The Renaissance
- LAST REVIEWED: 09 August 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0123
- LAST REVIEWED: 09 August 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0123
Introduction
The whole of the Oxford Bibliographies Renaissance and Reformation module is devoted to the period 1350–1650, one of the many possible time spans scholars use to denote the Renaissance era, and includes many entries pertaining to people, events, and movements associated with the Renaissance. This bibliography entry limits itself to the concept of the Renaissance: the monographs and articles that define it, debate its nature, and challenge its existence; general overviews of some aspects of the Renaissance; textbooks and sourcebooks suitable for classroom use; and journals and reference works useful for the exploration of the Renaissance as a whole. The concept of the Renaissance needs its own bibliography because its nature is not self-evident. The Renaissance does not have natural boundaries, as does Antiquity, which begins with the first civilizations and continues until the fall of Rome. Renaissance specialists do not agree on its chronological limits, although 1350 to 1650, or the somewhat larger period from Petrarch to Milton, is a designation with which many agree. Use of the term implies an interpretation of the nature of the Middle Ages, and the notion of a shift after 1300 from the main features of that era in the realms of culture, society, and politics. Most of those who employ the concept of the Renaissance see developments in thought and the arts as critical, but not as the sole elements in that transformation. Many medievalists have denied the existence of a Renaissance altogether, finding the roots of all its characteristic themes in the Middle Ages. Many scholars, especially of the later period (16th into the 18th centuries), prefer the term “early modern,” which seems to some more appropriately used when discussing European expansion, gender and sexuality, and even the modern state. But the editors of this Oxford Bibliographies module and most of its contributors find the concept of the Renaissance still to be indispensable, as denoting the era when, for the last time in the history of European civilization, the legacy of the Greco-Roman past was integrated with the firmly established Judeo-Christian one, thus reestablishing, on the threshold of modernity, its dual foundation.
Reference Works
The scholarly ferment of the last two generations has left its imprint on major reference projects completed over the last twenty years, which join some classic and still useful compilations. The numerous reference works on the Renaissance can be subdivided into aids that provide information—Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Atlases—and those that are gateways to further sources of information—Portals, Catalogues, and Bibliographies.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Alberti, Leon Battista
- Alexander VI, Pope
- Amsterdam
- Antwerp
- Aretino, Pietro
- Ariosto, Ludovico
- Art and Science
- Art, German
- Art in Renaissance Florence
- Art in Renaissance Venice
- Art Literature and Theory of Art
- Art Market
- Art of Poetry
- Art, Spanish
- Art, 16th- and 17th-Century Flemish
- Art, 17th-Century Dutch
- Artisans
- Ascham, Roger
- Astell, Mary
- Astrology, Alchemy, Magic
- Austria
- Avignon Papacy
- Bacon, Francis
- Banking and Money
- Barbaro, Ermolao, the Younger
- Barbaro, Francesco
- Baron, Hans
- Baroque
- Baroque Art and Architecture in Italy
- Barzizza, Gasparino
- Beaufort, Margaret
- Bellarmine, Cardinal
- Bembo, Pietro
- Bernardino of Siena, San
- Beroaldo, Filippo, the Elder
- Bessarion, Cardinal
- Bible, The
- Biondo, Flavio
- Bishops, 1400-1550
- Black Death and Plague: The Disease and Medical Thought
- Boccaccio, Giovanni
- Bohemia and Bohemian Crown Lands
- Borgia, Cesare
- Borgia, Lucrezia
- Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo
- Bosch, Hieronymous
- Bracciolini, Poggio
- Brahe, Tycho
- Bruegel, Pieter the Elder
- Bruni, Leonardo
- Bruno, Giordano
- Bucer, Martin
- Buonarroti, Michelangelo
- Burgundy and the Netherlands
- Calvin, John
- Calvinism
- Camões, Luís de
- Caravaggio
- Cardano, Girolamo
- Cardinal Richelieu
- Cardinals
- Carvajal y Mendoza, Luisa De
- Cary, Elizabeth
- Casas, Bartolome de las
- Castiglione, Baldassarre
- Catherine of Siena
- Catholicism, Early Modern
- Cecilia del Nacimiento
- Cellini, Benvenuto
- Cervantes, Miguel de
- China and Europe, 1550-1800
- Christian-Muslim Exchange
- Church Fathers in Renaissance and Reformation Thought, The
- Ciceronianism
- Cities and Urban Patriciates
- Civic Humanism
- Civic Ritual
- Classical Tradition, The
- Clifford, Anne
- Colet, John
- Colonna, Vittoria
- Columbus, Christopher
- Comenius, Jan Amos
- Confraternities
- Constantinople, Fall of
- Contarini, Gasparo, Cardinal
- Convent Culture
- Conversos and Crypto-Judaism
- Copernicus, Nicolaus
- Cornaro, Caterina
- Costume
- Council of Trent
- Crime and Punishment
- Croatia
- Cromwell, Oliver
- Cruz, Juana de la, Mother
- Cruz, Juana Inés de la, Sor
- Dance
- d'Aragona, Tullia
- Datini, Margherita
- Davies, Eleanor
- de Commynes, Philippe
- de Sales, Saint Francis
- de Valdés, Juan
- Death and Dying
- Decembrio, Pier Candido
- Dentière, Marie
- Des Roches, Madeleine and Catherine
- d’Este, Isabella
- di Toledo, Eleonora
- Dialogue
- Dolce, Ludovico
- Donne, John
- Drama, English Renaissance
- Dürer, Albrecht
- du Bellay, Joachim
- Du Guillet, Pernette
- Ebreo, Leone
- El Greco
- Elizabeth I
- England, 1485-1642
- English Puritans, Dissenters, Quakers, and Recusants
- Environment and the Natural World
- Epic and Romance
- Erasmus
- Europe and the Globe, 1350-1700
- Family and Childhood
- Fedele, Cassandra
- Ferrara and the Este
- Ficino, Marsilio
- Filelfo, Francesco
- Florence
- Foscari, Francesco
- France in the 17th Century
- France in the 16th Century
- Francis I
- Francis Xavier, St
- French Law and Justice
- French Renaissance Drama
- Fugger Family
- Galilei, Galileo
- Gambara, Veronica
- Garin, Eugenio
- General Church Councils, Pre-Trent
- Geneva (1400-1600)
- Ghetto
- Giambologna
- Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan
- Giustiniani, Bernardo
- Góngora, Luis de
- Gournay, Marie de
- Greek Visitors
- Guarino da Verona
- Guicciardini, Francesco
- Guilds and Manufacturing
- Hanseatic League
- Henri IV
- Henry VII
- Henry VIII, King of England
- Herbert, George
- Hispanic Mysticism
- Historiography
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Homes, Foundling
- Huguenots
- Humanism
- Humanism, The Origins of
- Hundred Years War, The
- Hungary, The Kingdom of
- Hus, Jan
- Hutchinson, Lucy
- Iconology and Iconography
- Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
- Inquisition, Roman
- Isabel I, Queen of Castile
- Ivan IV the Terrible, Tsar of Russia
- Japan and Europe: the Christian Century, 1549-1650
- Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre
- Jesuits
- Jews
- Jews and Christians in Venice
- Joan of Arc
- Jonson, Ben
- Julius II
- Kepler, Johannes
- Knox, John
- Kristeller, Paul Oskar
- Labé, Louise
- Landino, Cristoforo
- Landscape
- Last Wills and Testaments
- Law
- Lay Piety
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
- Leo X
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Leoni, Leone and Pompeo
- Leto, Giulio Pomponio
- Letter Writing and Epistolary Culture
- Libraries
- Literary Criticism
- Literature, French
- Literature, Italian
- Literature, Late Medieval German
- Literature, Penitential
- Literature, Spanish
- Locke, John
- London
- Louis XIII, King of France
- Louis XIV, King of France
- Luther, Martin
- Lyric Poetry
- Machiavelli, Niccolo
- Macinghi Strozzi, Alessandra
- Malatesta, Sigismondo
- Manetti, Giannozzo
- Mannerism
- Mantovano (Battista Spagnoli), Battista
- Manuel Chrysoloras
- Manuzio, Aldo
- Marinella, Lucrezia
- Marlowe, Christopher
- Marriage and Dowry
- Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots)
- Mary Tudor, Queen of England
- Masculinity
- Maximilian I, Emperor
- Medici, Catherine de'
- Medici, Cosimo il Vecchio de'
- Medici Family, The
- Medici, Lorenzo de'
- Medicine
- Mediterranean
- Memling, Hans
- Merici, Angela
- Midwifery
- Milan, 1535-1706
- Milan to 1535
- Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della
- Mission
- Monarchy in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, Female
- Montaigne, Michel de
- More, Thomas
- Morone, Cardinal Giovanni
- Music
- Navarre, Marguerite de
- Netherlandish Art, Early
- Netherlands, 1500-1621, Reformations and Revolt in the
- Netherlands (Dutch Revolt/ Dutch Republic), The
- Netherlands, Spanish, 1598-1700, the
- Nettesheim, Agrippa von
- Niccoli, Niccolò
- Nicholas of Cusa
- Nobility
- Opera
- Ottoman Empire
- Panofsky, Erwin
- Papacy
- Papal Rome
- Paris
- Parr, Katherine
- Patronage of the Arts
- Perotti, Niccolò
- Persecution and Martyrdom
- Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia
- Petrarch
- Philips, Katherine
- Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius
- Plague and its Consequences
- Poetry, English
- Pole, Cardinal Reginald
- Polish Literature: Renaissance
- Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, The
- Political Thought
- Poliziano, Angelo
- Pontano, Giovanni Giovano
- Portraiture
- Portugal
- Poverty and Poor Relief
- Prince Henry the Navigator
- Printing and the Book
- Purgatory
- Purity of Blood
- Quirini, Lauro
- Rabelais, François
- Raphael
- Reformation and Hussite Revolution, Czech
- Reformation and Wars of Religion in France, The
- Reformation, English
- Reformation, German
- Reformation, Italian, The
- Reformation, The
- Rembrandt
- Renaissance, The
- Reuchlin, Johann
- Revolutionary England, 1642-1702
- Rhetoric
- Ricci, Matteo
- Rienzo, Cola Di
- Roman and Iberian Inquisitions, Censorship and the Index i...
- Ronsard, Pierre de
- Royal Regencies in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, 140...
- Rubens, Peter Paul
- Russell, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby
- Russia and Muscovy
- Saint John of the Cross
- Saints and Mystics: After Trent
- Saints and Mystics: Before Trent
- Salutati, Coluccio
- Sarpi, Fra Paolo
- Savonarola, Girolamo
- Scandinavia
- Schooling and Literacy
- Scientific Revolution
- Scotland
- Scève, Maurice
- Sforza, Caterina
- Shakespeare, William
- Sidney Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke
- Sidney, Philip
- Sixtus IV, Pope
- Skepticism
- Spain
- Spanish Inquisition
- Spanish Islam, 1350-1614
- Spenser, Edmund
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Stampa, Gaspara
- Stuart, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia
- Switzerland
- Tarabotti, Arcangela
- Teresa of Avila
- The Radical Reformation
- Thirty Years War, The
- Titian
- Toleration
- Tornabuoni, Lucrezia
- Trade Networks
- Tragedy, English
- Translation
- Transylvania, The Principality of
- Traversari, Ambrogio
- Universities
- Urbanism
- Ursulines
- Valeriano, Pierio
- Valla, Lorenzo
- van Eyck, Jan
- van Schurman, Anna Maria
- Vasari, Giorgio
- Vega, Lope de
- Vegio, Maffeo
- Velázquez
- Venice
- Venice, Maritime
- Vergerio, Pier Paolo, The Elder
- Vermeer, Johannes
- Vernacular Languages and Dialects
- Vida, Marco Girolamo
- Virgil in Renaissance Thought
- Visitors, Italian
- Vives, Juan Luis
- War and Economy, 1300-1600
- Ward, Mary
- Warfare and Military Organizations
- Weyden, Rogier van der
- Widowhood
- Witch Hunt
- Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal
- Women and Learning
- Women and Medicine
- Women and Science
- Women and the Book Trade
- Women and the Visual Arts
- Women Writers in Ireland
- Women Writers of the Iberian Empire
- Women Writing in Early Modern Spain
- Women Writing in English
- Women Writing in French
- Wroth, Mary