What does it mean to be middle aged? That youth, hope, and promise are gone? Middle age can offer an opportunity for a new beginning a renewal of the body, mind, and spirit. It's about second chances. In Middle Age Renaissance, author Doug Brooks shows how middle age can be the time to think about pursuing positive change and taking the opportunity to renew yourself for today and all of your tomorrows for yourself and those who care about you. Drawn from a host of personal experiences, Brooks provides suggestions and advice for getting that second chance. Through stories and anecdotes, Middle Age Renaissance helps you to build your body for health and self-esteem, to build your mind for wisdom and truth, and to build your spirit for love and joy. Useful and inspiring, Middle Age Renaissance helps middle-aged people understand they can't change the past, but they can work toward becoming the person they could and should be.

After an extensive introduction that takes stock of the relevant research literature on Old Age in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, the contributors discuss the phenomenon of old age in many different fields of late antique, medieval, and early modern literature, history, and art history. Both Beowulf and the Hildebrandslied, both Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, both the figure of Merlin and the trans-European tradition of Perceval/Peredur/Parzival, then the figure of the vetula in a variety of medieval French, English, and Spanish texts, and of the Old Man in The Stricker's Daniel, both the treatment of old age in Langland's Piers the Plowman and in Jean Gerson's sermons are dealt with. Other aspects involve late-antique epistolary literature, early modern French farce in light of Disability Studies, the social role of old, impotent men in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish paintings, and the scientific discourse of old age and health since the 1500s. The discourse of Old Age proves to have been of central importance throughout the ages, so the critical examination of the issues involved sheds intriguing light on the cultural history from late antiquity to the seventeenth century.

Starting with an essay on the Renaissance as the concluding phase of the Middle Ages and ending with appreciations of Paul Oskar Kristeller, the great twentieth-century scholar of the Renaissance, this new volume by John Monfasani brings together seventeen articles that focus both on individuals, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, and Niccolò Perotti, and on large-scale movements, such as the spread of Italian humanism, Ciceronianism, Biblical criticism, and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy. In addition to entering into the persistent debate on the nature of the Renaissance, the articles in the volume also engage what of late have become controversial topics, namely, the shape and significance of Renaissance humanism and the character of the Platonic Academy in Florence.

Art must be the faithful expression of a society, since it represents it by its works as it has created them -- undeniable witnesses of its spirit and manners for future generations. But it must be acknowledged that art is only the consequence of the ideas which it expresses; it is the fruit of civilization, not its origin. To understand the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is necessary to go back to the source of its art, and to know the life of our fathers; these are two inseparable things, which entwine one another, and become complete one by the other. - Preface.

Originally edited by Thomas H. Greer, this series emanates from the Humanities Department at Michigan State University. Today, these books remain outstanding sources for the comprehensive study of most subject areas included under the umbrella of humanities. Most major literary forms are represented: essay, poem, short story, play, novel, memoir, epigram, scientific discourse, philosophical treatise, political manifesto, and religious proclamation. Major subject areas include art, music, education, mathematics, biology, psychiatry, religion, philosophy, politics, economics, and physics.Originally published under the General Editorship of Thomas H. Greer, the series emanated from the Humanities Department of Michigan State University. The books remain today perhaps the best sources available for the comprehensive study in one volume of every subject area which might be included in the umbrella of humanities. Most major literary forms are represented: essay, poem, short story, play, novel, memoir, epigram, scientific discourse, philosophical treatise, political manifesto, and religious proclamation. All major subject areas are explored: art, music, education, mathematics, biology, psychiatry, religion, philosophy, politics, economics, and physics. The informative apparatus, headnotes, and footnotes are all aimed at enhancing the student-reader's comprehension. -- Provided by Publisher --

"These papers were originally presented at the second colloquium of the Federation internationale des instituts d'etudes medievales with the same title"--P. [4] of cover.

This is a wide-ranging collection of essays from a variety of critical perspectives exploring alternative ways of understanding the entertainments, mystery plays, civic pageants, courtly masques, and professional dramas of late Medieval and Renaissance England.