ABSTRACT
The new movement had been born almost two centuries before in the Northern Italian cities where growing prosperity produced a more secular and materialistic middle-class society with ideals and aspirations far in advance of the feudalism still generally prevailing elsewhere in Europe. With the antique providing ideals of perfect form for architects, sculptors and often even painters, the Renaissance produced an extraordinary ferment of artistic activity and experiment. Poetry enjoyed a special place of honour in the Italian concept of the good life, and Petrarch had been the herald of the dawn of the new era. So too it fell to the poet Geoffrey Chaucer to be the first great Englishman to voice the spirit of Renaissance Italy. By the time that the Renaissance had reached the England of the Reformation, it had already become evident how difficult it must prove to reconcile the humanist ideal of man's greatness with the Church's teaching of human frailty and original sin.
