Renaissance The word renaissance means a complete change in modes of art, literature, music, and architecture, as well as an altered sense of morality and ethicality during a given period of time. This change stems from an expansion of thought and with that a new sense of what matters in the world. In literature, the term renaissance means an adoption and adaptation of new rules with regard to form, function, and subject matter stemming from a former period of relative disenchantment. The British Renaissance, American Renaissance, and Harlem Renaissance were all the direct results of a lack of representation or aesthetic wherein the rules of art changed to accommodate and celebrate the works of the authors within that historical moment.

During the British Renaissance, there was a complete alteration in how artists, from whatever media, chose to represent themselves. One such new form was the sonnet, wherein the writer was given certain parameters with which to write a poem. The subject matter was almost always love and the poet's endeavor was to make the reader believe that they were miserably suffering from the pangs of love. Either the sonnet was directed at some metaphysical Beloved without true presence or the topic was about love in a more general sense. Shakespeare's...

In "Sonnet 116" the narrator of the poem is defining the parameters of love and how the lover must accept the Beloved as they are, even with their faults and to remain steadfastly devoted even when the loved one has begun to age. "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds" (lines 2-3). "Sonnet 73" makes a similar case, that life is fleeting and as one changes from the able-bodied youth into a more dependent elder, true love will not abandon the Beloved.
The American Renaissance grew from a similar determination to alter the accepted parameters of what literature and art should be. Poet Emily Dickinson's works were all writings which she would create for nothing more than personal gratification and to show family and friends. They were never intended for publication, which allowed for a greater sense of intimacy and a lack of compunction to alter any ideas or emotions in order to sell a product. In her poem "303," Dickinson writes about the dangers of individuality and the need to fight for a person's sense of self. She writes, "The soul selects her own Society - / Then -- shuts the Door - / To her divine Majority" (lines 1-3). Writing in the 1800s during an oppressive highly patriarchal society,…