ABSTRACT
Understanding the emergence and the role of technical writing in the English Renaissance first requires reflection on major events that shaped the Renaissance in England. In contrast, the Renaissance emphasis on nature as organic infused art with human and natural subjects that had life, movement, and emotion. The Renaissance belief in the power of education, particularly self-education through the printed text, gave people the power to control their lives as far as their individual intellect could carry them. The effects of a new economics, trade, knowledge, and printing were inextricably entwined with the rise of humanistic philosophy and technical writing. Books on farming and farm animals form another major category of Renaissance technical writing. Technical books increased in length and complexity of content and clearly evidenced confidence in the power of human intellect to exert more and more control over the world.
