ABSTRACT
The Renaissance is an important category in the history of sexuality, but it is essential to note from the outset that there is no chronological rupture or dramatic change between the thirteenth century and the fourteenth century, especially in terms of sexual behaviour and sexuality. As a process, the key element of the Renaissance was the ‘rebirth’ and re-application of ancient knowledge. The cultural, intellectual and social changes described would not have impacted everybody, as it is likely that the many peasants who filled society were ‘living for the most part in extreme poverty and probably untouched by the Renaissance’. Exploring the beginning of the Renaissance process one can see in Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Petrarch’s Canzoniere, an emphasis on the first world motif around the theme of love. A great deal of social expectation was placed on men to be men in the Middle Ages, and masculinity was believed to be natural.
