The European Renaissance

As represented in: The Engines of Our Ingenuity
Originally created to complement Distance Education course: Engl 4330

Recommended Reading
by John Lienhard jhl [at] uh.edu

My dating of the Renaissance is fairly traditional. For endpoints, I like to take Gutenberg's mature printing press in 1455 and Francis Bacon's articulation of the new experimental science in 1620. The following Engines scripts are centered on that period. However, since no such dating is ever wholly accurate, a few of the following scripts describe circumstances on the eve of, and in the near wake of, that dating.


Printing and New Literacy

1. The Invention of Printing and the New Literacy

Measuring tools

2. Natural Philosophy (Science) and Mathematics

Vesalith

3. Medicine and Anatomy

Building

4. Architecture

Hour glass

5. Other Technology

Macbeth

6. Art, Music, and Theater

Illustrated letter H

7. Renaissance Culture and Attitudes

Cabin

8. Discovering, and Telling About, The New World

Each of these short readings includes source material.