Renaissance scholarship in America has flourished within- creasing tempo ever since the influx of materials for study began to accumulate in American libraries following the cessation of the first world war in 1918. Only in the nineteen-thirties, however, did Renaissance scholars begin to feel the need for a synthesis of departmentalized researches which the medievalists in this country felt in the early nineteen-twenties. In part this feeling was produced by the growing volume and significance of Renaissance studies in this country, but it certainly also owed its existence to the widespread efforts to redefine the nature and extent of the period itself. The popular myth that the Renaissance was the revival of light and joy after the bleak darkness of the Middle Ages was exploded by the better understanding of the great achievements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.