ABSTRACT
In 1861 Jacob Burckhardt, a professor at Basel University, published a work entitled The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. The Renaissance certainly involved the revival of classical literature and art, but it was the marriage of this with 'the genius of the Italian people, which achieved the conquest of the Western world'. Burckhardt treated the Renaissance as a crucial period in European history, radically different from the Middle Ages and far more than a stage in the development of the arts and of literature. Other historians have tended to see it as a cultural movement. In trying to decide which of these perceptions is the more accurate, it is appropriate to start where Burckhardt started, with Italian political life. Burckhardt and those influenced by him laid stress on the Renaissance 'discovery' of man, contrasting the secular interests and outlook of Renaissance Italians with the other-worldliness of medieval attitudes.
