153-515: Féerie ( French pronunciation: [feʁi] ), sometimes translated as "fairy play", was a French theatrical genre known for fantasy plots and spectacular visuals, including lavish scenery and mechanically worked stage effects. Féeries blended music, dancing, pantomime, and acrobatics, as well as magical transformations created by designers and stage technicians, to tell stories with clearly defined melodrama -like morality and an extensive use of supernatural elements. The genre developed in
306-464: A German bishop visiting north Italy during the 12th century, noticed a widespread new form of political and social organization, observing that Italy appeared to have exited from feudalism so that its society was based on merchants and commerce. Linked to this was anti-monarchical thinking, represented in the famous early Renaissance fresco cycle The Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (painted 1338–1340), whose strong message
459-460: A citizen and official, as well as a theorist and philosopher and also Quintilian . Perhaps the most succinct expression of his perspective on humanism is in a 1465 poetic work La città di vita , but an earlier work, Della vita civile , is more wide-ranging. Composed as a series of dialogues set in a country house in the Mugello countryside outside Florence during the plague of 1430, Palmieri expounds on
612-461: A city in the clouds with the birds and challenges Zeus 's authority. Ovid 's Metamorphoses and Apuleius 's The Golden Ass are both works that influenced the development of the fantasy genre by taking mythic elements and weaving them into personal accounts. Both works involve complex narratives in which humans beings are transformed into animals or inanimate objects. Platonic teachings and early Christian theology are major influences on
765-404: A combination of reasoning and empirical evidence . Humanist education was based on the programme of Studia Humanitatis , the study of five humanities: poetry , grammar , history , moral philosophy , and rhetoric . Although historians have sometimes struggled to define humanism precisely, most have settled on "a middle of the road definition... the movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate
918-399: A comic spectacle with winking references and allusions to most of the major féeries that had gone before it. The comic strain of Le Pied de mouton and Les Pilules du diable was emphasized in many of these successes, such as Les Sept Châteaux , Perlinpinpin , and Les Bibelots . Because of the large scale of the spectacle, the biggest and most technically equipped Parisian stages became
1071-584: A continuous learning from antiquity). Sociologist Rodney Stark , plays down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages , which married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism . This analysis argues that, whereas the great European states (France and Spain) were absolute monarchies , and others were under direct Church control,
1224-568: A cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective
1377-538: A faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas. In the first period of the Italian Renaissance , humanists favored the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics , and their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Writing around 1450, Nicholas of Cusa anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus , but in
1530-671: A feudal society hindering the modernization of China. Stories of the supernatural continued to be denounced once the Communists rose to power, and mainland China experienced a revival in fantasy only after the Cultural Revolution had ended. Fantasy became a genre of pulp magazines published in the West. In 1923, the first all-fantasy fiction magazine, Weird Tales , was published. Many other similar magazines eventually followed, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ; when it
1683-448: A foreign threat to national ballet traditions. Nonetheless, the ballet-féerie form attracted considerable artistic attention: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 's The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker are both ballet-féeries . Like the French féerie , the ballet-féerie emphasized spectacle and stage effects. Where previous dance stagings had emphasized the technique and solo virtuosity of
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#17330859151491836-518: A form of melodrama , but the gap between them quickly became highly pronounced. For the nineteenth century audience, the two genres stood at opposite ends of a spectrum: at one end was melodrama, with its plots calculated to make audiences weep; féerie filled a place at the other extreme, providing entertainment designed to make audiences laugh. Notable early attempts toward the genre were Cuvelier de Trie's adaptations of Tom Thumb and Puss-in-Boots , in 1801 and 1802, respectively. The development of
1989-445: A genre of its own, in competition with the similar but magic-based form of the "classical" féerie . The féerie fell out of popularity by the end of the 19th century, by which time it was largely seen as entertainment for children. It disappeared from French stages just as another medium, the cinema, was beginning to supplant it as a form of storytelling spectacle. With his 1899 film version of Cinderella , Georges Méliès brought
2142-564: A large audience. Lord Dunsany established the genre's popularity in both the novel and the short story form. H. Rider Haggard , Rudyard Kipling , and Edgar Rice Burroughs began to write fantasy at this time. These authors, along with Abraham Merritt , established what was known as the "lost world" subgenre, which was the most popular form of fantasy in the early decades of the 20th century, although several classic children's fantasies, such as Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , were also published around this time. Juvenile fantasy
2295-406: A long and complex historiography , and in line with general skepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual cultural heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation. Some observers have questioned whether the Renaissance
2448-489: A love of books. In some cases, cultivated library builders were also committed to offering others the opportunity to use their collections. Prominent aristocrats and princes of the Church created great libraries for the use of their courts, called "court libraries", and were housed in lavishly designed monumental buildings decorated with ornate woodwork, and the walls adorned with frescoes (Murray, Stuart A.P.). Renaissance art marks
2601-471: A main plot element, theme , or setting . Magic, magic practitioners ( sorcerers , witches and so on) and magical creatures are common in many of these worlds. An identifying trait of fantasy is the author's use of narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. This differs from realistic fiction in that realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, where fantasy does not. In writing fantasy
2754-532: A more natural reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform . It saw myriad artistic developments and contributions from such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo , who inspired the term "Renaissance man". In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning . The period also saw revolutions in other intellectual and social scientific pursuits, as well as
2907-412: A new style of "fuzzy" supernatural texts. The fantastic is on the dividing line between supernatural and not supernatural, Just as during this time period the women were not respecting the boundary of inequality that had always been set for them. At the time, women's roles in society were very uncertain, just as the rules of the fantastic are never straightforward. This climate allowed for a genre similar to
3060-540: A notable small-scale example, and Corneille 's Andromède and La Toison d'or also count within the genre. These genres owed much to the theatrical engineering work of Italian architects, especially Nicola Sabbatini . These spectacles paved the way for 18th-century fairground pantomimes ( théâtre de la foire ), such as Arlequin dans un oeuf at the Théâtre des Jeunes-Artistes , or Les Eaux de Merlin by Alain-René Lesage . The fairground pantomimes, by combining motifs from
3213-432: A perfect mind and body, which could be attained with education. The purpose of humanism was to create a universal man whose person combined intellectual and physical excellence and who was capable of functioning honorably in virtually any situation. This ideology was referred to as the uomo universale , an ancient Greco-Roman ideal. Education during the Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient literature and history as it
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#17330859151493366-403: A philosophical fashion. Science and art were intermingled in the early Renaissance, with polymath artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature. Leonardo set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and aerodynamics, and he devised principles of research method that led Fritjof Capra to classify him as
3519-440: A scene would change as if by magic in full view of the audience, were an important component of the style; until 1830, nearly all scene changes in féeries were full-view transformations. The last transformation in a féerie , accompanied by a flourish of music, led to the apotheosis : a grand final stage picture, usually involving beautiful supernumeraries descending from the sky or suspended on wires. These elements, especially
3672-513: A series of theses on philosophy, natural thought, faith, and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of the printing press , this allowed many more people access to books, especially the Bible. In all, the Renaissance can be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve
3825-607: A single source. The Welsh tradition has been particularly influential, due to its connection to King Arthur and its collection in a single work, the epic Mabinogion . There are many works where the boundary between fantasy and other works is not clear; the question of whether the writers believed in the possibilities of the marvels in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight makes it difficult to distinguish when fantasy, in its modern sense, first began. Although pre-dated by John Ruskin 's The King of
3978-520: A wall in the form of pilasters. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Brunelleschi. Arches, semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental, are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use
4131-659: A wide audience, with the success of Robert E. Howard 's Conan the Barbarian and Fritz Leiber 's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. However, it was the advent of high fantasy , and most of all J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , which reached new heights of popularity in the late 1960s, that allowed fantasy to truly enter the mainstream . Several other series, such as C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and Ursula K. Le Guin 's Earthsea books, helped cement
4284-459: A wide range of writers. Classical texts could be found alongside humanist writings. These informal associations of intellectuals profoundly influenced Renaissance culture. An essential tool of Renaissance librarianship was the catalog that listed, described, and classified a library's books. Some of the richest "bibliophiles" built libraries as temples to books and knowledge. A number of libraries appeared as manifestations of immense wealth joined with
4437-466: A writer in the Journal des débats commented satirically on the spectacular frivolity of a typical féerie , but positively on the genre's vast potential for creativity: Nothing is more rare than a féerie which is not an absurd mixture of ridiculous adventures and burlesque inventions and which consists otherwise only as an exhibition of tricks, costumes and decors … Nevertheless what resources are offered by
4590-484: A writer on the theatre, comparing the shifting scenes and magical occurrences of the féerie to a dream: What a charming summer spectacle is a féerie! That which doesn't demand any attention and unravels without logic, like a dream that we make wide awake … [It is] a symphony of forms, of colours and of lights … The characters, brilliantly clothed, wander through a perpetually changing series of tableaux, panic-stricken, stunned, running after each other, searching to reclaim
4743-615: Is One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) , which is a compilation of many ancient and medieval folk tales. Various characters from this epic have become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin , Sinbad and Ali Baba . Hindu mythology was an evolution of the earlier Vedic mythology and had many more fantastical stories and characters, particularly in the Indian epics . The Panchatantra ( Fables of Bidpai ), for example, used various animal fables and magical tales to illustrate
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4896-540: Is 1401, when the rival geniuses Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi competed for the contract to build the bronze doors for the Baptistery of the Florence Cathedral (Ghiberti won). Others see more general competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello , and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why
5049-479: Is a period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity . Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including art , architecture , politics, literature , exploration and science ,
5202-569: Is about the virtues of fairness, justice, republicanism and good administration. Holding both Church and Empire at bay, these city republics were devoted to notions of liberty. Skinner reports that there were many defences of liberty such as the Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475) celebration of Florentine genius not only in art, sculpture and architecture, but "the remarkable efflorescence of moral, social and political philosophy that occurred in Florence at
5355-535: Is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death , which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th century Italy. Italy was particularly badly hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife . It has also been argued that
5508-612: The Epic of Gilgamesh . The ancient Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Eliš , in which the god Marduk slays the goddess Tiamat , contains the theme of a cosmic battle between good and evil, which is characteristic of the modern fantasy genre. Genres of romantic and fantasy literature existed in ancient Egypt. The Tales of the Court of King Khufu , which is preserved in the Westcar Papyrus and
5661-453: The comedia de magia [ es ] , a genre very similar to the féerie , began a rise to prominence in 1715 with the works of Juan Salvo y Vela [ es ] . The form was well-established there by the time Juan Grimaldi [ es ] adapted Le Pied de mouton for the Spanish stage in 1829. Grimaldi's version, La Pata de Cabra , was a pronounced popular success and
5814-717: The Carolingian Renaissance (8th and 9th centuries), Ottonian Renaissance (10th and 11th century), and the Renaissance of the 12th century . The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period . Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in art , architecture , philosophy , literature , music , science , technology , politics, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed
5967-477: The Commedia dell'Arte with lavish fantasy created by theatrical spectacle, served as the most direct precursor of the 19th-century féerie . The French Revolution changed the face of French theatre, with a large new audience to please: the bourgeoisie . Various genres developed to please bourgeois tastes. The féerie , combining the fairground influences with the farcical style of comédie en vaudeville , began as
6120-509: The Elder Edda and the Younger Edda , includes such figures as Odin and his fellow Aesir , and dwarves , elves , dragons , and giants . These elements have been directly imported into various fantasy works. The separate folklore of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland has sometimes been used indiscriminately for "Celtic" fantasy, sometimes with great effect; other writers have specified the use of
6273-808: The High Middle Ages in Western Europe and in the Islamic Golden Age (normally in translation), but Greek literary, oratorical and historical works (such as Homer , the Greek dramatists, Demosthenes and Thucydides ) were not studied in either the Latin or medieval Islamic worlds ; in the Middle Ages these sorts of texts were only studied by Byzantine scholars. Some argue that the Timurid Renaissance in Samarkand and Herat , whose magnificence toned with Florence as
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6426-713: The Late Middle Ages have led some to theorize that its unusual social climate allowed the emergence of a rare cultural efflorescence. Italy did not exist as a political entity in the early modern period. Instead, it was divided into smaller city-states and territories: the Neapolitans controlled the south, the Florentines and the Romans at the center, the Milanese and the Genoese to
6579-745: The Levant . Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Iberia and Sicily , which became important centers for this transmission of ideas. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, many schools dedicated to the translation of philosophical and scientific works from Classical Arabic to Medieval Latin were established in Iberia, most notably the Toledo School of Translators . This work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of
6732-688: The Medici , and the migration of Greek scholars and their texts to Italy following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire . Other major centers were Venice , Genoa , Milan , Rome during the Renaissance Papacy , and Naples . From Italy, the Renaissance spread throughout Europe and also to American, African and Asian territories ruled by the European colonial powers of the time or where Christian missionaries were active. The Renaissance has
6885-543: The Northern Renaissance , the Spanish Renaissance , etc. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century. The traditional view focuses more on the Renaissance's early modern aspects and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it
7038-474: The One Thousand and One Nights , Les Mille et une nuits , introduced exoticism to the genre while preserving its lighthearted vaudevillian dialogue. Other notable Cogniard productions were La Chatte blanche with the café-concert performer Thérésa , the trick-filled La Poudre de Perlinpinpin , and, in collaboration with the vaudeville writer Clairville, the 1858 Variétés production Les Bibelots du diable ,
7191-492: The Pisa Baptistry , demonstrates that classical models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement. Applied innovation extended to commerce. At the end of the 15th century, Luca Pacioli published the first work on bookkeeping , making him the founder of accounting . The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of the printing press in about 1440 democratized learning and allowed
7344-400: The Renaissance , in which such court leaders as Catherine de' Medici and Henry IV of France would commission spectacularly designed ballets based on mythological subjects and fables. Another notable precursor is the pièces à machines ("plays with machines") genre, popular at the Théâtre du Marais in the mid 17th-century, again using mythology as source material; Molière 's Psyché is
7497-498: The diorama —a staged tableau animated and transformed by changes in lighting—widely influenced féerie transformation effects. The first great hit to match the success of Le Pied de mouton was the Cirque Olympique's Les Pilules du diable (1839), from a script by the vaudeville writer Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and two writers for circus productions, Laloue and Laurent. While the stage effects had gotten more spectacular since
7650-464: The féerie as "surely a delightful entertainment when it is in the hands of a true poet. It freely enters the whimsy of his imagination and can both delight the viewer's mind and enchant their eyes." One of the poems in Charles Baudelaire 's Les Fleurs du mal , "L'Irreparable," was inspired by a féerie he had seen, La Belle aux Cheveaux d'Or , starring Marie Daubrun, an actress with whom he
7803-491: The féerie into the newly developing world of motion pictures. The féerie quickly became one of film's most popular and lavishly mounted genres in the early years of the twentieth century, with such pioneers as Edwin S. Porter , Cecil Hepworth , Ferdinand Zecca , and Albert Capellani contributing fairy-tale adaptations in the féerie style or filming versions of popular stage féeries like Le Pied de mouton , Les Sept Châteaux du diable , and La Biche au bois . The leader in
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#17330859151497956-500: The féerie was helped along by a growing French interest in the literary qualities of classic fairy tales, and by the popularity of the One Thousand and One Nights after its first publication in France. The féerie in the full 19th-century sense of the word was born on 6 December 1806, with the premiere at the Théâtre de la Gaîté of Le Pied de mouton ("The Mutton Foot"). The play, written by Alphonse Martainville in collaboration with
8109-442: The féerie , with one critic for a New Zealand newspaper describing Les 400 coups du diable as a "fairy play which in everything but in name is very much like our own Christmas pantomime". With its fairy-tale themes, the féerie can be also compared to later English "fairy plays" such as J. M. Barrie 's Peter Pan or to American fairy-tale extravaganzas such as L. Frank Baum 's musical version of The Wizard of Oz . In Spain,
8262-431: The prima ballerina , the new genre put the focus on ensemble dances, magical transformations, and shifting stage pictures created with movement and color. By the mid-nineteenth century, féeries had become one of the foremost venues for fairy-tale storytelling in popular culture, and had gained the fascination and respect of some of the foremost writers of the day. Théophile Gautier often reviewed them in his capacity as
8415-400: The supernatural , magic , and imaginary worlds and creatures . Its roots are in oral traditions, which became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century, it has expanded further into various media, including film , television , graphic novels , manga , animations , and video games . The expression fantastic literature is also often used to refer to this genre by
8568-587: The "father of modern science". Other examples of Da Vinci's contribution during this period include machines designed to saw marbles and lift monoliths, and new discoveries in acoustics, botany, geology, anatomy, and mechanics. A suitable environment had developed to question classical scientific doctrine. The discovery in 1492 of the New World by Christopher Columbus challenged the classical worldview. The works of Ptolemy (in geography) and Galen (in medicine) were found to not always match everyday observations. As
8721-404: The 14th century with a Latin phase, when Renaissance scholars such as Petrarch , Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437), and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works by such Latin authors as Cicero , Lucretius , Livy , and Seneca . By the early 15th century, the bulk of the surviving such Latin literature had been recovered;
8874-565: The 1810s. Pantomime-féeries , developed by the mime Deburau, became highly popular in the 1840s. Other popular descriptors included folie-féeries and comédie-féeries . Opéra-féeries , with an increased emphasis on music, first flourished in the 1820s, eventually developing into a form of operetta in such works as Jacques Offenbach 's 1874 Le Voyage dans la lune . Most popular of all were vaudeville-féeries , written by vaudeville playwrights and featuring more songs and jokes than other productions did. This style became so widespread that by
9027-522: The 1st-century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics, Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that emulated and improved on classical forms. His major feat of engineering was building the dome of Florence Cathedral . Another building demonstrating this style is the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua , built by Alberti. The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance
9180-675: The Anglophone literary critics. An archaic spelling for the term is phantasy . Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these can occur in fantasy. In popular culture , the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that emulate Earth, but with a sense of otherness. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians from ancient myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Many works of fantasy use magic or other supernatural elements as
9333-462: The Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art. However, this does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred specifically in Italy in the 14th century. The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of
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#17330859151499486-710: The Convent of San Donato in Scopeto in Florence. The Renaissance was certainly underway before Lorenzo de' Medici came to power – indeed, before the Medici family itself achieved hegemony in Florentine society. In some ways, Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy but a method of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode, which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, Renaissance humanists would study ancient texts in their original languages and appraise them through
9639-585: The Golden River (1841), the history of modern fantasy literature is usually said to begin with George MacDonald , the Scottish author of such novels as Phantastes (1858) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872); the former is widely considered to be the first fantasy novel ever written for adults. MacDonald was a major influence on both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis . The other major fantasy author of this era
9792-440: The Greek phase of Renaissance humanism was under way, as Western European scholars turned to recovering ancient Greek literary, historical, oratorical and theological texts. Unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. Ancient Greek works on science, mathematics, and philosophy had been studied since
9945-741: The Islamic steps of Ibn Khaldun . Pico della Mirandola wrote the "manifesto" of the Renaissance, the Oration on the Dignity of Man , a vibrant defence of thinking. Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475), another humanist, is most known for his work Della vita civile ("On Civic Life"; printed 1528), which advocated civic humanism , and for his influence in refining the Tuscan vernacular to the same level as Latin. Palmieri drew on Roman philosophers and theorists, especially Cicero , who, like Palmieri, lived an active public life as
10098-589: The RPG products sold in 2005. The science fantasy role-playing game series Final Fantasy has been an icon of the role-playing video game genre (as of 2012 it was still among the top ten best-selling video game franchises ). The first collectible card game , Magic: The Gathering , has a fantasy theme and is similarly dominant in the industry. Fantasy encompasses numerous subgenres characterized by particular themes or settings, or by an overlap with other literary genres or forms of speculative fiction. They include
10251-468: The Reformation and Counter-Reformation clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive shift in focus from Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences (botany, anatomy, and medicine). The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements. Some view this as a " scientific revolution ", heralding
10404-618: The Renaissance began in Italy, and why it began when it did. Accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. Peter Rietbergen posits that various influential Proto-Renaissance movements started from roughly 1300 onwards across many regions of Europe . In stark contrast to the High Middle Ages , when Latin scholars focused almost entirely on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural science, philosophy and mathematics, Renaissance scholars were most interested in recovering and studying Latin and Greek literary, historical, and oratorical texts. Broadly speaking, this began in
10557-421: The Renaissance has close similarities to both, especially the late and early sub-periods of either. The Renaissance began in Florence , one of the many states of Italy . Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors, including Florence's social and civic peculiarities at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family,
10710-559: The Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence , then spread to the rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term rinascita ("rebirth") first appeared in Lives of the Artists ( c. 1550 ) by Giorgio Vasari , while the corresponding French word renaissance was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s. The Renaissance's intellectual basis
10863-676: The Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson , and the Harry Potter films, two of the highest-grossing film series in cinematic history. Fantasy role-playing games cross several different media. Dungeons & Dragons was the first tabletop role-playing game and remains the most successful and influential. According to a 1999 survey in the United States , 6% of 12- to 35-year-olds have played role-playing games. Of those who play regularly, two thirds play D&D . Products branded Dungeons & Dragons made up over fifty percent of
11016-470: The Supernatural in the 1890s and 1920s , Lizzie Harris McCormick, Jennifer Mitchell, and Rebecca Soares describe how the social climate in the 1890s and 1920s allowed for a new era of "fantastic" literature to grow. Women were finally exploring the new freedoms given to them and were quickly becoming equals in society. The fear of the new women in society, paired with their growing roles, allowed them to create
11169-418: The West. It was in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century , who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences, philosophy, and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts. In the revival of neoplatonism , Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity ; on
11322-458: The above factors. The plague was carried by fleas on sailing vessels returning from the ports of Asia, spreading quickly due to lack of proper sanitation: the population of England , then about 4.2 million, lost 1.4 million people to the bubonic plague . Florence's population was nearly halved in the year 1347. As a result of the decimation in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer
11475-417: The action which goes who knows where; but what does it matter! The dazzling of the eyes is enough to make for an agreeable evening. The popularity of the féerie had its first peak in the 1850s; by the end of the decade, around the time of Les Bibelots du diable , the focus had shifted from the fairy-tale plot to extravaganza on its own terms. Siraudin and Delacour's 1856 satire La Queue de la poêle parodied
11628-433: The actor César Ribié, follows the quest of a lovesick hero, Guzman, to save his lover Leonora from the hands of a villainous rival. With the help of a magic talisman (the mutton foot of the title) and under the watch of a fairy who espouses the value of virtue and duty, Guzman braves his way through a series of spectacular trials, spiced with music, ballet, and duels. Thanks to stage machinery, magical events flow freely through
11781-416: The affections of the ingenue, and a lazy valet obsessed with eating. The supernatural forces in the plot drove these characters through fantastic landscapes and multiple adventures, typically involving magic talismans used to transform people, things, and places. The apotheosis reunited the lovers to dazzling effect. The féerie can trace its origins to the ballet de cour ("court ballet") tradition of
11934-505: The air of uncertainty in its narratives as described by Todorov. Jackson also introduces the idea of reading the fantastic through a psychoanalytical lens, referring primarily to Freud's theory of the unconscious, which she believes is integral to understanding the fantastic's connection to the human psyche. There are however additional ways to view the fantastic, and often these differing perspectives come from differing social climates. In their introduction to The Female Fantastic: Gender and
12087-476: The arch on a monumental. Renaissance vaults do not have ribs; they are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault, which is frequently rectangular. Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220 – c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible. His Annunciation , from
12240-438: The author uses worldbuilding to create characters, situations, and settings that may not be possible in reality. Many fantasy authors use real-world folklore and mythology as inspiration; and although another defining characteristic of the fantasy genre is the inclusion of supernatural elements, such as magic, this does not have to be the case. Fantasy has often been compared to science fiction and horror because they are
12393-589: The beginning of a popular trend for plots featuring romances between mortals and supernatural beings; it tells the balletic, often aquatic love story of the water nymph Ondine, who obtains a soul by falling in love with a mortal. Technical advances in stage machinery were quickly woven into new féerie productions: gas lighting , installed in most major Paris theaters by the late 1830s, allowed for more realistic set designs and various atmospheric effects, with limelight becoming especially useful to simulate sunbeams and moonbeams. Similarly, Louis Daguerre 's invention of
12546-692: The beginning of the modern age, others as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the ancient world to the present day. Significant scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei , Tycho Brahe , and Johannes Kepler . Copernicus, in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ( On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ), posited that the Earth moved around the Sun. De humani corporis fabrica ( On
12699-469: The center of a cultural rebirth, were linked to the Ottoman Empire , whose conquests led to the migration of Greek scholars to Italian cities. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity. Muslim logicians, most notably Avicenna and Averroes , had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and
12852-580: The central Indian principles of political science . Chinese traditions have been particularly influential in the vein of fantasy known as Chinoiserie , including such writers as Ernest Bramah and Barry Hughart . Beowulf is among the best known of the Old English tales in the English speaking world, and has had deep influence on the fantasy genre; several fantasy works have retold the tale, such as John Gardner 's Grendel . Norse mythology , as found in
13005-631: The circular effect that all fantasy works, even the later The Lord of the Rings , were therefore classified as children's literature . Political and social trends can affect a society's reception towards fantasy. In the early 20th century, the New Culture Movement 's enthusiasm for Westernization and science in China compelled them to condemn the fantastical shenmo genre of traditional Chinese literature. The spells and magical creatures of these novels were viewed as superstitious and backward, products of
13158-495: The contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. But a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for
13311-646: The convention. The first WFC was held in 1975 and it has occurred every year since. The convention is held at a different city each year. Additionally, many science fiction conventions, such as Florida's FX Show and MegaCon , cater to fantasy and horror fans. Anime conventions, such as Ohayocon or Anime Expo frequently feature showings of fantasy, science fantasy, and dark fantasy series and films, such as Majutsushi Orphen (fantasy), Sailor Moon (urban fantasy), Berserk (dark fantasy), and Spirited Away (fantasy). Many science fiction/fantasy and anime conventions also strongly feature or cater to one or more of
13464-529: The conventions of the genre, much as Frédérick Lemaître had done to melodrama in his version of L'Auberge des Adrets . Though seen as somewhat old-fashioned during the 1860s, the genre saw a second surge in popularity from 1871 through the 1890s, in which ever more lavish versions of the genre's classics were mounted. In his 1885 dictionary of theatre arts, Arthur Pougin noted that "audiences always show up in great numbers to any [ féerie ] on offer, because they adore this truly magical entertainment", and praised
13617-435: The demands of the féerie , and flourished with the genre under the direction of Marc Fournier. The term féerie began as an adjective, used together with more established descriptive terms to advertise a production's genre. Many of the first féeries were advertised as mélodrame-féeries ("fairy melodrama"; half of all féeries presented between 1800 and 1810 were so described), a description which fell out of favor during
13770-469: The difference of critical traditions of each country have led to controversies such as the one led by Stanislaw Lem . Rosemary Jackson builds onto and challenges as well Todorov's definition of the fantastic in her 1981 nonfiction book Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion . Jackson rejects the notion of the fantastic genre as a simple vessel for wish fulfillment that transcends human reality in worlds presented as superior to our own, instead positing that
13923-522: The early 19th century and became immensely popular in France throughout the nineteenth century, influencing the development of burlesque , musical comedy and film . Féeries used a fairy-tale aesthetic to combine theatre with music, dances, mime, acrobatics, and especially spectacular visual effects created by innovative stage machinery, such as trap doors , smoke machines , and quickly changeable sets. Songs always appeared, usually featuring new lyrics to familiar melodies. Transformation scenes, in which
14076-492: The existence of these extremes, féeries made them unabashedly literal by embodying them as witches, gnomes, and other supernatural creatures. The clear moral tone was heightened by the dialogue, which often included maxims about love, duty, virtue, and similar topics. A full-length féerie often ran for several hours. Four human characters reliably appeared among the supernatural forces: two young lovers (an ingenue and her heroic suitor), an often comical and grotesque rival for
14229-461: The fantastic is a liminal space , characterized by the intrusion of supernatural elements into the realistic framework of a story, accompanied by uncertainty about their existence. However, this precise definition is not the predominant one in English critical literature, and the French term fantastique is used to differentiate the French concept from the broader English term of fantastic, synonym of fantasy. The restrictive definition of Todorov and
14382-429: The fantastic represents the unspoken desire for greater societal change. Jackson criticizes Todorov's theory as being too limited in scope, examining only the literary function of the fantastic, and expands his structuralist theory to fit a more cultural study of the genre—which, incidentally, she proposes is not a genre at all, but a mode that draws upon literary elements of both realistic and supernatural fiction to create
14535-554: The fantasy publisher Tor Books , men outnumber women by 67% to 33% among writers of historical, epic or high fantasy. But among writers of urban fantasy or paranormal romance, 57% are women and 43% are men. Fantasy is studied in a number of disciplines including English and other language studies, cultural studies , comparative literature , history and medieval studies . Some works make political, historical and literary connections between medievalism and popular culture. French literature theorists as Tzvetan Todorov argues that
14688-530: The first time since late antiquity. This new engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus , helped pave the way for the Reformation . Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture of Nicola Pisano , Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray
14841-536: The first time, women started to possess more masculine or queer qualities without it becoming as much of an issue. The fantastic during this time period reflects these new ideas by breaking parallel boundaries in the supernatural. The fantastic breaks this boundary by having the readers never truly know whether or not the story is supernatural. Renaissance The Renaissance ( UK : / r ɪ ˈ n eɪ s ən s / rin- AY -sənss , US : / ˈ r ɛ n ə s ɑː n s / REN -ə-sahnss )
14994-526: The following: In her 2008 book Rhetorics of Fantasy , Farah Mendlesohn proposes the following taxonomy of fantasy, as "determined by the means by which the fantastic enters the narrated world", while noting that there are fantasies that fit none of the patterns: Publishers, editors, authors, artists, and scholars with interest in the fantasy genre get together yearly at the World Fantasy Convention . The World Fantasy Awards are presented at
15147-493: The féerie to the poetic imagination! The plots of féeries were usually borrowed from fairy tales in the French tradition, such as those by Charles Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy ; other féeries borrowed from outside sources such as the One Thousand and One Nights , or created original plots. Like melodramas, the form féeries involved a stirring battle between forces of good and evil. However, where melodrama merely suggested
15300-528: The genre is inseparable from real life, particularly the social and cultural contexts within which each work of the fantastic is produced. She writes that the "unreal" elements of fantastic literature are created only in direct contrast to the boundaries set by its time period's "cultural order", acting to illuminate the unseen limitations of said boundaries by undoing and recompiling the very structures which define society into something "strange" and "apparently new". In subverting these societal norms, Jackson claims,
15453-629: The genre's popularity. The popularity of the fantasy genre has continued to increase in the 21st century, as evidenced by the best-selling status of J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series, Robert Jordan 's The Wheel of Time series, George R. R. Martin 's Song of Ice and Fire series, Steven Erikson 's Malazan Book of the Fallen sweeping epic, Brandon Sanderson 's The Stormlight Archive series and Mistborn series, and A. Sapkowski 's The Witcher saga. Several fantasy film adaptations have achieved blockbuster status, most notably The Lord of
15606-437: The genre, however, remained Méliès, who designed many of his major films as féeries and whose work as a whole is intensely suffused with the genre's influence. Jacques Demy 's 1970 film Peau d'Âne also shows a strong féerie influence, using elements of the féerie of the same name by Emile Vanderburch, Evrard Laurencin, and Charles Clairville. With its explorations into ways of integrating spectacle, comedy, and music in
15759-645: The greatest transmissions of ideas in history. The movement to reintegrate the regular study of Greek literary, historical, oratorical, and theological texts back into the Western European curriculum is usually dated to the 1396 invitation from Coluccio Salutati to the Byzantine diplomat and scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415) to teach Greek in Florence. This legacy was continued by a number of expatriate Greek scholars, from Basilios Bessarion to Leo Allatius . The unique political structures of Italy during
15912-438: The height of the epidemic due to the chaotic conditions in the city, but a small group of officials was appointed to conduct the affairs of the city, which ensured continuity of government. It has long been a matter of debate why the Renaissance began in Florence , and not elsewhere in Italy. Scholars have noted several features unique to Florentine cultural life that may have caused such a cultural movement. Many have emphasized
16065-414: The human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers , most famously Niccolò Machiavelli , sought to describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally. A critical contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote De hominis dignitate ( Oration on the Dignity of Man , 1486),
16218-477: The humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art. Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of antiquity , while the fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek , many of which had fallen into obscurity in
16371-423: The immensely successful féerie Les Pilules du diable could be performed as a purely mimed production, so that no spoken words would distract the audience from the spectacle they had come to enjoy. The total effect was one of a dazzling, dreamlike array of visuals, harkening back to fairy-tale traditions and a childlike sense of wonder through the use of innovative stage technology. In a review of The Blue Bird ,
16524-493: The immune system, leaving young children without a fighting chance. Children in city dwellings were more affected by the spread of disease than the children of the wealthy. The Black Death caused greater upheaval to Florence's social and political structure than later epidemics. Despite a significant number of deaths among members of the ruling classes, the government of Florence continued to function during this period. Formal meetings of elected representatives were suspended during
16677-413: The increased need for labor, workers traveled in search of the most favorable position economically. The demographic decline due to the plague had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400. Landholders faced a great loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall. The survivors of the plague found not only that
16830-427: The independent city-republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast unprecedented Commercial Revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance. Historian Leon Poliakov offers a critical view in his seminal study of European racist thought: The Aryan Myth . According to Poliakov, the use of ethnic origin myths are first used by Renaissance humanists "in
16983-522: The initial féeries , the plots remained familiar; in this play, the rich hidalgo Sottinez, madly in love with the ingenue Isabelle, pursues her and her lover Albert through bizarre and spectacular adventures. Les Pilules du diable was widely revived and imitated, and was possibly the most celebrated féerie of all. Later successful féeries included La Biche au bois , La Chatte Blanche , and Peau d'Âne , all of which borrowed heavily from fairy tales and romances while reframing their stories to suit
17136-577: The introduction of modern banking and the field of accounting. The Renaissance period started during the crisis of the Late Middle Ages and conventionally ends by the 1600s with the waning of humanism , and the advents of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation , and in art the Baroque period. It had a different period and characteristics in different regions, such as the Italian Renaissance,
17289-464: The language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome". Above all, humanists asserted "the genius of man ... the unique and extraordinary ability of the human mind". Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early modern period. Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers and applied them in critiques of contemporary government, following
17442-437: The late 13th century, in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto . As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of literary Latin and an explosion of vernacular literatures , beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch ; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering
17595-551: The late 1840s, vaudeville-féeries were known simply as féeries , and their particular tone became the standard across the genre. James Robinson Planché , after seeing a féerie at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin on his honeymoon in 1821, brought the genre to England as the "fairy extravaganza ." He staged some twenty fairy extravaganzas in London between 1836 and 1854. The nineteenth-century pantomime also had strong similarities to
17748-415: The major categories of speculative fiction . Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements. A science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seemingly possible through logical scientific or technological extrapolation, where fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. Authors have to rely on the readers' suspension of disbelief , an acceptance of
17901-502: The modern fantasy genre. Plato used allegories to convey many of his teachings, and early Christian writers interpreted both the Old and New Testaments as employing parables to relay spiritual truths. This ability to find meaning in a story that is not literally true became the foundation that allowed the modern fantasy genre to develop. The most well known fiction from the Islamic world
18054-435: The most in-demand venues for the shows. The Cirque Olympique, formerly an arena used for political and equestrian spectacles, took advantage of its deep stage to present expensively mounted féeries ; it was eventually replaced by a new auditorium built specifically for spectacle, the Théâtre du Châtelet . The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin , originally designed for opera productions, had a stage and machinery well suited to
18207-592: The north and west respectively, and the Venetians to the north east. 15th-century Italy was one of the most urbanized areas in Europe. Many of its cities stood among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings; it seems likely that the classical nature of the Renaissance was linked to its origin in the Roman Empire's heartland. Historian and political philosopher Quentin Skinner points out that Otto of Freising (c. 1114–1158),
18360-444: The play: portraits move, people fly, chaperones transform into guitarists, food disappears. In the end, love conquers all, and the fairy intervenes once more to ensure the triumph of good over evil. Le Pied de mouton was widely successful and frequently revived. It codified the standard form of féeries for the next hundred years: a narrative in which the hero or heroes undergo a series of adventures through spectacular scenes, with
18513-419: The prevailing cultural conditions at the time. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was the catalyst for an enormous amount of arts patronage, encouraging his countrymen to commission works from the leading artists of Florence, including Leonardo da Vinci , Sandro Botticelli , and Michelangelo Buonarroti . Works by Neri di Bicci , Botticelli, Leonardo, and Filippino Lippi had been commissioned additionally by
18666-459: The prices of food were cheaper but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives. The spread of disease was significantly more rampant in areas of poverty. Epidemics ravaged cities, particularly children. Plagues were easily spread by lice, unsanitary drinking water, armies, or by poor sanitation. Children were hit the hardest because many diseases, such as typhus and congenital syphilis , target
18819-412: The qualities of the ideal citizen. The dialogues include ideas about how children develop mentally and physically, how citizens can conduct themselves morally, how citizens and states can ensure probity in public life, and an important debate on the difference between that which is pragmatically useful and that which is honest. The humanists believed that it is important to transcend to the afterlife with
18972-544: The role played by the Medici , a banking family and later ducal ruling house , in patronizing and stimulating the arts. Some historians have postulated that Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance as a result of luck, i.e., because " Great Men " were born there by chance: Leonardo, Botticelli and Michelangelo were all born in Tuscany . Arguing that such chance seems improbable, other historians have contended that these "Great Men" were only able to rise to prominence because of
19125-522: The same time". Even cities and states beyond central Italy, such as the Republic of Florence at this time, were also notable for their merchant republics , especially the Republic of Venice. Although in practice these were oligarchical , and bore little resemblance to a modern democracy , they did have democratic features and were responsive states, with forms of participation in governance and belief in liberty. The relative political freedom they afforded
19278-454: The secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity and through novel approaches to thought. Political philosopher Hans Kohn describes it as an age where "Men looked for new foundations"; some like Erasmus and Thomas More envisioned new reformed spiritual foundations, others. in the words of Machiavelli , una lunga sperienza delle cose moderne ed una continua lezione delle antiche (a long experience with modern life and
19431-407: The service of a new born chauvinism". Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had their origin in Florence at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, in particular with the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374), as well as the paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337). Some writers date the Renaissance quite precisely; one proposed starting point
19584-467: The sets often "magically" transforming in view of the audience. Scholars continue to cite it as a quintessential example of the genre. The féerie , once established, quickly flourished; between 1800 and 1820 alone, some sixty féeries were produced. An 1826 " mélodrame féerie " at the Porte Saint-Martin, Le Monstre et le magicien , struck new ground not only thematically—it had a Gothic edge and
19737-458: The several subcultures within the main subcultures, including the cosplay subculture (in which people make or wear costumes based on existing or self-created characters, sometimes also acting out skits or plays as well), the fan fiction subculture, and the fan video or AMV subculture, as well as the large internet subculture devoted to reading and writing prose fiction or doujinshi in or related to those genres. According to 2013 statistics by
19890-465: The social structure to emerge. The fantastic is never purely supernatural, nor can the supernatural be ruled out. Just as women were not equal yet, but they were not completely oppressed. The Female Fantastic seeks to enforce this idea that nothing is certain in the fantastic nor the gender roles of the 1920s. Many women in this time period began to blur the lines between the genders, removing the binary out of gender and allowing for many interpretations. For
20043-413: The spectacle and stage effects, were far more prominent than the plot. The critic Francisque Sarcey suggested that for a féerie , the crew in charge of design and stagecraft should be regarded as more important than the writers, noting that the scripts themselves were so incoherent that "one can put the beginning at the end, and vice versa." Théophile Gautier even suggested, with considerable irony, that
20196-541: The tastes of the day. The popular playwright Adolphe d'Ennery had a hit at the Gaîté in 1844 with Les Sept Châteaux du diable , a morality play -like fantasy in which a pair of young couples face temptations in castles representing the Seven Deadly Sins ; among d'Ennery's other féerie s is the similarly moral Rothomago (1862). Many successful féeries were the work of the prolific Cogniard brothers; their 1843 adaptation of
20349-459: The theatre, the féerie also influenced the development of burlesque and musical comedy . In recollections of his career making films in the Méliès tradition, Ferdinand Zecca reflected on the genre's power: "It's not in the dramas and the acrobatic films that I put my greatest hope. It was in the féeries." Fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction which involves themes of
20502-494: The unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment, in order to write effective fantasies. Despite both genres' heavy reliance on the supernatural, fantasy and horror are distinguishable from one another. Horror primarily evokes fear through the protagonists' weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. While some elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were a part of literature from its beginning, fantasy elements occur throughout ancient religious texts such as
20655-515: The works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were much imitated by other artists. Other notable artists include Sandro Botticelli , working for the Medici in Florence, Donatello , another Florentine, and Titian in Venice, among others. In the Low Countries , a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed. The work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck
20808-589: Was William Morris , an English poet who wrote several novels in the latter part of the century, including The Wood Beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896). Despite MacDonald's future influence with At the Back of the North Wind (1871), Morris's popularity with his contemporaries, and H. G. Wells 's The Wonderful Visit (1895), it was not until the 20th century that fantasy fiction began to reach
20961-423: Was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity , while social and economic historians, especially of the longue durée , have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras, which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties". The word has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as
21114-530: Was also derived from Verne: the pièce de grand spectacle , an extravagantly lavish production built on a colorful but not fantasy-based plot. The genre was launched with Verne and d'Ennery's smash-hit 1874 dramatization of Around the World in Eighty Days , quickly followed by two further adaptations from the same team, The Children of Captain Grant and Michael Strogoff . The style of the pièce de grand spectacle
21267-477: Was an extension of the Middle Ages. The beginnings of the period—the early Renaissance of the 15th century and the Italian Proto-Renaissance from around 1250 or 1300—overlap considerably with the Late Middle Ages , conventionally dated to c. 1350–1500 , and the Middle Ages themselves were a long period filled with gradual changes, like the modern age; as a transitional period between both,
21420-411: Was based on Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein —but also literally: an English designer, Tomkins, was brought in to install a complex new system of trapdoors in the stage floor. While the trap doors became a staple for féerie effects, the fashion for Gothic fiction onstage subsided by the 1830s. One of Guilbert de Pixérécourt 's most famous works in the genre, Ondine or La Nymphe des Eaux (1830), marks
21573-634: Was conducive to academic and artistic advancement. Likewise, the position of Italian cities such as Venice as great trading centres made them intellectual crossroads. Merchants brought with them ideas from far corners of the globe, particularly the Levant . Venice was Europe's gateway to trade with the East, and a producer of fine glass , while Florence was a capital of textiles. The wealth such business brought to Italy meant large public and private artistic projects could be commissioned and individuals had more leisure time for study. One theory that has been advanced
21726-477: Was considered more acceptable than fantasy intended for adults, with the effect that writers who wished to write fantasy had to fit their work into forms aimed at children. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote fantasy in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys , intended for children, although his works for adults only verged on fantasy. For many years, this and successes such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) created
21879-405: Was formalized as an artistic technique. The development of perspective was part of a wider trend toward realism in the arts. Painters developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci , human anatomy . Underlying these changes in artistic method was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics , with
22032-401: Was founded in 1949, the pulp magazine format was at the height of its popularity, and the magazine was instrumental in bringing fantasy fiction to a wide audience in both the U.S. and Britain. Such magazines were also instrumental in the rise of science fiction, and it was at this time the two genres began to be associated with each other. By 1950, " sword and sorcery " fiction had begun to find
22185-441: Was founded in its version of humanism , derived from the concept of Roman humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy , such as that of Protagoras , who said that "man is the measure of all things". Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe: the first traces appear in Italy as early as
22338-462: Was likewise described by contemporary observers as a féerie , though critics noted that it was a more overtly poetic and intellectual example of the genre than the classic Châtelet productions. From 1875's La Voyage dans la lune onward, some féerie s began to show a trend for incorporating scientific and technological themes into their plots, a novelty due in part to the popularity and influence of Jules Verne's works. A related and very popular genre
22491-490: Was particularly influential on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in representation. Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life. In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient classical buildings. With rediscovered knowledge from
22644-548: Was probably written in the middle of the second half of the eighteenth century BC, preserves a mixture of stories with elements of historical fiction, fantasy, and satire. Egyptian funerary texts preserve mythological tales, the most significant of which are the myths of Osiris and his son Horus . Myth with fantastic elements intended for adults were a major genre of ancient Greek literature . The comedies of Aristophanes are filled with fantastic elements, particularly his play The Birds , in which an Athenian man builds
22797-452: Was smitten. Gustave Flaubert even wrote a full-length féerie , Le Château des cœurs , in 1863, though it was never performed. Jules Verne made his own contribution to the genre in 1881 with Journey Through the Impossible , written in collaboration with Adolphe d'Ennery and featuring themes and characters from Verne's well-known novels. Maurice Maeterlinck 's 1908 play The Blue Bird
22950-418: Was so close to the féerie that some critics found the terms interchangeable; Alphonse Daudet called Around the World "the most sumptuous, the most original of all féeries ", while Jules Claretie said he overheard a theatregoer describe the show as La Biche au bois "by locomotive". Eventually, Around the World and Michael Strogoff , both immensely successful, codified the pièce de grand spectacle as
23103-418: Was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica , combining the skills of Bramante , Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno . During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters , and entablatures as an integrated system. The Roman orders types of columns are used: Tuscan and Composite . These can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against
23256-427: Was thought that the classics provided moral instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior. A unique characteristic of some Renaissance libraries is that they were open to the public. These libraries were places where ideas were exchanged and where scholarship and reading were considered both pleasurable and beneficial to the mind and soul. As freethinking was a hallmark of the age, many libraries contained
23409-486: Was widely imitated. In Russia, the concept of fairy-tale spectacle merged with narrative ballet to create the ballet-féerie ("fairy ballet"). This form took its name from the French genre and its dance characteristics from the Italian ballo grande style. It was often considered a lower-class, more commercialized entertainment than traditional ballet; many late-nineteenth-century Russian critics attacked it, describing it as
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