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English Potry1

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14 views4 pages

English Potry1

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English potry1

I.I. ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

With the slaying of Richard III at Bosworth Add in 1485, the Wars of the Roses I came to an

end, and England entered a new era of comparative peace. The English people grew tired

of war and tumult; they desperately wanted peace and quiet and a good and stable

government. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond , was thirty years old when he was crowned

Henry VII .He set himself the task of making England a united, strong and prosperous

country. His rein, however, was harassed by two rebellions, both of which were suppressed.

I.I.I. SIMNEL'S REBELLION

Lambert Simnel, a youth of humble birth, claimed to be the Earl of Warwick, the rightful heir to

Richard III. He went to Ireland , and was crowned as King Edward VI. Henry VII easily proved his

claim false by bringing the real Warwick out of prison. As a result, Simnel received little support when

he landed in England, defeated and captured In 1487 .

I.I.2. WARBECK'S REBELLION

Perkin Warbeck's rebellion was more serious and for some years caused Henry VII much anxiety.

Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, brother of Edward V,-and that he had escaped from

the Tower . He received strong support from James IV of Scotland , and from Margaret, Duchess of

Burgundy and sister of Edward IV. Warbeck landed in Cornwall with a band of his Irish followers in

1497, but his troops deserted him, and he was soon captured and sent to the Tower.
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English potry1
1.2.4 Elizabeth 1558-1603

Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry Vill, by his second wife Anne Boleyn, came to the throne at the
age of 25. She became queen at a difficult tirne,for England was at war with France, the treasury
was empty and taxes were heavy. The two religious parties were quarrelling severely. Besides,
work was not available and there was a great deal of poverty and misery in England . Bands of
thieves robbed travellers on the highways and terrorized th e countryside, forcing villages and
smal I towns t o feed them free.

1.3. General Character of the Sixteenth Century

By 1500 the English language had become standardized and the great changes in store for
English literature were not to come from another upheaval in the language, but from a whole
new outlook on life, brought about by the Renaissance.

13.1.3 The Invention of Printing

As late as the fifteenth century books were still copied out by hand slowly and painfully, generally
by monks in the monasteries. About I445,or perhaps earlier, the modern printing press appeared.
Books which had formerly been handmade in single copies at long intervals, could now be
produced in hundreds and thousands, at a price which made the possession of a library of books
no longer the privilege of the very wealthy, for even the poor scholars could now buy books.
Printing presses were set up in all the chief cities of Europe. Thus was the new learning spread.
Without the printing Ares s this great revival of classical study could never have touched more
than a few of the very learned and wealthy. But with the invention of printing , knowledge spread
over the whole of Europe.

1.3.13 The Reformation

By the end of the Middle Ages many were convinced that the Roman Catholic Church needed
reforming. The Reformation started as a protest against the conduct of the Roman Catholic
Church which had hitherto remained undivided. Circumstances favourable to the Reformation
included:
humanism and the Renaissance (which encouraged a new criti-cal spirit) , the invention of
printing (which helped in spreading ideas), the reaction of Princes and Jurists against the authority

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of the Pope, the growing wealth of the clergy ( especially in Germany) and the religious and
moral shortcomings of certain of the clergy. The leaders of the Reformation sought to restore
Christianity to its early purity as a simple religion based on the teaching of the Bible. The
Reformation in England proceeded in three stages: under Henry VIII England rejected Papal
control (1534), veered towards Calvinism under Edward VI, and , after the Catholic reaction under
Mary I, adopted the compromise of the Elizabe-than Church settlement, a careful compromise
between the reforms of her father and those of her brother. The outcome of the Reformation was
division: The Roman Catholic Church remained dominant In countries bordering the western
Mediterranean and South Germany; the new Prot-estant Churches became supreme in northern
Europe. The Reformation tended to increase the growth of nationalism and to strengthen the
economic position of the mercantile class.

2.1. Medieval Legacy


Sixteenth Century England witnessed, as has been noted, the rise of the Renaissance, that Is,
a rebirth of learning. Although it signified the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture,
Renaissance, in England at least, was allied to various other forces that helped to reshape it and
give It a typically national character. One such force was the surviving influence of Medieval
culture as contained and preserved in literature, particularly in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer
(1360- (400), the fourteenth century poet.

2.2. The Rise of the Renaissance


Tlie rise of the Renaissance however, was marked by growing interest on the part of the scholars
in the language and literature of the calsslcal worlds of Greece and Rome. Originally this Interest
In the ancients had arisen in the Middle Ages in the scholars' pursuits of Latin studies; the medieval
scholar had known most of the leading Roman writers and a few major Greek ones in Latin
translations. But what did happen in the Renaissance was a shift of emphasis of classical studies
from the Roman to the Greek. As a result, the predominatimg vision of life moved more towards
the Hellinistic than the Latin studies

2.3. Characteristics of the Renaissance


2.3.1. Renaissance is always associated with 'Humanism' Generally speaking, the term humanism
signifies any attitude that exults the human elements in man as opposed to the supernatural or
divine, on the one hand, and the animal, on the other. With regard to the Renaissance,
'humanism' had a specific significance and use. It Is applied to those scholars who pursued the
studies that helped to produce the civilized man, particularly the classical writings of Greece and
Rome.

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2.4. Characteristics of English Renaissance
English Renaissance is, in addition, characterized by several other distinctive features
2.4.1 Perhaps the first characteristic lies in its belated arrival in England. When It first began,
scholars in all European countries had already been working on ancient Greek and Latin writers
and producing works of their own inspired by the classic.

3. Sixteenth Century Poetry


3.1. Songs, Madrigals and Lyrics
If music be the food of love, play on
Give me excess of it. . .
) Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I, 1, 1-2(
Ever since Chaucer's death in 1400 and. up to the dawn of the sixteenth century there
had been no English poet to compare with him in greatness, or poetry to match his in sweetness
and originality. Chaucer was succeeded by his imitators and the Latinists of the fifteenth century--
a century of sterility in literature, as well as ruinous civil w a which only ended in 1485. With the
dawn of the sixteenth century and the Impact of the Renaissance a dew blood was transfused
Into the land. Poetry which at first looked more b7ckward than ose received a new life and made
outstanding progress. Indeed the sixteenth century witnessed eno-mous changes in both
language and literature—changes that are real and permanent, so much so that it is no
exaggeration to say that the sixteenth century found out English.

3.1.4. Development of the lyric form


Although poetry, ever since Wyatt, followed a steady line of progress, scoring, at times, some sort
of success in lyrics and other serious types of verse, a really good song or lyric was a rare event .
Besides, the full Impact of the Renaissance and the new learning , and their fusion with native
tradition, European current as well as medieval examples, never became felt complet-ely or
absorbed fully by any single poet.
3.2 .The Development of the Sonnet
3.2.1. The Sonnet was the most popular form of the lyrics with the Elizabethans. In fact, the
Elizabethan Age might be called the Age of the sonnet. This Is partly because of the love
the Elizabethans had for the exquisite, dainty world of art, and partly because of their
admiration of accomplishmen6/ The sonnet has a challenging poetic form which is not
easy to write; it demands thought, manipulation and polish

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