At the risk of stating something obvious, Wikipedia's article on the Carolingian Renaissance is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian

At the risk of stating something obvious, Wikipedia's article on the Carolingian Renaissance is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_Renaissance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_Renaissance The term I've seen in books I've read lately is "Early Middle Ages" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages#Early_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages#Early_Middle_Ages). "Dark Ages" is arguably applicable to the time around 500-800, although the other problem is that there's also another commonly referred-to time period known as the Dark Ages, the Greek Dark Ages, from around 1100 BC - 750 BC.