Modern scholars are well aware of the inexactitude and ambiguity of the terms “Renaissance” and “humanism”. We continue to find the words useful, but we have adopted the practice of employing them cautiously, with precisely stated qualifications. It is the purpose of this paper to point out, especially to students of the cultural history of England, that contradiction and ambiguity also lurk in the equally useful term “the new learning” and to urge a similar caution in employing it.
Historians of English literature commonly identify the New Learning (usually capitalized) with the revival of classical learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They may use the term narrowly to mean the revival of interest in the language and literature of ancient Greece, or somewhat more broadly to include the revival of “classical” Latin. Some writers will also include the Biblical scholarship of such men as Erasmus and Reuchlin.
