Cultural History - AP World History: Modern

The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus is most famous for his works of drama. Most notable he wrote the Oresteia trilogy.

The Great Library of Alexandria was built in Egypt during the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty (circa 300 BCE) For a few centuries it was a renowned center of learning and innovation in the classical world.

During the Middle Ages, Europe underwent a gradual transition from a state of relative darkness and backwardness at the beginning of the period (called the Early Middle Ages or the Dark Ages), towards a state of cultural accomplishment and refinement at the end of the period (called the High Middle Ages). Still, it is worth noting that throughout this period, Europe’s cultural accomplishments lagged behind those of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia.

The Canterbury Tales was written by the Englishman Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century. It is considered to be of particular importance for encouraging the spread of vernacular English in English society.

Boccaccio was an influential figure in the Italian Renaissance. He is one of the early leading figures associated with humanism. His most famous work is called The Decameron.

Peter Abelard is most notable for his contributions to scholasticism. Scholasticism was one of the most important philosophical and theological disciplines of the Middle Ages. It was primarily concerned with marrying the insights of Greco-Roman civilization with the Christian world.

While the code of Chivalry had deep roots in religious and social piety, it was designed as a code of conduct for soldiers. As a result, the code promoted "defending Christianity" from "the infidel" and showing "no mercy" to enemies.

The use of steel and glass and the Prairie School style were all popular in the twentieth century. Chinoiserie became popular in the late eighteenth century, and the period from 1450-1750 saw a restored interest in Classic or Greco-Roman designs in Europe.

French Salons were centers of art, such as painting and sculpture.

Although Salons were attended by many military officials, firearms tests and military drills were not a part of Salon culture.

The Salons were largely secular affairs, if clergy attended they were not in charge.

Calculus was invented in Britain in the 1600s, not in French Salons in the 1700s.

Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century CE. It is an Abrahamic religion, which means it continues the same monotheistic tradition as Judaism and Christianity. Islam spread extremely rapidly around the Middle East and North Africa in the centuries after its foundation.

Pueblos were houses built by the Anasazi people in the caves, and on the plains, of the American southwest.

Moveable type and printing were both invented first in China. Moveable type allows for the mass production of documents and was first invented in China in the eleventh century, during the Song Dynasty.

Historians have been able to pinpoint Italy as the birthplace of the Renaissance. It is important to note that at this time, Italy did not in fact exist as a nation – instead, the region which the modern world calls “Italy” today was then a collection of city-states, each independent from the others, but with a shared cultural, religious, and ethnic background. It was within these several city-states (including Venice, Milan, Naples, and Florence) in which the Renaissance first began to blossom sometime during the late medieval period, before later embarking on the long process of cultural, economic, and political transmission to the rest of Western Europe.

One of the reasons that Christianity spread around the Roman Empire was because it was so popular among those who were powerless or disenfranchised in Roman society (which was the vast majority of the population). Christianity was rapidly embraced by non-citizens, slaves, the rural poor, the urban poor, and women.

Mansa Musa was a devout Muslim; pilgrimage to Mecca is considered a holy commandment by many devout Muslims. Devout Christians and Jews view Jerusalem as the holiest city and the most important pilgrimage site. Mali has never had a large Hindu or Buddhist community, nor have they ever had a ruler practice either of those religions.

Gunpowder was invented in China in the ninth or tenth century. The discovery of gunpowder led to the invention of fireworks and to the invention of firearms. Eventually gunpowder would transform the military and societies of almost everywhere in the world.

Above all other conditions, ample wealth was primarily and absolutely essential for any and all Renaissance-era patronage of the cultural arts. This wealth could be held in any variety of hands, from secular government officials to papal employees to members of the monarchy and nobility, but it had to be ample enough in quantity to allow for disposable spending. This ultimate condition of great monetary wealth was found, first and foremost, amongst the Italian city-states, all of whom enjoyed bustling economies, as well as the inter-classist competition and favorable governmental policies that made such a system possible. Florence, for example, had a well-established “grandi” or generationally wealthy class, as well as a newly-burgeoning nouveau-riche class, known as the “popolo grosso,” both of whom had a great deal of money to spare and an attendant desire to show off their power. These conditions created the system of patronage, by which wealthy citizens, officials, or other individuals financially sponsored painters, writers, highly skilled craftsman, sculptors, and architects, among others. These artists received the funds necessary to support themselves and their artistic endeavors, while their rich patrons gained bragging rights, high public visibility, and a sense of pride in having helped facilitate the creation of beauty.

The artwork of the Renaissance, as is especially demonstrated by the works of Michelangelo, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci, differs radically in both style and substance from medieval art. Much of the medieval era’s works of art took religious settings or themes as their central focus, so that the vast majority of these artists depicted their subjects in abstract ways, relying on standard styles and techniques that were passed down across the decades. But the Renaissance, with its emphasis on secular knowledge and classical themes, put an end to these sort of rigid religious depictions. Increasingly, Renaissance artists embraced this new cultural freedom and began to experiment with a wide variety of new techniques and subjects; many turned away from religious sources and began to look to the worlds of ancient Greek and Rome for inspiration. While of course it is impossible to codify all Renaissance era artwork according to the same exact set of standards, a great deal of commonality does exist. First and foremost, Renaissance artists developed a preference for realism – they looked to nature and the human form for inspiration, preferring to depict these subjects as realistically as possible, with deep emotions and detail made lovingly evident. Several new artistic techniques also emerged, including the use of mathematical principles by artists in order to ensure symmetry within their works. Connected to this trend was the development of linear perspective, or the depiction of objects within a work of art in differing degrees of size in order to create a realistic sense of distance or closeness to the viewer. Linear perspective allowed artists to render the natural world in much more realistic detail – now, mountains could be shown looming in the distance, while children frolicking in a meadow could be shown, with anatomical exactitude, close to the viewer’s position at the canvas’s foreground. Together, these developments, new focuses, and trends account for the great degree of prominence given to realistic, simplified scenes of nature and the human physical form in most Renaissance artworks.

The Renaissance is exhilaratingly replete with astoundingly talented artists and breathtaking works of art. These include Giotto, who is today regarded as the father of Renaissance painting, and the sculptor Donatello, both of whom found ample inspiration in the many intricacies of nature. The painter Raphael is perhaps best known for his fresco “The School of Athens,” which depicts a bustling scene in ancient Greece, full of famous scholars, orators, and philosophers whom the humanists of the Renaissance (himself included) idolized. Michelangelo was an artist of exceptional talent – he excelled at both painting and sculpting and is equally famous for his massive, classically-heroic statue of the biblical hero David and his awe-inspiring frescoes that adorn the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. But out of all these prodigies, one stands apart as the best exemplar of the ideals of the so-called “Renaissance man”: Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci was an extremely versatile talent, with the wide array of skills and accomplishments and the prodigious intellect that make up the notion of the truly universally accomplished man of the Renaissance era. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is perhaps the best known painting in the entire world and his many codices of artworks, architectural ideas, and technological designs are a staggering array of visionary scientific talent. Da Vinci was also a devoted student of human anatomy, conducting numerous autopsies in secret so as to better understand the intricacies of the human form (as his Vitruvian man clearly shows). His mighty intellect made him a valuable mathematical and scientific consultant to several Italian princes and even King Frances I of France.