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UNIT 4 Introduction

Literatura Inglesa Medieval

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9 views20 pages

UNIT 4 Introduction

Literatura Inglesa Medieval

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mgomezibor
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© © All Rights Reserved
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UNIT 4: THE LITERATURE OF RENAISSANCE ENGLAND.

INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE 16TH


CENTURY

Introduction to the Literature


of the Sixteenth-Century

Some wh-questions…

”Every Renaissance comes to the


World with a cry, the cry of the
Human spirit to be free.”
(Anne Sullivan Macy. Speech at
Temple University, Philadelphia,
PA, February 16, 1932)
UNIT 4: THE LITERATURE OF
RENAISSANCE ENGLAND

- General periodization of the history of the English language:


1.- OE (5th – late 11th century)
2.- ME (1110 – 1500) vs. Renaissance from late 14th cent.
3.- Modern Eng. (1500 – present)

- Norton Anthology classification of Renaissance literature:


1.- The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603)
2.- The Early Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)
Chronology (late 15th – early 17th C.)

¤ The printing Press (1440 / 1476)

¤ 1485 Henry VII.

¤ 1509: Henry VIII.

¤ 1516: Thomas More’s Utopia

¤ 1517-…: Protestant Reformation.

¤ 1534 & 1558: Acts of Supremacy.

¤ 1557: Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets. (Tottel’s Miscellany/271 poems)

¤ 1573: Building of The Theater.

¤ 1558–1603: The Elizabethan Era.


Events that Shaped Early Modern
England (1476-1603):

¤ 1476: William Caxton prints an edition of The Canterbury Tales


on the first printing press in England.

¤ 1485: Accession of Henry VII inaugurates Tudor Dynasty

¤ 1492: Columbus lands in the Caribbean on his first voyage

¤ 1509: Accession of Henry VIII

¤ 1515: Sir Thomas More begins writing Utopia

¤ 1517: Martin Luther’s Wittenberg Theses; beginning of the


Reformation
Events that Shaped Early Modern
England (1476-1603):

¤ 1534: Henry VIII declares himself head of the English church

¤ 1558: Accession of Elizabeth I

¤ 1585-7: Colony of settlers disappears at Roanoke

¤ 1603: Death of Elizabeth I and accession of James I


A new concern for the individual

“…what is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability of godlike reason
To fust in us unus’d” (Hamlet IV.31-7).
Humanism and the Renaissance

¤ Chronological asymmetries. From Petrarch to More

¤ Changes in arts, politics, economy, society…

¤ Individualism - self-fashioning. Education

¤ Latin & English

¤ Female monarchs: Isabella I of Castile, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I

¤ Englishness vs. Otherness. ‘Our English tongue is of small reach –


it stretcheth no further than this island of ours –nay, not there
over all.’ (R. Mulcaster, 1582)

¤ Transmission of knowledge. The Sonnet.

¤ Taste for ornament in poetry, clothing, furniture…


English Renaissance Lyrics
¤ Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542)

- St. John’s College (Cambridge)

- Henry VIII’s diplomat (France, Low Countries, Ambassador


to Spain)

- Petrarch’s themes and adaptation of Petrarchan sonnet.

¤ Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)

- Difficult to stay alive in Henry VIII’s court. His last victim


Close reading:

Ø ”The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbour” (Wyatt)

Ø “Love That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought”


(Surrey)

Ø Rima 140 by Petrarch


English Renaissance Lyrics
- “High” Renaissance Poetry. Reign of Elizabeth I (1558-
1603)

- Philip Sidney

- Edmund Spenser

- William Shakespeare

- Ben Jonson

- John Donne

- John Milton (early career)


English Renaissance Lyrics: Spenser &
Sidney
¤ Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599) “the poets’ poet”

- Merchant Taylor’s School & Pembroke College (Cambridge)

- The Shepheardes Calender; The Faerie Queene (9-line stanza,


hexameter); Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595). Unusual
approach to the theme of love.

- Spenserian sonnet (abab bcbc cdcd ee). 3 quatrains


ending in a rhyming couplet; primarily iambic pentameter;
volta (l. 8-9)

- “I was promis'd on a time, / To have a reason for my rhyme:


/From that time unto this season, / I receiv'd nor rhyme nor
reason.” (GBP 100 in 1600, c. 30,200 in 2020)
https://www.uwyo.edu/numimage/currency.htm
Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595)

Elizabeth Boyle (1566? – 1622)


English Renaissance Lyrics: Spenser &
Sidney
¤ Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) Knight, soldier, poet, patron…
perfect courtier.

- Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesy (The Defence


of Poetry or An Apology for Poetry), and The Countess of
Pembroke's Arcadia.

- Astrophel and Stella (1591). Sonnet cycle. 108 sonnets and


10 songs.

- Petrarchan approach to an anatomy of love.


Astrophel and Stella (1591)

Penelope Devereux / Lady Rich (1564-1607).


Charles Blount Baron Mountjoy.
Close reading

Ø Sonnets 34 and 75 (Spenser’s Amoretti)

Ø Sonnets 1 and 7 (Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella)

Ø Excerpt from Defense of Poesy (1579 Ms. / 1595 in print)


William Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Q-
1609)
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)

Ø Composition (1590s) and publication (1609). TT & W.H.


(Thomas Thorpe and William Herbert? Or Who He?).
Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint. Why did he write the
Sonnets? 1 shilling=GBP10 sale. TT paid 6 pennies
(Stationer’s Register 1609). Iambic pentameter (10-syllable
line). 14 lines, and most are divided into three quatrains
and a final, concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef
gg

Ø Master (young male) - Mistress (dark lady)

Ø Structure 1-17; 18-126; 127-152; 153-154.

Ø Time sonnets. The problem with time.


Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609). S. LX
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)

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