We're nineteen days away from the beginning of the school year! Sorry if that depresses you. It seems as if summer is never long enough. It certainly never seems like time enough to get all of my summer work done. Yes, I work over the summer. I have to make sure that everything is ready to go for the next school year. This blog is a small part of that work. I had intended to write more, but time got away from me. It's funny how time does that.
Actually, time is exactly the subject I wanted to address in this blog post. Time is going to be very important to your success in AP Euro. More precisely, developing a sense of time is very important. Have a sense of when things happened helps us to develop and understand the context in which they happened. For example, looking at a fourteen-foot tall marble statue of naked man who is standing confidently in his lack of clothing may seem a bit strange. But if we understand that this particular statue was created during the High Renaissance, we gain an entirely new perspective on what would otherwise be a very awkward encounter for our modern eyes. During the Renaissance, philosophers and artists known as humanists developed a new confidence in the ability and potential of human beings. For the artists, the idealized human body became an expression of that ability and potential. If we understand that, this statue (If you already haven't guessed, I'm referring to Michelangelo's
David) becomes a very powerful affirmation of the power and confidence of humanity.
Notice that in the example I was able to refer to an era, a range of dates, by a common name, "The Renaissance." This is one of the tools that historians use in order to develop a sense of chronology and to analyze the bigger trends in history. In order to classify a range of dates as an era, there has to be some commonality in the events, culture, or ideology that belong to that period of time. The renewed confidence in human potential is one of the characteristics that define the Renaissance. The Renaissance is just one of the era that we will be studying, our starting point. It overlaps with the next era we will study, the Protestant Reformation.
That leads us to one of the unique features of periodization in history; eras don't necessarily have firm beginning and ending dates, and they don't easily fit next to each other like bricks in a wall. Eras can be messy. They can even be the subject of much debate. The Renaissance is a good example of the messiness of eras. When did it begin? When did it end? Well, that all depends upon you point of view. The early stirrings intellectual Renaissance may have begun as early as 1313, with Dante's
Divine Comedy, or maybe in the middle part of the 1300's with the work of Petrarch. The artistic Renaissance may have its beginnings as early as the late 1200's and Giotto's more naturalistic frescoes. Many art historians prefer to place the beginning of the artistic Renaissance over one hundred years later, when all of the qualities that define Renaissance art finally came together in the works of Masaccio. Did the Renaissance end in 1564 with the death of Michelangelo, or in 1642 with the death of Galileo? That depends upon whether you are answering a question of art or a question of intellect and science. Our course, AP Euro, begins around (c. - circa) 1450, right in the middle of the range of dates that defines the Renaissance.
Periodization helps us to make comparisons between the different eras. We can more effectively develop and answer questions about what has changed over time and what has remained the same. For example, we can analyze the differences in ideas about religious toleration during the Reformation with ideas about religious toleration during the Enlightenment. What were the differences in ideology between the two periods and what may have caused those differences? Of course, we may not always refer to the eras. We may refer to a century, or a range of dates. For example, we may want to examine the relationship between the arts and state power from 1550 to 1700. If we are aware that this is the era of the Baroque in art, the Counter-Reformation in religion, and the era of divine right absolutism in politics, then we might have a better shot at answering this question more effectively. Don't worry if you don't know any of this stuff yet. You will know it later.
So, is chronology important? Yes, yes it is.
