the victims of dictatorship...they take even stronger action to protect the rights of traders who are subjected to any kind of legal injustice in foreign countries, either as a result of unfair laws, or of fair ones deliberately misinterpreted. – Thomas More from Utopia

29. So the moment war’s declared they arrange through secret agents for lots of posters to go up simultaneously at all points on enemy territory where they’re most likely to be seen. These posters carry the official seal of the Utopian government, and offer a huge reward for killing the enemy king. They also offer smaller, but still very considerable sums for killing certain individuals, whose names appear on a list, and who are presumed to be the chief supports, after the king, of anti-Utopian policies. The reward for bringing such people in alive is twice as much as for killing them...The immediate result is that everyone mentioned on the list becomes suspicious of everything in human shape. They all stop trusting one another, and stop being trustworthy. They live in a constant state of fear...They realize that these people would never have started a war if they hadn’t been forced into it by the insanity of their rulers. – Thomas More from Utopia

30. Bosch • Hieronymus Bosch • Garden of Earthly Delights