Dante Alighieri
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Dante Alighieri was a major italian poet of the middle ages. He was born around 1265 in Florence, Italy. Throughout his lifetime he acomplished many things. He also wrote many poems in his lifetime. One of his most famous vernacular poems was called The Divine Comedy. Vernacular is a language that is unique to each place. This is very important to the Renaissance because when more people begin writing in the vernacular, many more people could read there work.
Pieter Brueghel
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Pieter Brueghel was born in Flanders around 1530. He is best known for his paintings of peasants. One of his paintings, The Peasant Dance, shows an example of the Renaissance art in Northern Europe. This painting shows a village celebration. He portrays the peasants as real people. Like Italian Renaissance artists, Brueghel painted people as they were.
Miguel de Cervantes
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Miguel de Cervantes was a famous spanish writer. He was born in 1547. He had written many plays and fictional books in his lifetime. One of them was called Novelas Ejemplares in 1613. His most famous novel however was entitled Don Quixote de la Mancha, which was published in 1604.
Geoffrey Chaucer
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Geoffrey Chaucer was a famous writer from England who wrote the book The Canterbury Tales. This book is about 29 pilgrims who are traveling to the city of Canterbury. This book describes the levels of english society in the olden days. The levels go from nobles at the top, to the poor at the bottom.
Rene Descartes
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He was philosopher who was born in La Haye en Touraine. He is often regarded as the first thinker. For descartes, mortality was a science. He is a very wise man. He believes in god, investigates the place of man in nature, and defends free will.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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Niccolo Machiavelli was a diplomat in Florence. He wrote a book called the prince. This book was created to try to answer the question, how could a ruler guarantee that he would stay in power? He claimed that people are greedy and self-centered. According to him, rulers should not try to be good, rather they should do whatever is necessary to keep their position.
Franceso Petrarch
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Petrarch was a famous poet and scholar of the ancient works. He lived in the 1300s. He studied famous writers from Rome like Cicero. He also wrote biographies of famous Romans. Petrarch encouraged Europeans to search for latin Manuscripts in monasteries all over Europe. Overtime his effort paid off and new libraries were built.
William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was said to be the greatest writer of the era. He was born in 1564. He was best know for his plays. He wrote many plays, but some of his greatest tragedies include Hamlet, MacBeth, and Romeo and Juliet. He also wrote comedies like A Midsummers Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing. His histories included Henry V and Richard III.
Vocabulary
Vernacular = The everyday language people speak in a region
Printing Press = A machine that uses moveable metal type to help write books. This allowed people to write books much easier