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Renacimiento / Renaissence
Renacimiento / Renaissence
Renacimiento / Renaissence
M.A.R. Habib
Intellectual Background
(a) Humanism and the Classics
While classical writers had been influential through much of the Middle Ages, the
revival of the classics in the early modern period took an entirely different
character and scope. To begin with, in the Middle Ages, scholarship was
undertaken largely by the clergy, usually monks, and later by scholars in the
Cathedral schools. One of the major persisting endeavors throughout the Middle
Ages was to reconcile classical philosophy and literature with the teachings of
Christian scripture. The early modern period witnessed the growth of a new
secular class of educated people and a more secular employment of the classics in
fields such as rhetoric and law. The most distinguished humanists and classicists
of this period fostered the revival of classical literary forms in poetry and
rhetoric. These figures included Albertino Mussato who is credited with writing
the first tragedy of this period; and, even more important, Francesco Petrarca
(1304-1374) who outlined a curriculum of classical studies, focusing on the study
of classical languages and the traditional grammatical requirement of imitating the
classical authors. Eloquence, based on a study of classical models, was important
for Petrarch, since it inspired people to virtue. Petrarch’s program, based on a
combination of moral philosophy and rhetoric, inspired others such as Leonardo
Bruni, to formulate curricula for the study of the humanities, deriving in part
from the liberal arts curriculum recommended by Cicero and Quintilian.
These new curricula overlapped to some extent with the Mediaeval trivium
(rhetoric, grammar, logic) and quadrivium (music, astronomy, algebra, geometry)
but laid a renewed emphasis on rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.
Another major difference between Mediaeval and humanist attitudes to the
classics was that the latter insisted upon a thorough knowledge of the classical
languages, not only Latin but Greek, which began to be studied at the end of the
fourteenth century. In the Middle Ages, the classics had been studied largely
through Latin translations. Moreover, the humanists attempted to return to the
pure Latin of the ancient authors as opposed to the Mediaeval Latin of the
Church. The humanists also insisted on the direct study of ancient texts,
unencumbered by the constraining framework of Mediaeval glosses and
commentaries. Another difference was that in the early modern period, the
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classical texts were far more widely disseminated, partly for the pedagogical
reasons just outlined and partly because of the development of printing. Finally,
the monopoly of Latin as the language of learned discourse and literature was
undermined, and in the works of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and many
humanists, the rules of grammar and composition were adapted to theorize about
vernacular tongues. Hence the humanists created a set of techniques and a
framework of interpretation for both classical and vernacular texts. In general,
the humanists supplanted the Scholastic aversion to poetry and rhetoric with an
emphasis upon the moral value of these disciplines and upon worldly
achievement in general. David Norbrook has stated that humanism originated in
a defence of rhetoric against scholastic philosophy, effectively reviving the
“ancient quarrel” between philosophy and rhetoric (PBRV, 8, 53). In this process
the humanists reaffirmed both the classical emphasis on style and the logical or
rational and rhetorical or persuasive components of literature, thereby combining
the disciplines of rhetoric, logic and poetics which the Middle Ages had kept
somewhat separate.
These poets not only theorized about the vernacular but wrote in it and
cultivated its elegant expression. Petrarch’s friend Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-
1375) adapted classical forms to the vernacular, developing literary forms such as
the pastoral, idyll and romance. Through his best known work such as the
Decameron, Boccaccio provided models of Italian prose which influenced both
Italian writers such as Tasso and writers in other countries such as Chaucer. The
cultivation of prose — in narratives, epistles and dialogues — was an important
achievement of the humanists. A renowned example is Baldassare Castiglione’s
treatise entitled The Courtier, a discussion of attitudes toward love, and of the
courtly behavior and education appropriate for a gentleman. This text is often
seen as an embodiment of Renaissance ideals and had a far-reaching influence
throughout Europe. Later Italian writers developed other literary forms: the epic
reached its height in the Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533),
which departs from the idealistic and moralistic nature of Mediaeval epics.
Historiography and political writing also achieved a new level of realism:
Machiaevlli wrote a history of Florence that was free of theological explanations
and based upon “natural” laws. Machiavelli’s political writings entirely
undermined Mediaeval notions of government: in his treatise The Prince (1513),
he treated politics as an autonomous domain, free of the incursions of morality
or religious doctrine. He saw the state as an independent entity, whose prime
goal was the promotion of civic rather than religious virtue, and self-preservation
at any cost. An even more important figure in historiography was Francesco
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Guicciardini (1483-1540) whose History of Italy is characterized by realistic,
detailed analysis of character, motive and events. Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457)
applied critical methods of scholarship and analysis to Biblical texts, and he
challenged the authenticity of certain authoritative documents, opening the way
for later attacks upon Christian doctrine.
The humanist tradition was richly expressed in the rise of English vernacular
literature of this period. Even Chaucer, often treated as a Mediaeval writer,
expressed a somewhat secular humanistic vision in his Canterbury Tales, which
tends to bypass simple moralism in the interest of broader stylistic ends such as
verisimilitude and realistic portrayal of character, situation and motive. English
drama achieved unprecedented heights in the work of Christopher Marlowe
(1564-1593), Ben Jonson ((1573?-1637) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus expresses an overwhelming craving for experience
and a humanistic desire to subjugate the world to human intellection and
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ingenuity. Shakespeare’s plays expressed not only a profound analysis of human
character and emotion but embodied the vast struggle between the values of a
declining feudal system and an emerging bourgeois structure of values. As Chris
Fitter has shown, the Shakespearian stage illustrates precisely the truth of
Norbrook’s claim that Renaissance theatre provided a forum for public dialogue
and demystified the rituals of power (PBRV, 24). The rise of national
consciousness in many countries during this period was reflected in the growth
of vernacular literatures in Italy, England, France, Germany and Spain.
In general, the humanists tended to turn away from Scholastic philosophy with
its emphasis upon logic and theology and its Aristotelian basis. Poets such as
Sidney and Milton argued, as against Plato (though adducing his own style in
support of their claims), for the elevation of poetry above the languages of prose
such as philosophy and history. The humanists, concerned more with the
material aspects of language, the achievement of eloquence and with the
ennobling, moral impact of discourse, turned to classical rhetoricians such as
Cicero, and promoted the revival of other ancient philosophies such as
Platonism. In fact, the major philosophers of this period, such as Marsilio Ficino
(1433-1499) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) were neo-Platonists, affiliated
with the Platonic Academy in Florence founded by Cosimo de’ Medici. Other
thinkers revived the ancient movements of Stoicism, Epicureanism and
Scepticism. They included Lorenzo Valla who, in addition to his historical
writing, wrote a Dialogue of Free Will and a sympathetic examination of
Epicurean ethics; and of course the political philosopher Machiavelli who, also
informed by the philosophy of Epicurus, condemned asceticism and other-
worldliness. In France, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) expounded a
philosophy of scepticism which held that the deliverances of the senses are often
deceptive and that even reason can misguide us. We should recognize, he held,
that there is no absolute truth, and it is the humble acknowledgment of
uncertainty alone that can free us from superstition and bigotry. Like the later
sceptical thinker David Hume, Montaigne saw religious, philosophical and moral
systems as ultimately the product of custom. The most renowned English
philosopher of this period was Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose most
significant contributions were contained in his Novum Organon and The
Advancement of Learning. Bacon was the forerunner of the empiricist tradition
in Britain, urging the use of the inductive method and direct observation as
against scholastic reliance upon authority, faith and deductive reasoning.
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There can be no doubt that a major distinction between the Mediaeval and early
modern periods lies in a momentous transformation in scientific outlook.
Mediaeval cosmology and scholastic theology were premised on a Ptolemaic
geocentric view of the earth as being at the centre of the universe, surrounded by
a series of seven concentric spheres (the orbits of the planets), beyond which was
the Empyrean and the throne of God, who was the “unmoved Mover” and the
“First Cause” of all things. The universe was thought to be composed of four
elements, earth, air, fire and water combined in varying proportions; and human
beings were constituted by four “humors.” The earth, as in Dante’s Divine
Comedy, was thought to be populated only in its Northern hemisphere which
was composed of Asia, Africa and Europe. This world-view, based largely on the
physics and metaphysics of Aristotle, was shattered in the early modern era by
the heliocentric theory of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), whose truth was
demonstrated by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and thus paved the way for modern
mechanistic (rather than spiritual) conceptions of the universe. Even much of
this humanistic scientific revolution returned to neglected ancient sources in
Greek science and astronomy, such as the third century B.C. Hellenistic
astronomer Aristarchus who had first propounded a heliocentric theory. Great
advances were made also in mathematical theory and in medicine; Andreas
Vesalius (1514-1564) produced a description of the human body based on careful
observation. A particularly significant invention of this time was that of printing,
developed in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg and spreading quickly through
Europe. Needless to say, the transformations engendered in every area of
communication were profound and far-reaching, enabling vast and rapid
dissemination not only of information but of all forms of ideology.
(c) Religion
One of the most profound and large scale transformations in the early modern
period was the Protestant Reformation, erupting in 1517 and resulting in a major
schism in the Christian world. Most of Northern Europe broke away from
Roman Catholicism and the authority of the Pope. There also occurred the
Catholic Reformation (sometimes known as the Counter-Reformation) which
reached its most fervent intensity in the mid-sixteenth century, changing the
shape of Catholicism considerably from its Mediaeval character. Indeed, these
Reformations embodied a sharper break from Mediaeval thinking and
institutions than many of the changes wrought by the other currents of
humanism. National consciousness played an even more integral role in the
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Reformation since the Protestant cause was affiliated with reaction against a
system of ecclesiastical control at whose apex sat the Pope.
While it may have been immediately incited by abuses within the Catholic
Church — such as the amassing of wealth for private self-interests, the sale of
indulgences and the veneration of material objects as holy relics — the Protestant
Reformation was directed in essence against some of the cardinal tenets of
Mediaeval theology, such as its theory of the sacraments, its elaborate
ecclesiastical hierarchy of intermediation between God and human beings, and its
insistence that religious faith must be complemented by good deeds. As seen
earlier, Mediaeval theology had been broadly propagated through two systems:
the theology of the early Middle Ages had been based on the teachings of St.
Augustine that man is fallen (through original sin), his will is depraved, and that
only those whom God has so predestined can attain eternal salvation. This largely
fatalistic system, whereby man was entirely and mysteriously dependent on God
was largely supplanted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the theologies of
Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, which acknowledged man’s free will, but
urged that he needed divine grace to attain salvation. Such grace was furnished to
man through the sacraments, such as baptism, penance and the eucharist or
mass. It was the ecclesiastical hierarchy, tracing its authority all the way through
the Pope to the apostle Peter, which had the power to administer these
sacraments and hence to gain access to divine grace.
The Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther reacted against this complex
system of intermediation between God and man, advocating a return to the
actual doctrines of the Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers such as
Augustine. They rejected the theory of the priesthood as well as worship of the
Virgin, the intermediation of the saints, and the reverence for sacred relics. In
general, they returned to the Augustinian visions of original sin, the depraved
state of man’s will and, in the case of Calvinism, a strong belief in predestination.
The causes of the Protestant Reformation were multifold and complex. The
papacy’s decline in power and prestige reached a nadir in the “Great Schism,” a
division into two conflicting claims to the papacy, contested by Popes in Rome
and Avignon. Many movements had helped prepare the way for the
Reformation, including mystics and the fourteenth century English reformer
John Wyclif, who attacked the abuses of the Catholic Church. Many of the
humanist thinkers mentioned earlier, such as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, had
contributed to a renaissance in religion, associated with the “Brethren of
Common Life,” a group of laymen who established schools in Germany and the
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Low Countries. They professed a religion of simple piety based on the model of
Christ, as expressed in Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. This book
enjoyed a wide readership, and inspired Ignatius of Loyola to found the Society
of Jesus. In the writings of these thinkers, known as Christian humanists,
Christianity was freed from its superstitious and ritualistic elements, the absolute
authority of the Pope was rejected, and the need for a rational and reasonable
faith was urged. The growth of national consciousness, affiliated with the
increasing power of absolute rulers, was another factor. Perhaps the most
fundamental causes were economic: not merely the desire of rulers to appropriate
Church wealth but more significantly the growth and increasing power and
wealth of the middle class, whose commercial interests clashed with both
feudalism and the ideals of Catholic Christianity, which, as in the writings of
Aquinas, condemned profit-making and usury.
Just as many of our own institutions are descended from the early modern
period, much of our own literary criticism, and indeed the very notion of
criticism as a relatively autonomous domain, derive from this era. In particular,
the rise of the independent state and of a liberal bourgeoisie enabled the
pervasive growth of humanist culture and indeed of national sentiment; the
literature and criticism of the period tends to reflect civic values, a sense of
national identity, and a sense of place in history, especially as gauged in relation
to the classics. The technology of the period, such as the development and
dissemination of printing, transformed the conditions of reading, facilitating the
process of editing (of especially classical texts), and vastly extending the sphere of
the reading public. Some of the innovative characteristics of Renaissance literary
criticism, as Glyn P. Norton has noted, include reappraisals of the nature and
function of language, moving away from the scholastic fourfold allegorical
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structure — grounded on a literal, referential, view of meaning — to a view of
language as dialogic and as subject to historical evolution. Such a shift entailed
new approaches to reading, interpretation, and an increasing recognition that all
literary criticism is intrinsically tied to specific social contexts.2
It is clear also that the general transformation in Europe from feudal power to
the absolutist state engendered profound changes in the conditions of
production of literature and criticism. Scholars such as Robert Matz have argued
that, whereas a number of different forms of power — economic, social and
judicial — were merged in the authority of the feudal lord, the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries witnessed an increasing separation of these spheres. An
important literary and literary-critical consequence was that the artist exercised a
greater autonomy, in a number of ways: his support came less from “personal
patronage” and more from the “anonymous market;” there was an increasing
“separation of art from the church and the sacred;” and, perhaps above all, the
emergence of the absolutist state as “a locus of authority to some degree distinct
from and opposed to that of the feudal lord…this separation created the
opportunity for the social assertion of secular-bourgeois intellectuals who gained
power within the expanding bureaucratic state and whose identity lay in their
humanist language skills and disciplined conduct rather than warrior function or
traditional landed status.” These cultural transformations, which wore the
countenance of humanism, were associated not only with the emerging
bourgeoisie but with the transformation of the aristocracy itself from a “warrior
elite into a civil elite.”3 Matz argues that this transformation generated different
views of appropriate aristocratic conduct, and a struggle within factions of the
aristocracy itself, which were both reflected in, and shaped, some of the major
defences and definitions of poetry during this period.
In our own day, and especially in Western culture, where poetry and good
literature have been marginalized, it is easy to forget how deeply poetry and
literary criticism were embroiled in the political process during the Renaissance.
In a number of groundbreaking studies, David Norbrook has extrapolated Jurgen
Habermas’ notion of “bourgeois public sphere, a realm of debate in which
citizens could participate as equals, independently of pressure from monopolies
of power.” Habermas saw this public sphere as emerging fully around 1695.
Norbrook traces its emergence somewhat earlier on the English scene,
attributing its growth to a number of factors such as an educational revolution,
the Reformers’ campaign for widely available public education, relaxed
censorship of Protestant writings, the rise of a literary market which allowed
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greater independence from court patronage, increased circulation of newspapers
and the size of the electorate in public life, and of course the growth of a wider
reading public (PBRV, 18, 24, 28, 32). The important point made by Norbrook is
the poet’s involvement in this sphere: the poet was a public figure, and all of the
English Renaissance poets “tried to influence public affairs through their
writings.”4 After the rise of monarchies and the decline of the feudal nobility,
many poets could entertain career prospects only in serving the Crown. While
this of course entailed compromise with courtly discourse, the expansion of the
public sphere and the other factors mentioned above enabled the poet to create
fictive and Utopian worlds, to mould the image of public events (as in Marvell’s
Horatian Ode), and to assert some degree of individualism. Moreover, textual
criticism was charged with a potent political potential to demystify the power and
language of corrupt institutions: the exposure by humanist scholarship of the
“Donation of Constantine” as a forgery helped undermine the power of the
papacy, and the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages shifted the
privilege of interpretative authority away from the clergy to the individual reader.
In such a climate, poets and critics inevitably placed emphasis on the practical
and social functions of poetry and its dependence on rhetorical strategies (PBRV,
9, 11, 13-15).
Indeed, much Renaissance criticism was forged in the struggle to defend poetry
and literature from charges — brought within both clerical and secular circles —
of immorality, triviality and irrelevance to practical and political life. The types of
criticism proliferating in the early modern period also included a large body of
humanist commentary and scholarship on classical texts. The most influential
classical treatises during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were Aristotle’s
Poetics and Horace’s Ars Poetica. A third important body of criticism in this
period is comprised of commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics and debates between
the relative virtues of the Aristotelian and Horatian texts as well as attempts to
harmonize their insights. Alongside Aristotle and Horace, the influential
rhetorical voices of Cicero and Quintilian were recovered in the early fifteenth
century: Renaissance critics tended to adapt, and even distort, these voices to
their own needs.
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Introducción al Renacimiento
M.A.R. Habib
Antecedentes intelectuales
Mientras que los escritores clásicos habían sido influyentes durante gran parte de
la Edad Media, el renacimiento de los clásicos en el período moderno temprano
tomó un carácter y un alcance completamente diferentes. Para empezar, en la
Edad Media, las becas eran otorgadas en gran parte por el clero, generalmente
por los monjes, y más tarde por los eruditos de las escuelas de la Catedral. Uno
de los mayores esfuerzos que persistieron a lo largo de la Edad Media fue
reconciliar la filosofía y la literatura clásica con las enseñanzas de las escrituras
cristianas. El período moderno temprano fue testigo del crecimiento de una
nueva clase secular de personas educadas y de un empleo más secular de los
clásicos en campos como la retórica y el derecho. Los más distinguidos
humanistas y clasicistas de este período fomentaron el renacimiento de las formas
literarias clásicas en la poesía y la retórica. Estas cifras incluyen a Albertino
Mussato, a quien se le atribuye el mérito de escribir la primera tragedia de este
período; y, lo que es aún más importante, a Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374),
quien esbozó un plan de estudios de estudios clásicos, centrándose en el estudio
de las lenguas clásicas y en el requisito gramatical tradicional de imitar a los
autores clásicos. La elocuencia, basada en el estudio de los modelos clásicos, era
importante para Petrarca, ya que inspiraba a la gente a la virtud. El programa de
Petrarca, basado en una combinación de filosofía moral y retórica, inspiró a
otros, como Leonardo Bruni, a formular planes de estudios para el estudio de las
humanidades, derivados en parte del plan de estudios de artes liberales
recomendado por Cicerón y Quintiliano.
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La tradición humanista se expresó ampliamente en el auge de la literatura
vernácula inglesa de este período. Incluso Chaucer, a menudo tratado como un
escritor medieval, expresó una visión humanista un tanto secular en sus Cuentos
de Canterbury, que tiende a pasar por alto el simple moralismo en interés de fines
estilísticos más amplios como la verosimilitud y la representación realista del
carácter, la situación y el motivo. El drama inglés alcanzó cotas sin precedentes
en la obra de Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) y
William Shakespeare (1564-1616). El Doctor Faustus de Marlowe expresa un
deseo abrumador de experiencia y un deseo humanista de subyugar al mundo a la
inteligencia y el ingenio humanos. Las obras de Shakespeare expresaban no sólo
un profundo análisis del carácter y la emoción humanos, sino que encarnaban la
vasta lucha entre los valores de un sistema feudal en decadencia y una estructura
de valores burguesa emergente. Como Chris Fitter ha demostrado, el escenario
shakesperiano ilustra precisamente la verdad de la afirmación de Norbrook de
que el teatro del Renacimiento proporcionaba un foro para el diálogo público y
desmitificaba los rituales del poder. El aumento de la conciencia nacional en
muchos países durante este período se reflejó en el crecimiento de las literaturas
vernáculas en Italia, Inglaterra, Francia, Alemania y España.
No cabe duda de que una distinción importante entre la Edad Media y los
primeros tiempos modernos radica en una transformación trascendental de la
perspectiva científica. La cosmología medieval y la teología escolástica se basaban
en una visión geocéntrica ptolemaica de la tierra como centro del universo,
rodeada de una serie de siete esferas concéntricas (las órbitas de los planetas),
más allá de las cuales estaba el Empíreo y el trono de Dios, que era el "Soberano
inmóvil" y la "Primera Causa" de todas las cosas. Se pensaba que el universo
estaba compuesto de cuatro elementos, tierra, aire, fuego y agua combinados en
proporciones variables; y los seres humanos estaban constituidos por cuatro
"humores". La tierra, como en la Divina Comedia de Dante, se pensaba que
estaba poblada sólo en su hemisferio norte, que estaba compuesto por Asia,
África y Europa. Esta visión del mundo, basada en gran medida en la física y la
metafísica de Aristóteles, fue destruida a principios de la era moderna por la
teoría heliocéntrica de Nicolás Copérnico (1473-1543), cuya verdad fue
demostrada por Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), y así allanó el camino para las
modernas concepciones mecanicistas (más que espirituales) del universo. Incluso
gran parte de esta revolución científica humanística volvió a las fuentes antiguas
descuidadas de la ciencia y la astronomía griegas, como el astrónomo helenístico
del siglo III a.C. Aristarco, que había propuesto primero una teoría heliocéntrica.
Se hicieron grandes avances también en la teoría matemática y en la medicina;
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) hizo una descripción del cuerpo humano basada
en una cuidadosa observación. Un invento particularmente significativo de esta
época fue el de la imprenta, desarrollada en Alemania por Johannes Gutenberg y
que se extendió rápidamente por Europa. Huelga decir que las transformaciones
generadas en todos los ámbitos de la comunicación fueron profundas y de gran
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alcance, lo que permitió una amplia y rápida difusión no sólo de la información,
sino de todas las formas de ideología.
(c) Religión
Si bien puede haber sido inmediatamente incitado por abusos dentro de la Iglesia
Católica -como la acumulación de riquezas por intereses privados, la venta de
indulgencias y la veneración de objetos materiales como santas reliquias-, la
Reforma Protestante se dirigió en esencia contra algunos de los principios
cardinales de la teología medieval, como su teoría de los sacramentos, su
elaborada jerarquía eclesiástica de intermediación entre Dios y los seres humanos,
y su insistencia en que la fe religiosa debe complementarse con buenas obras.
Como se ha visto anteriormente, la teología medieval se había propagado
ampliamente a través de dos sistemas: la teología de la Alta Edad Media se había
basado en las enseñanzas de San Agustín de que el hombre está caído (por el
pecado original), su voluntad es depravada, y que sólo aquellos a quienes Dios ha
predestinado así pueden alcanzar la salvación eterna. Este sistema, en gran
medida fatalista, en el que el hombre dependía de Dios de forma total y
misteriosa, fue suplantado en los siglos XII y XIII por las teologías de Pedro
Lombardo y Tomás de Aquino, que reconocían el libre albedrío del hombre,
pero le pedían que necesitara la gracia divina para alcanzar la salvación. Tal gracia
fue dada al hombre a través de los sacramentos, tales como el bautismo, la
penitencia y la eucaristía o la misa. Fue la jerarquía eclesiástica, que trazó su
autoridad a través del Papa hasta el apóstol Pedro, quien tuvo el poder de
administrar estos sacramentos y, por lo tanto, de acceder a la gracia divina.
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Los reformadores protestantes como Martín Lutero reaccionaron contra este
complejo sistema de intermediación entre Dios y el hombre, abogando por un
retorno a las doctrinas actuales de las Escrituras y a los escritos de los Padres de
la Iglesia como Agustín. Rechazaron la teoría del sacerdocio, así como la
adoración de la Virgen, la intermediación de los santos y la reverencia por las
reliquias sagradas. En general, volvieron a las visiones agustinianas del pecado
original, al estado depravado de la voluntad del hombre y, en el caso del
calvinismo, a una fuerte creencia en la predestinación. Las causas de la Reforma
Protestante fueron múltiples y complejas. El declive del poder y el prestigio del
papado alcanzó un punto más bajo en el "Gran Cisma", una división en dos
reivindicaciones contradictorias del papado, disputadas por los Papas de Roma y
Avignon. Muchos movimientos han ayudado a preparar el camino para la
Reforma, incluyendo a los místicos y al reformador inglés del siglo XIV John
Wyclif, quien atacó los abusos de la Iglesia Católica. Muchos de los pensadores
humanistas mencionados anteriormente, como Erasmo y Sir Thomas More,
habían contribuido a un renacimiento religioso, asociado con los "Hermanos de
la Vida Común", un grupo de laicos que establecieron escuelas en Alemania y en
los Países Bajos. Ellos profesaban una religión de piedad simple basada en el
modelo de Cristo, tal como se expresa en La Imitación de Cristo de Tomás a
Kempis. Este libro tuvo un amplio público e inspiró a Ignacio de Loyola a fundar
la Compañía de Jesús. En los escritos de estos pensadores, conocidos como
humanistas cristianos, el cristianismo fue liberado de sus elementos
supersticiosos y ritualistas, se rechazó la autoridad absoluta del Papa y se instó a
la necesidad de una fe racional y razonable. El crecimiento de la conciencia
nacional, afiliada al creciente poder de los gobernantes absolutos, fue otro factor.
Quizás las causas más fundamentales fueron económicas: no sólo el deseo de los
gobernantes de apropiarse de la riqueza de la Iglesia, sino más significativamente
el crecimiento y el aumento del poder y la riqueza de la clase media, cuyos
intereses comerciales chocaban tanto con el feudalismo como con los ideales del
cristianismo católico, que, como en los escritos de Aquino, condenaban las
ganancias y la usura.
d) Crítica literaria
Del mismo modo que muchas de nuestras propias instituciones descienden del
período moderno temprano, gran parte de nuestra propia crítica literaria y, de
hecho, la noción misma de la crítica como un dominio relativamente autónomo,
se deriva de esta época. En particular, el surgimiento del Estado independiente y
de una burguesía liberal permitió el crecimiento generalizado de la cultura
humanista y, de hecho, del sentimiento nacional; la literatura y la crítica de la
época tienden a reflejar los valores cívicos, el sentido de la identidad nacional y el
sentido de lugar en la Historia, especialmente en relación con los clásicos. La
tecnología de la época, como el desarrollo y la difusión de la imprenta,
transformó las condiciones de la lectura, facilitando el proceso de edición
(especialmente de textos clásicos) y extendiendo ampliamente el ámbito del
público lector. Algunas de las características innovadoras de la crítica literaria del
Renacimiento, como ha señalado Glyn P. Norton, incluyen reevaluaciones de la
naturaleza y la función del lenguaje, alejándose de la estructura escolástica
cuádruple alegórica -basada en una visión literal, referencial y de sentido- hacia
una visión del lenguaje como dialógico y sujeto a la evolución histórica. Este
cambio implicó nuevos enfoques de la lectura, la interpretación y un
reconocimiento cada vez mayor de que toda crítica literaria está intrínsecamente
ligada a contextos sociales específicos.
También está claro que la transformación general en Europa del poder feudal al
Estado absolutista ha provocado cambios profundos en las condiciones de
producción de la literatura y de la crítica. Estudiosos como Robert Matz han
argumentado que, mientras que varias formas de poder -económico, social y
judicial- se fusionaron en la autoridad del señor feudal, los siglos XVI y XVII
fueron testigos de una creciente separación de estas esferas. Una importante
consecuencia literaria y crítica literaria fue que el artista ejerció una mayor
autonomía, de varias maneras: su apoyo provenía menos del "mecenazgo
personal" y más del "mercado anónimo"; había una creciente "separación del arte
de la iglesia y lo sagrado"; y, quizás sobre todo, el surgimiento del estado
absolutista como "un lugar de autoridad hasta cierto punto distinto y opuesto al
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del señor feudal... esta separación creó la oportunidad para la afirmación social de
intelectuales laicos-burgueses que ganaron poder dentro del estado burocrático
en expansión y cuya identidad radicaba en sus habilidades lingüísticas humanistas
y su conducta disciplinada, más que en su función de guerreros o su estatus
tradicional de terratenientes".” Estas transformaciones culturales, que llevaban el
rostro del humanismo, estaban asociadas no sólo con la burguesía emergente sino
con la transformación de la propia aristocracia de una "élite guerrera a una élite
civil".3 Matz argumenta que esta transformación generó diferentes puntos de
vista sobre la conducta aristocrática apropiada y una lucha dentro de las facciones
de la aristocracia misma, que se reflejaron y moldearon en algunas de las
principales defensas y definiciones de la poesía durante este período.
Copyright © 2019 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.
Page last updated at 12:07 pm May 10, 2013.
https://habib.camden.rutgers.edu/introductions/