The Renaissance

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The Renaissance
The Early Modern Period
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Learning Objectives

• To observe the transformative qualities a monarch
  can have on the arts and culture of a time
  period.
• To understand the basic principles and
  influential factors behind Elizabethan
  literature.
• To study the major themes and motifs of this era.

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The Renaissance

• Means rebirth
• In science, for example, Copernicus (1473-1543)
  attempted to prove that the sun rather than the
  earth was at the center of the planetary system,
  thus radically altering the cosmic world view
  that had dominated antiquity and the Middle Ages.
  
• In religion, Martin Luther (1483-1546) challenged
  and ultimately caused the division of one of the
  major institutions that had united Europe
  throughout the Middle Ages--the Church.
• Renaissance thinkers often thought of themselves
  as ushering in the modern age, as distinct from
  the ancient and medieval eras.
• Hence the often used title as the Early Modern
  period.

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The Renaissanceof Poetry

• A reintroduction and revival of texts and
  languages from the classical period.
• Romantic Dialogue clever/witty/entendre
  Rhetorically savvy/beautiful language POETRY!
• Sonnets fit this perfectly and they are all the
  rage in the 1580s. This is the time the
  literature of the period really takes off why?
• English poets generally imitate sonnets of
  Petrarch until Shakespeare makes fun of them all
  later on.

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The Renaissance of Theater

• During the reign of Henry VIII, Commedia dell
  arte (traveling troops of actors with a
  repertoire) is popular in Italy he wants that
  for England.
• Earls begin supporting groups of actors
• 20 men
• Traveling troop
• Linked to a great house
• Wears the Earls colors
• Geared towards lower classes
• 1576 James Burbage opens The Theatre now not
  restricted by church or Earls tastes

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The Renaissance of Theater

• The theatre determined the type of play
  literary, trashy, or plays by certain
  playwrights.
• Actors learned only their own lines
• Performed on a thrust stage no proscenium arch.
• Plays only performed twice, one week to remember
  lines and rehearse.
• Playhouses outside the city wallsnot a
  respectable establishment
• Many playwrights are Cambridge or Oxford
  graduates who didnt want to take religious
  orders over-educated unemployed bitter

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The Tudors
Henry VII
Elizabeth York
Jane Seymour
Anne Boleyn
Anne of Cleves
Kathryn Howard
Katherine Parr
Arthur Mary Margaret
Henry VIII
Catherine of Aragon
Henry VII (1485-1509) Henry VIII
(1509-1547) Edward VI (1547-1553) Lady Jane Grey
(9 days) Mary I (1553-1558) Elizabeth I
(1558-1609)
Mary I
Elizabeth I
Edward VI
Philip II of Spain
Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots Tried to claim
throne through Her mother, Margaret. Her
son James takes over after Elizabeth.
Jane Grey Tried to claim throne through Her
grandmother, Mary.
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Henrys Wives

• Henry married his late brothers (Arthur) wife,
  Catherine, when he ascended to the throne.
• When Catherine produced no male heirs, Henry
  began looking elsewhere mainly at her
  ladies-in-waiting.
• Henry wanted Anne Boleyn, but needed to divorce
  Catherine, first.
• When Rome refused to grant him an annulment, he
  declared himself head of Englands church and
  granted himself the annulment instead.
• Henry remained mostly Catholic in his beliefs and
  practices, despite the change in church.
• However, he took out his frustration with the
  Catholic church by destroying many of Englands
  cathedrals and monasteries.

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Sir Thomas More (1478-1553)

• Counselor and Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII
• Opponent of Protestant Reformation
• Humanist creating an educated public,
  emancipating the individual, intellectual
  freedom.
• Most famous for his fictional satire Utopia
  (1516) .
• Perfect world where there is no private
  property, no pre-marital sex, and courtship
  takes place in the nude!
• Ironic that the non-Christian commonwealth had
  attained a greater degree of peace and order
  than his own England had .
• Executed by Henry VIII for treason he refused to
  proclaim Henry as head of Englands church.
  Beatified in the 1800s.

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Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

• The Baconian or Scientific method
• A set of procedures for examining the natural
  world.
• The father of empiricism.
• One of the dimly possible Shakespeare writers.

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Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

• Lyric poet who introduced the sonnet form to
  England by translating some of Petrarchs sonnets
  into English.
• Unlike Petrarch, who idealizes love as
  transforming, Wyatt stresses the anguish and
  disillusionment of love.
• The speaker in some of the poems is bitter,
  cynical, angry, longing and pained.
• Briefly enamored of Anne Boleyn, but Henry VIII
  distanced Wyatt from her by sending him to Italy.

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Mary I (Bloody Mary)

• Snatched the crown from Lady Jane Grey and had
  both her and her husband executed, despite the
  fact that Edward VI had named Grey as his heir.
• A strict Catholic, she marries King Philip II of
  Spain. A very unpopular choice.
• Mary was notoriously intolerant of Protestants
  and had over 300 them burned at the stake for
  heresy.
• Died at age 42 possibly of a tumor which may
  have produced signs of pregnancy.

13
Princess Elizabeth

• Elizabeth was classically trained and highly
  educated along with her brother, Edward
• six languages, grammar, theology, history,
  rhetoric, logic, philosophy, arithmetic, logic,
  literature, geometry, religious studies, and
  music.
• She also learned the skills of a noble lady of
  her rank
• sewing, embroidery, dancing, music, archery,
  riding and hunting
• Mary locked her in the Tower during her reign
  because she feared Elizabeth might rise against
  her.

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Queen Elizabeth I

• Ascended to the throne in 1558 after the death
  of her sister, Mary. She ruled until her death in
  1603.
• A moderate ruler (more so than her father or
  sister had been). Video et taceo I see, and
  say nothing.
• Protestant, but she was famous for her tolerance
  of Catholicism (as long as people werent too
  blatant about it and attended Anglican church on
  Sundays).
• Rome hated her anyway and excommunicated her and
  any who followed her rule.

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Elizabeth the Lover

• After Marys court of fear, Elizabeth implements
  a court of love. Courtly love politicians must
  court her, not petition her. Poetry, music,
  chivalry, etc.
• She put herself into the role of the unattainable
  lover
• Her poetry is a weapon, deliberately leaked in
  order to make her appear human and emotional
  after unpopular political decisions.
• Elizabeth entertains several heads of state with
  the possibility of marriage the closest she gets
  is the Duke of Anjou of France in 1581. On
  Monsieurs Departure

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Elizabeth , Virgin Queen

• After a shaky recovery from small pox in 1562,
  the Queens former beauty is ruined. Parliament
  and her privy counsel begin to make their
  strongest arguments for her to marry and produce
  and heir.
• It is at this point that Elizabeth begins to wear
  the heavy white makeup, elaborate wigs, and
  highly stylized costumes shes known for in most
  of her portraits.
• Artists and playwrights begin to follow along
  with her fashioning of herself as a virgin
  goddess.

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Mary Queen of Scots

• In 1571 the Ridolfi Plot is uncovered.
• Mary Queen of Scots has been trying to take
  Elizabeths throne on the grounds that she is
  Henry VIIIs niece (and a Catholic).
• Elizabeth delays taking action, though Mary has
  been proven guilty. Advisors urge action.
• Highly controversial since Mary is a queen in her
  own right (Scotland and France).

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Elizabeth the Warrior Goddess

• Spanish Armada 1588 Philip II of Spain amassed
  151 ships to sail against England and depose
  Elizabeth, whom he felt was ruling illegitimately
  (and who was helping the Protestant Dutch revolt
  against their Catholic Spanish enemies)
• Elizabeth addresses the troops amassed at Tilbury
  who are to meet the fleet when it hit shore
  they had little chance of success.
• Luckily a storm knocks out most of the fleet and
  England is saved!
• England becomes a world power, becomes fascinated
  with itself many history plays are written to
  glorify its past.

Her victory dress
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Sir Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

• As an aspiring poet, Spenser penned The Faerie
  Queene in honor of Queen Elizabeth, but he fell
  out of favor with her when he severely criticized
  one of her trusted advisors.
• Wrote Amoretti (1595) for his future wife,
  Elizabeth Boyle. It is a sonnet sequence of 89
  sonnets that tell the story of a love
  relationship in which the couple move toward
  marriage.
• Wrote Epithalamion for his wife after their
  marriage. 365 line poem, one line for each day of
  the year.

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The Faerie Queene (1596)

• A LONG narrative poem/allegorical epic in six
  books. (one of the longest in English)
• Spenser planned to write 24 books, one for each
  of the "twelve private moral virtues and 12
  public virtues which King Arthur represents.
• In each book, a different hero represents one of
  these moral virtues. Book 1 is Redcrosse Knight
  Holiness.
• Gloriana Queen Elizabeth. Arthur is always
  searching for her what better consort for Queen
  Elizabeth but King Arthur?

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The Faerie Queene (1596)

• Spenser deliberately uses archaic language as he
  attempts to create a mythology surrounding Queen
  Elizabeth and the ideals of her court.
• Each book contains Lines 1-8 in each stanza are
  iambic pentameter, and 9 is iambic hexameter
  (alexandrine) ababbcbcc.
• This form is called a Spenserian stanza.

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Book One Characters

• Redcross Holiness a knight trying to do the
  right thing. Is actually the character of St.
  George, patron saint of England.
• Una the True Church (Protestantism).
  Accompanies Redcrosse on his quest to save her
  kingdom from a dragon.
• Errour a book vomiting monster/snake woman
• Duessa/Fidessa the False Church (Catholicism)
  Tries to seduce and destroy Redcrosse.
• Gloriana the Faerie Queene really a
  representation of Queen Elizabeth
• Arthur of Arthurian legend. Has fallen in love
  with the Faerie Queene and seeks her out.
• Sansfoy, Sansjoy, Sansloy three evil knights
  (faithless, Joyless, Lawless)

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Sir Philip Sydney 1554-1586

• Poet, courtier, soldier, Protestant
• Works to know his Astrophil and Stella sonnets
  written to Penelope Devereux
• Defense of Prosey

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Defense of Prosey

• "The lawyer saith what men have determined the
  historian what men have done.  The grammarian
  speaketh only of the rules of speech and the
  rhetorician and logician, considering what in
  nature will soonest persuade, thereon give
  artificial rules. . . Only the poet, disdaining
  to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with
  the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in
  effect another nature, in making things either
  better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite
  anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the
  Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and
  such like so as he goeth hand in hand with
  nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of
  her gifts, but freely ranging only within the
  zodiac of his own wit.  Nature never set forth
  the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets
  have done. . . Her world is brazen, the poets
  only deliver a golden" (956-7).
• "The poet he nothing affirms, and therefore never
  lieth.  For, as I take it, to lie is to affirm
  that to be true which is false.  So as the other
  artists, and especially the historian, affirming
  many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of
  mankind, hardly escape from many lies.  But the
  poet (as I said before) never affirmeth. . . . 
  so wise readers of poetry will never give the
  lie to things not affirmatively but allegorically
  and figuratively written" (968).

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William Shakespeare
Youve got this already, right? But maybe you
should read his longer poems, like The Rape of
Lucrece or a history play, like Richard II.
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Vocabulary to Know

• Difference between the Italian (Petrarchan),
  English (Spensarian), and Shakespearean sonnet
  types.
• Octave, sestet, turn (volta), problem, solution
• Blazon
• Allegory
• Pastoral
• Body Politic vs. natural body