Chapter Two　The English Renaissance

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The English Renaissance

Chaucer's death starts the transition period in England full of significant changes.

The King of England, after the Wars of Roses, assumed greater power than before.23/4/20 2

Henry VII (1485 ～ 1509)

He founded the Tudor dynasty which was a centralized monarchy and met

the needs of the rising bourgeoisie and so won its support.

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Henry VIII (1509 ～ 1547)

Declaring the separation from the Roman Catholic Church, implementing a large-scale suppression of the monasteries and confiscating the property of the Church to enrich the new bourgeois, he started the movement called the Reformation, the essence of which is the fight of the bourgeois for power.

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Queen Mary (1553 ～ 1558)

She carried out the Counter-Reformation by put an end to the Reformation and caused the bloody religious persecution.

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Elizabeth I (1558 ～ 1603)

The reign of Elizabeth I was a period of political and religious stability on the one hand and economic prosperity on the other. The Church of England was re-established, ending the long time religious strife; commerce and industry forged ahead as a result of the enclosure movement at home and the opening of new sea routes in the world. In the meantime, the rise of the bourgeoisie also showed its influence in the sphere of cultural life. 23/4/20 6

The English Renaissance

The word “ Renaissance ” means revival, specifically between the 14th and mid 17th century, revival of interest in ancient Greek and Roman culture.

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The English Renaissance

Renaissance, therefore, in essence, was a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of conservatism in feudalist Europe and introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, to lift the restrictions in all areas placed by the Roman church authorities

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The English Renaissance

Roman Catholic Church

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The English Renaissance

During the period of Renaissance, old sciences revived and new sciences emerged, national languages and national cultures free from the absolute control of the Papal authority in Rome took shape and art and literature flourished as never before. With a thirsting curiosity and great love for classical literature, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church was shaken and people came to a

new awareness.

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The English Renaissance

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The English Renaissance Renaissance started in Florence and Venice and

went to embrace the rest of Europe .

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The English Renaissance Renaissance came later in England than other

European countries. When it did come, it was to produce some towering figures in world literary

heritage.

Florence of Italy

Venice in Italy London in Britain23/4/20 13

The English Renaissance Humanism is both the keynote of the

Renaissance and the intellectual liberation movement, associated with new attitudes to ancient Greek and Latin literature. The humanists began by criticizing and evaluating the Latin and Greek authors in the light of what they believed to be Roman and Greek standards of civilization. They took interest in human life and human activities and gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for human beauty, human achievement.

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The English Renaissance

Ancient Greek writers

Plato Homer Aeschylus

The English Renaissance was an exciting time for literature which experienced a burst of ideas and literary brilliance.23/4/20 15

The English Renaissance

Human beauty

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The English Renaissance

Thomas More (1477 ～ 1535)

was the leading humanist of his day.

Scholar

thinker statesman

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The English Renaissance Among his writings the best known is

Utopia (1516) which tells of a journey to an imaginary island named Utopia, where an ideal form of society exists.

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Utopia Its title comes from the Greek word meaning “

nowhere ” and was adopted by More as the name

of his ideal commonwealth.

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The English Renaissance

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 ～ 1599)

was the most influential poet and the dominating literary intellect in the late 16th century in England .

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The Shepherd's Calendar (1597) A poem in the traditional pastoral form

and his first important work, established his poetic reputation. The union of line and meter in the poem is more harmonious, more supple, and richer than that in the works of Chaucer. His sonnet Amoretti is one of the most famous sonnet sequences of the Elizabethan Age.

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The Shepherd's Calendar

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The Faerie Queene

In Spenser's masterpiece The Faerie Queene he devised a verse form called the Spenserian Stanza, which consists of eight ten -syllable lines, plus a ninth line of 12 syllables, an iambic rhythm and a rhyme scheme as follows: abab bcbc c.

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The Faerie Queene

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The English Renaissance

Francis Bacon (1561 ～ 1626) He showed his great intellectual

energy in his day. politician philosopher

essayist

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The English Renaissance

While being the founder of English materialist philosophy and the founder of modern science in England , he is also the first great English essayist.

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Francis Bacon

In 1597 Francis Bacon published his first collection of essays, which made popular in English a literary form widely practiced afterward. It is the most informal and casual of his works, the Essays, that is read most often.

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His major worksThe Advancement

of Learning and New Instrument.

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The English Renaissance Based on the miracle play, the

morality play, the interlude and the classical drama, drama flourished in this age more than any other form of literature.

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miracle play

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morality play

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Christopher Marlowe

(1564 ～ 1595)

The English Renaissance

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Christopher Marlowe

He was the greatest of the pioneers of English drama. His importance is due to the energy with which he endowed the blank verse line (unrhymed iambic pentameter), which in his hands developed an unprecedented suppleness and power. His plays have great intensity, but sometimes they show a genius which is epic rather than dramatic.

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Christopher Marlowe

His acknowledged masterpieces are:

Tamburlaine

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Christopher Marlowe

Doctor Faustus

Edward II is his best constructed piece of theatre 23/4/20 35

Christopher Marlowe

The final scene of Doctor Faustus is one of the most intensely dramatic in English literature. It shows his musical handling and control of

the ten-syllable line.

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The English Renaissance

Marlowe's works paved the route for the greatest dramatist—William Shakespeare—whose accomplishments were the monument of the English Renaissance and whose works gave the fullest expression to humanist ideals.

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