The notion of ‘renaissance’

Between Classical Antiquity and our own day lie a series of renaissances, so-called ‘rebirths’ of a past phase of history, or more accurately revivals of interest in an earlier period. The Italian Renaissance, the Renaissance par excellence, is the best known, but every survey of European history reveals others: the Carolingian Renaissance, the Ottonian Renaissance, the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, and then, after the Italian Renaissance, the Northern Renaissance. After that the label ‘renaissance’ disappears, and instead we talk about Neo-Classicism, the Gothic revival, the pre-Raphaelite movement. Even the late twentieth-century preoccupation with roots and heritage, with manifestations as diverse as reconstructions of Civil War battles, Anglo-Saxon villages, historical theme parks, Elizabethan feasts, and companies which will trace your family tree, is in its own way a ‘renaissance’ of the past. Although such renaissances are invariably brief, they occupy a disproportionately important place in historical surveys of all kinds, from intellectual history to the history of art and architecture. Why? Isn't a retreat into the past a form of escapism, at best antiquarianism, at worst a failure to get to grips with the present?

In fact, almost paradoxically, each such period presages the appearance of something new. Latent in them is the germ of the next phase of development. Yet how can an interest in the past lead to the future? All back-to-the-past movements have certain elements in common.