It’s hard to overstate how important the Renaissance was. It’s kind of one of the highest high points of all of human history. I mean, there are Renaissance faires all over the US, including one in Texas that starts next week. Fortuitous timing, that. But there’s not really faires for other stuff – there’s no ‘Reformation faire,’ nor an ‘Enlightenment Faire.’ There’s definitely not any ‘Dark Ages Faires.’ It’s because the Renaissance was a good time. It was a time when Europe began to rediscover some of the good things that had been lost since the Roman Empire.
Florence, Italy
Dante Alligheri, by Tito
Doors of the Baptistry of the Florence Cathedral, by Ghiberti
Geoffrey Chaucer
Canterbury Cathedral in England
The Canterbury Tales. A very early copy of the manuscript, in the Bodleian Library Museum, in Oxford, England.
Links to spoken versions of some of the Canterbury Tales, including the Prologue in Middle English