Introduction

The major in Renaissance Studies is a special major in the humanities whose purpose is to contribute to an integrated understanding of the Western cultural tradition (see also "Special Programs in the Humanities"). It is an interdisciplinary program that introduces students to that period in European history conventionally termed the Renaissance - very roughly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, the sixteenth century in northern and western Europe, 1500-1660 in England.

Students choosing the major study several aspects of this rich civilization, including visual arts, social and political history, history of ideas and philosophy, religion, literature, and history of music. Such study of a distant era demands and fosters a capacity for intellectual flexibility; students in the program are invited to learn the various languages of the era's visual arts, of early Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation, of records and objects, of Renaissance music, lyric poetry, epic, drama, and prose narrative.

The program's challenge lies partly in the need to grasp systems of communication different from our own but possessing their own coherence and intricate relationships to each other.