Dude I thought you said you where a geek. The renaissance is highlighted by new learning, development of infrastructure, more attention to the arts and reading. The printing press for example was developed during the renaissance. Also during the renaissance the nation state developed. The middle ages where nothing like this. There was a general lack of learning and infrastructure. Far more war and feudalism. Loyalty to a person and not a nation state. Now the renaissance came after the middle ages and the dividing line between the two is difficult to draw. Many people draw it with columbus discovering the new world circa 1492. Me I personally draw it with Martin Luther's reformation starting around 1530.

Renaiissance is supposed to start after the Battle of Bosworth field ( defeat of Richard lll )This was the House of York over the House of Lancaster. Henry Vll (YORK) married Elizabeth of Lancaster therebye uniting the two Houses and ending the War of the Roses This began the Tudor era in 1485 through the 16th century Middle Ages was obviously earlier Time of the Norman Conquest through to the late 15th century. Of course it is up for debate you may have meant art and literature

Simple. The Renaissance Period came after the Middle Ages. It was characterized by movements which were fully against the movements (of culture, art, education, etc.) created and propagated during the Medieval Period (also known as the Middle Ages). This aforementioned Middle Ages was, on the contrary, characterized by strictness and rigidity when it comes to religion, moral values, culture, education, and the like. Thus, an uproar came about, and the the rule of absolute, downright, strict morality and adherence to the Church became totally unfounded; and so, people began creating an age of Neo-Humanism and Neo-Classicism - with a great disposition towards creating a culture that's being influenced by the 6 HUMANITIES, namely: Painting, Sculpture, Music, Literature, Architecture and Landscaping. This humane culture then became a factor which made the Renaissance a period for utmost liberal education, as well as the "return" to and the "rebirth" of the Greek Classical Ages of art, poetry and humanistic values. Renaissance, then, simply means the above quoted words....

The "Middle Ages" began with the fall of the Roman Empire (about AD 500), and lasted around 1000 years. The first half of this period is also called the "Dark Ages." The Renaissance was basically what ended the "Middle Ages" around the fifteen century. And it was after that when people started calling the earlier period the "Middle Ages." The adjective is "medieval" (middle era). They saw the early centuries as glorious, and the current renaissance as glorious. That 1000 years of muddy darkness was called the "middle ages" between the two grand periods.

multi-tasking

The middle ages, sometimes also refered to as "The Dark Ages" was a period of feudalism and unrest directly after the fall of the Roman Empire, when there was no definde leadership to keep things in line, and so the Lords began to fight over land and th only real rule was by an unsteady sort of monarchy, wereby the lords ruled over a populouse mainly comprised of serfs who had been stripped of their rights. The Renaissance was the period of enlightenment, art and learning directly after the Dark Ages, when things settled down a bit and people focused more upon the arts and sholarship. I swear, I know this stuff, and I dropped out of second grade. How can you not?

I'd like to offer some counter-point to the progressivist doctrine that the Middle Ages were a "dark age." The Middle Ages were not all bad. Consider that the latter days of the Roman Empire were characterized by a widespread dependence upon slavery, which, setting aside the humanitarian issues, stifled technological progress. Who wants to develop better and more efficient ways to till the ground or build structures when you have slaves to do all that grunt work for you? In contrast, the Middle Ages saw the invention of new technologies, perhaps the most significance of which was a more effective plow, which opened much of northwestern Europe to agriculture. Also in the realm of agriculture was the three-field planting system, which increased the productivity of farmland and added more protein-filled legumes to the European diet. Improvements in smiths' furnaces made iron production and smithing a local affair rather than one depending on the relatively inefficient distribution mechanisms of the Empire. Mill technology also improved; the typical Roman mill produced only 1/2 horsepower, but by the middle of the Medieval period, there were mills producing upward of 30 hp. Now, it is true that literacy rates declined sharply in the Middle Ages, but they did rise gradually throughout until the Renaissance began. After all, the Renaissance did not erupt spontaneously from a dark age--it was the product of the growth that had occurred throughout the age that preceeded it. Anyway, culturally and socially, the Middle Ages left much to be desired, but there were still many significant advances in philosophy, technology, political science, art, and literature that should not be discounted.

Hard 2 believe no one has mentioned the fact that the Medieval or "Dark Ages" were ushered in by the plague also known as the "Black Death." Many of the educated and or medical specialists perished early due to prolonged exposure 2 the disease(s)causing a downward spiral in culture. The Renaissance was ushered in by the Humanist perspectives and values which revived the classic Greek ideas of Art, Philosophy, Poetry, Architecture.... Blah Blah Blah.

The Middle Age art was usually based on religious figures and Renissance art was usually based on people in the natural world.

The answer is either (a) Nothing - they're the same thing/period, or (b) The Middle Ages happened, the Renaissance did not. Ren-scholars around the world pretty much came to the conclusion 15-20 years ago that the Renaissance never happened. Intellectually, philosophically, culturally, theologically, politically, there is no break or even transition throughout the Medieval period. It's been 80 years since Haskins first published "The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century." When scholars started talking about "the Carolingian Renaissance" (8th-9th cent.) historians started realizing their categories were off. The idea of a "Renaissance" owes itself to the Italian patriotism and anti-Germanism of Petrarch, who decided that the German tribes -- rather than being the people who actually saved the people of the western Roman empire from outrageous despotism, super-taxation, oppression, and the legal cofinement of every last man in the trade or occupation of his father, permitting no social mobility -- were nothing but crude barbarians, and anything they had brought or had developed under their ascendancy was simply barbarous. Petrarch, conveniently blind to the fact that he was of mostly Germanic ancestry himself, saw a new birth of the (much exaggerated) glories of Roman civilization with the Italian independence movement against German domination. A few other Italian panagyrists took up the false history, but it had pretty much fallen by the wayside by the 15th century. Voltaire and the Philosophes, unconsciously looking for something to give them a pedigree, invented the myth of "the Renaissance" as we now know it, though it really didn't catch on until the Romantic Era of the 19th Century. The fact is, however, that the Medieval Synthesis (or paradigm) reigned supreme and unchallenged from the so-called Dark Ages right up until the dawn of the Reformation. Da Vinci, Dante, Lombard, Anselm, Alcuin, Okham, Abelard, St. Bernard, St. Francis, Barbarosa, Aquinas, and even Petrarch all operated in the same categories of thought; all shared a common worldview. The Medieval synthesis was graddually gutted in the late 1400s and early 1500s, and Martin Luther, Zwingli, John Calvin and the other Reformers obliterated its delapidated shell.