1、ABSTRACTEducation was of central interest to the Renaissance humanists. Different from the Medieval education, the purpose of Renaissance education was to act, rather than to meditate. This brings forward the question of womens learning in this great historical change, since that purpose seems contr
2、adictory to womens virtue at that time, which was chaste, silent, and subservient. Humanists resolved this problem in such a way as to limit education to limited number of women, and the limitation was strict. Latin was taught, but rhetoric was not; noblewomen and upper-classed received the educatio
3、n, but as an ornament rather than to learnt to assert themselves. Despite these restrictions, Renaissance did see burgeoning learned women and they had their works publish, only that they were celebrated as exceptions to the rule.Key words: Renaissance, womens education, restrictions, notion of wome
4、nThe term Renaissance derives in part from the success of Jakob Burckhardts book, The Civilization of the Renaissance. The original meaning of this term is “rebirth”, for the artists and intellectuals at that time asserted to revive the virtues of the antiquity. Later, its meaning has extended, as e
5、verlasting terms requires elasticity. “Nowadays, it conveys, to say the least, a general notion of artistic creativity, of extraordinary zest for life and knowledge of spectacular individual achievement,” （Mack, p. 1200） thus extending beyond the literal meaning of rebirth and the strict ideal of a
6、revival and imitation of antiquity. During the Middle Ages, Western society and education were heavily shaped by Christianity, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. The schools at that time were primarily attended by persons planning to enter religious life such as priests, monks, or nuns. The vas
7、t majority of people were serfs who served as agricultural workers on the estates of feudal lords. The serfs, who did not attend school, were generally illiterate.Various were the reasons why people began to actively pursue knowledge during the Renaissance. Economically speaking, the burgeoning bour
8、geoisie class demanded a say in the political field. So huge was the obstacle of being illiterate that they found it necessary to be educated. Besides, the gradual decline of religious influence also catalyzed the demand. The corruptions of the churchmen set people to find real interpretation and un
9、derstanding of the Bible by their own. Moreover, the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century made books more widely available and increased literacy rates. The technological development, as well as this yearning for knowledge and individual achievement prospered the institution of ed
10、ucation.This social development is so delighting and overwhelming that most people hold the belief that mens cultivation is mankinds cultivation; however, some others doubt the meaning of Renaissance for women. John Kelly, in her article “Did Women Have a Renaissance”, pungently pointed out “yet pre
11、cisely these developments affected women adversely, so much so that there was no renaissance for women - at least, during the Renaissance.” （Kelly, p. 19） Kelly noted that compared with women in the Medieval, during the Renaissance, noblewomen, were increasingly removed from public concerns-economic
12、, political, and cultural - although they did not disappear into a private realm of family and domestic concerns as fully as their sisters in the patrician bourgeoisie. Hence, their loss of public power made it felt in new constraints placed upon their personal as well as their social livesThis pape
13、r does not go so far as to question the accepted scheme of historical periodization. In other words, it recognizes the existence of Renaissance, for both men and women. The purpose here is to take womens education during the Renaissance as a starting point, and to investigate into “the widely held n
14、otion of the equality of Renaissance women with men.” （Kelly, p. 20） First, a holistic view will be taken about the Renaissance womens education, with comparison with the Medieval. The second focus on the womens education during the Renaissance, mainly dealing with such questions as what were taught
15、, and the intended purpose of this education. In this part, we will have a closer view of Renaissance, by studying Desiderius Erasmus, a renowned Renaissance scholars thoughts and works. “There is agreement among scholars that this difference in moment and approach to the education of boys and girls
16、 can be explained in light of Erasmus （and by extension the humanists） views on the purpose of education.” （Rummel, pp. 8-9） As Erasmus produced works that are esteemed as literary canon, such as The Praise of Folly, womens image will be examined in these canons, to glimpse at the question that whet
17、her these are canons for women. The last part concerns the product of the education, that is, the learned women. We will have a try to probe the life of some women writers - or, to be more specific, of those women whose works have survived during the Renaissance.During the Medieval period, as pointe
18、d out earlier, education was religiously oriented. While the majority of the people were illiterate, fewer women than men received education and they were nuns. The church provided some limited opportunities for the education of women in religious communities or convents. Convents had libraries and
19、schools to help prepare nuns to follow the religious rules of their communities. Besides the nuns who were educated, there were another group of women in the Middle Ages who could afford education, the noblewomen. It was not a rarity that young noblewomen were able to read and write. In Lex Saxonum,
20、 a law in the eighth century, it illustrated what women were allowed to inherit: Psalms of the Bible and other readings facilitating women to go to the church. （Bumke, p.424）As the Middle Ages progressed into the Renaissance, womens education changed. If more women were able to be educated, the prop
21、ortion of educated women declined. As the Middle Ages and the Renaissance covered different periods of time over a wide range of countries, it is difficult to conclude a demographic change from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. What is definite is the Black Death almost ended the Middle Ages and e
22、nded nearly half of the European population. The ensuing Renaissance probably saw an increase in population, although how large the increase was remains question. Anyway, one feature to differentiate the Renaissance from the Medieval times is the growing secular culture and the declining of Christia
23、nity. （Xu, p. 169） This unavoidably affected the nuns education, the number of which decreased. This influence might affect less on noblewomen, but the education of them and the rising bourgeoisie women was no better for other reasons. Take women of the middle class for example. Scholar William Mont
24、er shows, in his essay “Protestant Wives, Catholic Saints, and the Devils handmaid: Women in the Age of the Reformations,” how these extremely classical ideas （from the classical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans） about women when combined with the Religious Reformation increased the value o
25、f women in the domestic realm and saw their role as mothers and wives become extremely important, almost to the exclusion of any other roles. （Monter, pp. 203-219） The exclusion partly resulted from the deprivation of education on the one hand, and on the other, worsened the deprivation. It was beca
26、use more occupations required a certain or even university education, to which most women were denied access. For those jobs that did not require specific education, men began to define their jobs, as the provinces of men only. As the number of available jobs for women decreased, eventually more wom
27、en began competing for fewer jobs, usually domestic in nature, effectively keeping their wages low. Eventually work associated with women and the domestic arena became devalued in and of itself in relation to mens work. The less important women were in peoples eyes, the less necessity people saw in
28、womens education. Women lost more rights, or gained fewer rights, as the historical face of Europe changed from the Medieval to the Renaissance. Although, the proportion of educated women decreased, hopefully and probably the bulk of educated women increased with the bigger population. The womens ed
29、ucation during the Renaissance seems dismaying, statistically or proportionately speaking; however, more information is needed to understand the real situation of it. Are the contents of womens education the same in the course of time? Advocates of womens rights in both the nineteenth and the twenti
30、eth centuries made equal access for women to educational institutions one of their key demands. Only Through education, they argued, could women become knowledgeable citizens or enter careers in which they would be economically independent; they regarded education as inseparable from political and e
31、conomic rights. The Renaissance period also saw numerous calls for the improvement of womens education, but the lines of argument were very different. “Learning, by the advocates of womens education, meant training in classical languages, philosophy, the sciences, theology, and history, was primaril
32、y for a womans individual fulfillment or to make her a better Christian; it was not linked with political or vocational aims.” （Wiesner, pp117-118）Throughout the Middle Ages, the subject of education for women, was a hotly debated issue. As education was directly connected with the church it was inevitable that the churchs views of women should have led predominated. St. Thomas of Aquinas, 1225-1274, who was perhaps one of the great teachers of the period declared what was clearly a widely supported notion regarding women: “The woman is subject t
