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The purpose of this sketch is to locate a movement which has had a significant influence on a number of disciplines since the 1970s, the movement known as Postmodernism.

It is customary to break up the history of western thought into a number of ages. While it is broadly agreed that there are several ages, there is no agreement on the exact boundaries (they can differ by centuries, particularly when it comes to the distant past) and there is a difference in nomenclature. But here is a rough guide.

(1) The Ancient World: This covers the period from 10th century BC to about 500 AD and picks us the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, notably Babylon and Egypt, the ascendancy of the early Roman Empire with its contribution to military logistics, infrastructure construction, and administrative law and practice, and the Hellenic Period, roughly the 5th century BC to 300 AD, which is the period of the flourishing of Greek intellectual life, particularly in philosophy, logic, and geometry. It was during the latter part of this period that history emerged as a discipline, notably in Rome, but also in Greece.

(2) The Medieval World: This covers the period from approximately 500 AD to the 15th century AD. Once called ‘the Dark Ages’ with the implication that nothing of intellectual significance happened in the west between the end of the Hellenic Period and the Renaissance, this description has fallen into disuse as our knowledge of the period has grown. It encompasses inter alia the birth of Islam in the 8th century AD, the birth and growth of the Ottoman Empire – a Turkish Muslim empire centred on Istanbul (the ancient city of Constantinople) - from the 14th century, and lasting in some form or other until the 20th century It also includes the Crusades, in which the Christian Church, in the first instance under the aegis of the papacy, endeavoured to recover the Holy Places of Palestine from Muslim occupation. While the Crusades ended, unsuccessfully from a Christian point of view, in 1291, with the final expulsion of the Christian west from Palestine, there was a huge legacy in East-West trade and commerce, which included as a by-product the transmission of much Eastern knowledge and culture to the west. It also included the birth of the southern English dialect as the literary language of England, with the publication of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in the 14th century. During this entire period Latin remained the universally dominant intellectual language of the west. So it can be seen that this Age was far from ‘Dark’.

(3) The Renaissance: This period begins in the 14th century and runs through the 16th century; the ‘High Renaissance’ was the period 1500 – 1520 in which the Italian artists Leonardo da Vince, Raphael and Michelangelo took the classical artistic concepts of balance and harmony to a new peak. Broadly speaking, the Renaissance encompasses inter alia not just the events generally included under that name, but also the Reformation. The Renaissance (French for ‘rebirth’) was a movement, centred originally and p本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。