Reflections on ＂Imitatio＂ as an Educational Ideal of English Humanism

Abstract

In order to discuss the educational ideals of English Humanism, we need to begin by, first, examining the meaning and concerns related to the term "Humanism." Subjected to copious definitions, Humanism can most readily be grasped as a system of education during the Renaissance, which curriculum was the adaptation of newly discovered or revived classical learning by means of rote, precept, and exercise, the covering term for which was "imitation." The Humanists' absorption with classical learning, however, was more than mere transmission and establishment of classical texts but rather embraces a new/renewed mode of perception, one that is defined by its belief in the revolutionary possibility of change. With the acceptance of the belief that individuals are changeable by deliberate human action, the humanists proposed to educate the "best" people in order to provide the nation with effective statesmen, advisors, and leaders by nurturing their intellectual and moral faculties, which in turn, they believed, would ensure that they would work for the common good. Central, then, to the educational ideals of sixteenth-century humanists is the Renaissance theory of "imitation." For the humanists, classical texts not only offered the possibility of fashioning the self and society but also the pattern or paradigm after which that fashioning should take place. Moved by a genuine desire to recapture the qualities they admired in antiquity, the humanists were also motivated to imitate. Thus, inspired by the knowledge of the classical period, the humanists proposed a solution for political and social problems through their mode of education based on the theory of "imitation."