Английская литература в эпоху Ренессанса

Муниципальное образовательное учреждение

«Многопрофильная  гимназия №12»



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Секция: Английский язык

Предмет: Английский язык





Английская литература в эпоху Ренессанса

(English literature during the Renaissance)





Выполнила:

ученица   __9в__ класса 

Шишова Анастасия Павловна



Руководитель:

Елкина Ксения Ивановна





	Тверь,  2017 год

Contents

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………….…… 3

Thomas More (1478-1535) ……………………………………………………………………….….. 5

Drama ……………………………….……………………………………………………………………….… 6 

 The Theatres ……………………………………………………………………………………….… 6

 Christopher Marlowe ……………………………………………………………………….…… 8

Poetry …………………………………………………………………………………………………….……. 9

 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ………………………………………………………… 10

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) ……………………………………………………………………………... 12

Prose ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14

Literature ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 15































Introduction



    The word renaissance means rebirth in French and consists of two words: re means again, while naissance is birth. The Renaissance denotes an era in development of European culture between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was the rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman art and literature that attracted new talented writers and artists. 

    During the reign of Elizabeth I the English Renaissance flourished. Her reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity. The classics were widely studied, and influential Greek and Latin writers such as Plutarch and Seneca were translated into English.

    The country which had the greatest influence on the development of the English literary Renaissance was Italy. From there the cultural revival which signaled an end to the medieval period in Europe had sprung up, flourished and spread across the continent. Leading English writers of the time, including Shakespeare, admired Italy as the cradle of culture, the home of Dante, Petrarch and others. 

    During the Renaissance the world appeared in a new light. Perhaps the most important development in the sixteenth century was the revival of the interest in classical culture known as Humanism. It was a radical departure from the principles that governed medieval art and literature and the focus of attention was no longer God but Man. 

    That is just a brief history, but I would like to focus on historical details of the English Renaissance.

    The aim of my report was to collect information about this particular era in English literature and the famous writers who gave rise to this movement. 

    Everybody who learns English will find this report interesting not only because of fascinating period it is about, but also because of the English language, the report is written in.













































Thomas More (1478-1535)



   The re-awakening of interest in classical Greece affected all aspects of culture and took place during the period called The Renaissance. Compared to other European countries such as Italy, the Renaissance came relatively late to England. Its first great exponent was Thomas More.



    Sir Thomas More was born in London on the 7th of February, 1478. He was the first English humanist of the Renaissance and kept a keen eye on the events of his time.

    Thomas More was one of the most influential figures of his day. He was appointed Lord Chancellor by Henry VII and that made him the most powerful man in England after the king. He was also a deeply religious man and refused to acknowledge Henry VII as the Head of the Church of England after the schism. Because of this he was arrested and beheaded in 1535. 

    His greatest work, Utopia, an attack on the evils of English society, was widely read in England and many other countries. 

    Utopia is the name of non-existent Island. The book, which was published in Latin in 1516 and later translated into English and other languages, was written in a form of a dialogue between More and an imaginary traveler. Utopia describes a social system built on communist principles. The word ‘utopia’ is now used in modern English to denote an unattainable ideal, usually in social and political matters.

    In the first book More denounces England for its corruption and criticizes the misuse of private property, religious intolerance, the exploitation of workers and cruelty to animals in the form of hunting, while in the second book he describes the imaginary island of Utopia, which has the best possible form of government, a society based on shared property, education for both men and women and religious tolerance. 





Drama



    The medieval tradition of Mystery and Miracle plays continued under the reign of Henry VII, but after the schism from Rome and the Reformation, he put an end to medieval religious drama. Humanism revived interest in classical drama and the plays of Plautus, Terence and Seneca were translated into English, published and widely read. Seneca’s tragedies were particularly popular and created a taste for horror and bloodshed. 

    An example of Seneca’s influence on English drama can be seen in the works of Thomas Kyd. His popular play about bloody revenge called The Spanish Tragedy has many Seneca elements including horror, villains, intrigue and the supernatural. 

    Early English Renaissance playwrights accepted some of the conventions of the classical theatre, but they adapted the form to suit their needs and did not content themselves with simply producing poor imitations of classical models.

    Drama from its very beginning was divided into comedy and tragedy. The first English tragedies and comedies were performed in London in 1550.

    For several reasons English drama flourished under the reign of Elizabeth I and James I:

Theatre appealed to all social classes. 

Plays could be understood by the illiterate, who formed the largest section of the population.

The theatre was patronized by the Court and the aristocracy.

The language of drama was less artificial than that of poetry.

 There was a great number of talented playwrights who produced works of extraordinary quality

The prosperity of Elizabethan and Jacobean periods meant that people had both the time and money to go to the theatre. 



The theatres



    Until the building of permanent playhouses, plays were performed in inns, on a platform raised in the yards. Guests at the inn watched the performances from the second-storey galleries, while the common people took their places in front of the stage.

    Playhouses were at first built outside the city walls because they were considered to be centers of corruption. The first playhouse in London was The Theatre in 1576, followed by The Rose, The Swan and The Globe. The company to which Shakespeare belonged (The Lord Chamberlain’s Men) was one of the few companies that owned its own playhouse. By the end of Shakespeare’s career they had two theatres: The Globe and The Blackfriars.

    Elizabethan theatres were built with the inn yard model in mind. They were polygonal or circular three-tiered in structures, open to the sun and rain. In the case of The Globe, the open courtyard and three semi-circular galleries that surrounded it could hold more than 1,500 people. The stage projected out into the courtyard about five feet above the ground and had two main parts: 

The outer stage was a rectangular platform where the main action of the play took place. It was covered by a thatched roof but had no front or side curtains;

The inner stage stood behind the outer stage and was concealed by the curtain. This stage was used when a scene took place in a more confined place (for example the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet) or when a character was supposed to overhear the action on the main stage. On the other side of the inner stage where was a door through which actors entered and disappeared.

    Below the floors of the outer and inner stages there was a large cellar called hell. Actors in ‘hell’, who played the parts of ghosts, demons and fairies, would make dramatic appearances through trap doors onto the main outer stage. 

    Over the main stage there was a third space which could be used by musicians, represent a balcony scene or stand for the walls of a city. Above the third level there was a series of pulleys which could be used to suspend fairies, angels, ghosts and thunderbolts. 

    Many special effects were used in the theatre. Death scenes were very gory and animal organs and blood were often used to make battle scenes more realistic. 

    The audiences became very involved in the play, particularly the spectators in the yard, who were very close to the action. Their tickets were cheaper than the tickets of the spectators sitting in the galleries and they participated by cheering, hissing and even throwing rotten vegetables.

    I would like to tell about the great dramatist of English Renaissance Christopher Marlowe.



Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)



    Christopher Marlowe was one of the most famous English Renaissance dramatists who surpassed all his coevals. 

    Christopher was born in 1564 in the family of prosperous shoemaker. He was a very bright student and even was awarded a scholarship to one of the best schools in Canterbury and then continued studying at Cambridge University. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about his life after the University.

    Christopher was greatly influenced by the ideas of the Renaissance and from 1587 to 1593 Marlowe wrote and produced his four great plays: Tamburlaine the Great (Parts I and II), The Jew of Malta, Edward the Second and Doctor Faustus. These works were successful and affected other playwrights of this period.

    The main aim of Marlowe’s plays was to show the strength of the men who fight for their own benefit and to teach people to understand the tragedy which was performed to reveal the suffering of man. Although Christopher’s fame was somewhat obscured by his contemporary William Shakespeare, he is regarded as one of the great dramatists of the English Renaissance and his characters in Doctor Faustus are considered to be one of the most compelling in English literature. 

    The dramatist died at the age of twenty-nine on May 30, 1593 in a tavern brawl.



Poetry



    Nowhere was the influence of Italian models more strongly felt than in poetry. The Petrarchan sonnet was introduced to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. 

    Wyatt’s sonnets were largely translations or imitations of those of Petrarch. However, he changed the structure of the poetic forms thus creating what become known as the Elizabethan sonnet. In the original Italian sonnet the first eight lines introduced the problem, while the last six lines provided an answer or comment and expressed the personal feelings of the poet. The rhyming scheme was usually ABBA-ABBA-CDC-DCD. Wyatt changed the rhyming scheme of the sestet to CDDC-EE thus creating a quatrain (four lines) and a couplet (two lines). The Earl of Surrey developed the sestet even further, separating the couplet from the quatrain and using it to comment on the previous twelve lines. The final pattern for the Elizabethan sonnet comprised therefore three quatrains and a couplet with the scheme ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG.

    Sir Phillip Sydney excelled in Elizabethan sonnet form. In his sequence of 108 sonnets Astrophel and Stella he addresses his lover Stella and explores the theme of love. His sonnets contain variations of Petrarchan model and the themes strongly echo those of the Italian poet in his sonnets to Laura.

    Sydney inspired a literary trend which continued throughout the Elizabethan period and produced such notable works as Edmund Spencer’s Amoretti and William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets written in the last decade of the century. 

    Edmund Spenser wrote eighty-eight sonnets, the Amoretti, celebrating his love for Elizabeth Boyle. Italian influence was also evident in Spenser’s great work The Shepheardes Calender, inspired by the fifteenth-century Italian writer who wrote allegorical pastorals. Spenser’s work contained a series of short poems, one for each month of the year, describing the artificially idyllic life of shepherds in language which is highly styled.

    However, Spenser’s masterpiece is The Faerie Queene, published in 1590. The Faerie Queene is a religious and political allegory that can be understood on two or more levels. Originally intended to be twelve books, only half of the work was completed. Each book recounts the adventures of a knight, who represents one of the twelve virtues that make a perfect gentleman. The main theme of the work is the glorification of Queen Elizabeth and her Court. In fact, at the end of the story, Prince Arthur, the most important knight, is to marry the Faerie Queenne Gloriana, who represented Queen Elizabeth. 

    The Faerie Queene shows Spenser’s great gift for creating refined and vivid word pictures, and his ear for the musicality of the language. He introduced a new meter in English poetry called the Spenserian stanza, which consisted of eight lines of ten syllables plus a twelve-syllable line containing six iambic feet, with the rhyming scheme ABABBCBCC. Spenser’s belief that poetry should deal with subjects far removed from everyday life and should be written in refined language became the basic principle for poetry throughout much of the Elizabethan period.

    Although it introduced new elements inspired by classical and continental Renaissance models, Elizabethan love poetry maintained many of the features of the country love poems of the Middle Ages. The lady to whom poems was addressed was distant and idealized and the poetic language was highly ornate and musical. Poems were often set to music and sung to the accompaniment of an instrument. 

    I would like to tell about the great poet of English Renaissance William Shakespeare. 



William Shakespeare (1564-1616)



    William Shakespeare is known as ‘the Bard’, which means ‘poet’. This is because much of the language in his plays is poetic and because he also wrote poems. Shakespeare was the best interpreter of human nature, the poet of the widest sympathies and a genius formed by the epoch of the Renaissance.

    William Shakespeare was born at the pleasant town of Stratford-on-Avon on the 23rd of April, 1564 in the family of a prosperous tradesman and farmer’s daughter. His parents, John and Mary, had eight children and William was the third. 

    For a few years Shakespeare attended the local grammar school, but when the poet was about fourteen years old, his father lost prosperity and fell into debt and William had to leave the school to help his family. 

    When Shakespeare was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway and they had three children: Sussanah, Hamnet and Judith. But in a few years after marriage William left Stratford to avoid being arrested for poaching and went to London where he became an actor and then began to write plays for the theatre. His success as a poet and dramatist grew.

    Shakespeare had great powers of imagination and his plays deal with a vast range of topics and situations. The range of emotions exploded in the sonnets is extraordinary: confident declarations of unselfish love, sad parting words, expression of joy at reunion or bitter disappointment at mutual identity. The range of styles is greatly varied. In many sonnets the style is complex and rich while in others the vocabulary, syntax and form are disarmingly simple. The best of the sonnets are widely considered to be the finest love poems in English Literature. 

    The highly poetic quality of the language is a feature of all Shakespeare’s plays. In Elizabethan theatres scenery and props were almost non-existent so Shakespeare had to conjure up settings, moods, atmospheres with his words. His richly dense language, with its striking imagery and musicality, is perhaps his greatest legacy. Many of the lines from his plays are so memorable that they have become everyday sayings in the English language, for example All’s Well That Ends Well (title of a play), ‘neither a borrower nor a lander be’ (Hamlet).

    Part of what gives his work its poetic quality is the rhythm and musicality of the language. Shakespeare used two verse forms: blank verse and rhyming couplets. 

    Blank verse consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters – ten syllable lines in which unstressed syllables are followed by stressed syllables, while a rhyming couplet consists of two lines of iambic pentameter that rhyme in pairs: AA, BB, and so on. 

    Also, an important element is the use of metaphors. A metaphor is an implied comparison which creates a total identification between the two things being compared. Words such as ‘like’ and ‘as’ are not used. A metaphor is made up of three elements:

The tenor, i.e. the subject under discussion (for example, ‘life’);

The vehicle, i.e. what the subject is compared to (for example, a ‘candle’);

The ground, i.e. what the poet believes the tenor and the vehicle has in common (for example, ‘brevity’).

    Shakespeare’s work is usually divided into three periods:

The first period covers the years from 1590 to 1595 when he wrote chronicle plays dealing with the history of England, comedies and sonnets.

The second period – from 1601to 1608 – was the period of tragedies.

The third period – from 1608 to 1612 – when he wrote mostly tragi-comedies.



    William Shakespeare, one of the greatest dramatists and poets in world literature, passed away on April 23rd 1616.



Ben Jonson (1572-1637)



    The two outstanding playwrights of the era were Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. One of their contemporaries, Ben Jonson, also made a significant contribution to the drama of the period. He is best remembered for his play Volpone, a satire on greed and corruption. The main character Volpone is a rich avaricious Venetian. He is surrounded by people who pretend to be his friends because they want to inherit his fortune. Volpone pretends to be ill and tricks his so-called friends into giving him expensive gifts, thus punishing them for their insincerity.

    Jonson also wrote a series of successful masques. A masque was an elaborate form of court entertainment originally developed in Italy that involved poetic drama, music, song, dance and splendid costuming. The plot was slight and often introduced mythological and allegorical elements. The characters, who wore masks, were played by ladies and gentlemen of the court. The play ended with a dance when the players removed their masks and took members of the audience as partners. 

    

Prose



    Prose writing in the Renaissance period did not reach the same standards of excellence as drama or poetry. The geographical expeditions of the era gave rise to travel literature in which writers gave accounts of the voyages of explorers such as Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake.

    The great interest in classical and continental literature led to the translation of many book into English: Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, Chapman’s translation of Homer and Paterick’s Machiavelli were all very influential works.

    The Authorized Version of the Bible, produced in 1611 by a team of forty-seven scholars, is unquestionably one of the works which greatly influenced the development of English prose style. Every Protestant home had a copy of the Bible and many families listened to daily readings. 

    One of the most important figures in the development of English pros was Francis Bacon. He wrote in Latin and in English, and is remembered for his Essays, inspired by the French writer Montaigne. Bacon rejected the long-winded overly ornate Elizabethan style, thus helping to pave the way for modern English.











































Conclusion



    From about 1500 to 1600 the world has been changing in many ways. New social and economic conditions brought great changes in the development of art and science and this period of flourishing of culture is known in history as the Renaissance. 

    During the Renaissance the world appeared in a new light, but the wave of new cultural trends reached England only in the 16th century. A lot of Italian plays were translated into English and the influence of Italian models was strongly felt in English literature. 

    The sixteenth century marked the beginning of the English Renaissance with the work of writers like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon and Sir Philip Sidney. The Renaissance attracted these great playwrights and poets that gave birth to the movements such as drama, poetry and prose.

    In my work I have particularly described the development of English literature during the Renaissance and have learnt a lot about this important era.  

























Literature

Utevskaya N.L., «English and American Literature», 2006.

Zubanova O.V., «Guide to English and American Literature», 2005.

Safonova V., Kuzmina L., Smirnova E., «British literature and culture», 1997.

Abeltina R., Flieja D.Z., Misane A., «English and American literature», 1976.

Ford B., «The Pelican Guide to English Literature», 1963........................