Reframing the Renaissance
By Alexandra A. Jopp The uncertainty and elusiveness of the Renaissance is well recognized. This is because the period has neither exact chronological boundaries nor distinctive cultural features that would allow it to be sharply defined. The many scholarly approaches to interpretation of the Renaissance do not bring much clarity and, in fact, often complicate the understanding of the period. The more methods and classifications that exist for a phenomenon, the more blurred the criteria become. This creates a particular problem today , one which can call into doubt the “ legitimacy” of historical research : can a historian reasonably hope that he or she will be able to express the essence of the Renaissance as a whole? At the same time , though, there remains a need to examine the Renaissance’s place in history and interpret the many changes that occurred in Italy between the fourteenth and the sixteenths centuries as, at least in part, an expression ...