15th and 16th centuries
Malory and Caxton
Renaissance and Reformation Literature
Thomas Malory and William Caxton (15th century)
-15th century – England lost all its possessions in France
-bitter struggles between two descendants of Edward III -
the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), Henry Tudor in 1485
- in literature - ‘the matter of Britain’:
Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Le Morte Darthur’ (1469-1470)
- greatest 15th century prose writer
- profound influence on English writers/poets
from Spenser to Tennyson
-Malory’s ‘Le Morte Darthur’ published by William Caxton
-Caxton – a printer, publisher, translator
-He publshed ‘The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye’ – the first book printed in English
(1473-4), Belgium
-Caxton introduced a printing press in England in 1476
-Caxton as translator: French words, standardised the English language
During the 15th century - literacy increased
- printing made books cheaper
- silent reading
Renaissance and Reformation Literature (1510-1620)
-15th & 16th c – Renaissance, transforming movement
-the medieval society of scholasticism, feudalism, and chivalry to the modern world
-Italy -14th and 15th centuries
-rediscovery and study of Greek language, literature
-the fall of Constantinople in 1453
-the medieval church – disapproved of joy, pleasure
-the intellectual life – formalized, conventionalized the whole sphere of knowledge - the
authority of the Bible
-ancient writers – ‘to see life steadily and see it whole’
-Roman writers/philosophers – rediscovered
-’human’, ‘humanists’
-the invention of printing
-vast expansion of the physical world – geographical explorations (Columbus, da Gama,
Magellan)
-1540, the Polish Copernicus - the Heliocentric Theory of the universe
-Englishmen travelling to Italy, contact with cultural, intellectual movement
-Humanism as the intellectual basis
-’man is the measure of all things’
-freedom of choice, man maker and molder of himself
-the vision of self-fashioning – in poetry, art, the statecraft
-in England – literature largely centred at the court
-the court of Henry VII – political stability, flourishing of the new movement
-developed primarily the spiritual and intellectual sphere (humanism)
-desire to reform the secular education for boys (Greek and Latin)
-girls educated at home
-ancient authors studied for their style but also for moral, political, philosophical truths
-pagan but reconciled to the moral vision of Christianity
-to write in Latin (pan-European world) or English (appeal to national languages,
nationalism)?
-translations of Greek and Roman authors
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
-brilliant, disturbing figure
-admired but also criticised
-born in London, father a prominent lawyer
-a secular career in public affairs
-moral, theological arguments,
passion for Greek and Latin literature, Christian piety
-Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Praise of the Folly (satire)
-More’s Utopia (1515-16) Greek ‘ou’ (not, no) + topos (place)
More’s Utopia
Influence of:
-Plato’s Republic (communalistic reimagining of society)
-contemporary influences (monastic communities, emerging market societies, A. Vespucci’s
voyages)
-the question of the relation of the State and the individual
-two parts - 1st terrible evils, corruptions in Church and state in England
- 2nd part - R. Hythlodaye – Utopia, a remote island in the New World
--a work of political and social satire
Interpretation:
1. blueprint for reform
2. an abstract idea of a semi-perfect society, never meant as a serious idea for a reform
3. a satire or a high-spirited joke
4. a satire aimed at More's England, or the satire aimed at the state of Utopia itself
-also, a comment or criticism of 16th century
Catholicism or the idea that the perfect
commonwealth could not occur with private property
Thomas More’s other works
-History of King Richard III (1513-1518), unfinished, in Latin and English, attack on royal
tyranny, literary value, less for its historical accuracy, influenced Shakespeare’s play Richard
III
-other works focused on theology, moral philosophy, religious controversy
-an ardent Catholic
-accused of treason, executed in 1535
-’to die the king’s good servant, but God’s first’
-canonized by the Catholic church 400 years after his death as St Thomas More
The Literature of English Reformation
-break with the Roman Catholic church, the dissolution of monasteries
-noblemen and the king benefited from it
-the disappearance of the women’s communities
-Henry VIII→Edward VI →’Bloody’ Mary → Elizabeth I
-return to the Reformation/Protestantism
-outward conformity to the official Protestant settlement
-the use of English in worship
-The Great Bible in 1540, William Tyndale
-under Tudor dynasty modern English emerged
-sense of England as a nation state
-with Henry VIII, the king/queen is also the head of the church
-in 1603 two crowns of England and Scotland were unites – James VI of Scotland became
James I
-the emergence of Great Britan (an Arthurian dream of independent and unified island)
-but it was an ideological convenience, uniformity imposed from above
-the court – the centre of power and culture
-the court-imposed fashion in dress and speech, painting, music and poetry
-the route to power and wealth - in proximity to the king, but it also meant potential danger
-Tudor courtiers – Machiavelli’s Il Principe, Castiglione,
Il Cortegiano
-skillful in using graceful words with double, triple meanings
-many of the best poets - courtiers
-status of English outside England
-the association between literature and print
Tudor style: ornament and plainness
-in 1512 Erasmus, De copia, on verbal richness
Your letter mightily pleased me.
To a wonderful degree did your letter please me.
By your letter was I mightily pleased.
I was exceeding pleased by your letter.
Your epistle exhilarated me intensely.
I was intensely exhilarated by your epistle.
Your brief note refreshed my spirits in no small measure.
I was in no small measure refreshed in spirit by your grace's
hand.
-a taste for elaborate ornament in language, but also in clothing, jewelry, furniture
-in sonnets, the use of figures → high emotional intensity, psychological nuance and complex
imagery
-Marlowe 'infinite riches in a little room'
-also capable of admiring plainess of speech
-major literary modes/kinds: pastoral, heroic, lyric, satiric, elegiac, tragic and comic – defined
by clusters of conventions
-Spencer’s Faerie Queene – a generic hybrid
Poetry at the court of Henry VIII
-poetry in Latin and English
-Chaucer – a model, but to some it seemed rusty and rude, looked for models elsewhere
-tendency to read love poetry as outpouring of the soul
-also, political tensions
-Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547) - leaders of
an imported progressive avant-garde
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
-sophisticated courtier-diplomat,
(Travelled to France, Italy)
-sonnet sequence of F. Petrarch, Tuscan lyric poetry
-typical features of the Petrarchan sonnet: stylised images of physical beauty & allusions to
spirituality and moral growth
-the use of oxymoron and
antithesis
-Waytt introduced ’Petrarchism’
→ themes, imagery, structure and literary techniques
- ‘translated’ and adapted Petrarch's sonnets
-Wyatt’s aim: to experiment with the English language, to ‘civilise’ it, to raise its powers to
equal those of other European languages
-Petrarch’s sonnet – an ‘octave’ abba abba + ‘sestet’ with various rhyme schemes
while Wyatt uses an ‘octave’ and introduces a final couplet – anticipates the creation of the
English sonnet (three quatrains and a closing couplet abbaabba cddc ee)
-Wyatt’s sonnets – transposes the idealised vision of
love, devotion to a compromised social situation
-many of his works – records of personal experience
-the precariousness of life at court
'V. Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides ‘(’Innocence, Truth, Wyatt, Faith, "My Enemies have
surrounded me “’ (psalm xvii, 9)
-many of his poems interpreted as referring to ill-fated association Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII's
second wife)
-'Who so list to hounte' (hunt) reworks the Petrarchan 'Una candida cerva' ('A white hind')
the difference in form, but also love as transcendent experience (Petrarch) opposed to Wyatt’s
obsessive and embittering love
'They flee from me' - unfaithful lover theme
-an atmosphere of indistinct danger
- does not use courtly love conventions
- his woman overthrows contemporary gender
conditioning, her victim does not suffer in silence
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17-1547)
-Songes and Sonettes, written by the right honorable Lorde Henry Howard late Earl of Surrey,
Thomas Wyatt, the Elder and others (1557)
-a nobleman, a politician, a poet
-his sonnets admired as pioneer expressions of neo-classical propriety
-a poet writing to a formula rather than evolving a personal mode of expression
-the first English poet to publish blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) in his translation
of the 2nd and the 4th books of Virgil's Aeneid
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
-The Defence of Poesy (written in1580, published in 1595)- exalts the role of the poet,
freedom, imagination, moral value of fiction
-a knight, a soldier, a poet
-killed in a battle in the Netherlands fighting against the Spanish, hero’s funeral
-of noble orgin, studied at Oxford
-his travels on the Continent
-after being dismissed from the court, retires to his sister’s estate
-writes Arcadia (The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, towards the end of 16th c)
-his finest achievement – Astrophil and Stella (Starlover and Star), a cycle of 108 sonnets
-exploration of the lover’s state of mind and soul, but also matters of politics and foreign
policy
-his true role /life– the life of action
-yet remembered for his literary achievements
-Arcadia – the most ambitious work of prose fiction (of the Elizabethan Age)
- a long prose pastoral romance
- major literary modes of the period: pastoral, heroic, lyric, satiric, elegiac, tragic and comic
-the pastoral – rustic characters, simple concerns, modest scope ≠ of heroic – honour, courage,
loyalty, leadership, glorification of a nation or people
(Spenser’s Faerie Queene – a generic hybrid (classical epic with romance, medieval allegory,
pastoral, satire))
-Sidney’s Arcadia also hybrid work
-two versions – The Old Arcadia and The New Arcadia (expanded and revised)
-the story of Basilius, the duke of Arcadia and his wife and daughters
-the main plot and subplots, political treachery, battles, elopment
-scenes where shepards meet, sing songs about God, human love, passions
-poems throughout the narrative – Sidney’s experiments with different kind of verse forms
- Astrophil and Stella – autobiographical elements, follows Petrarca’s model of sonnet
Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 1
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain, —
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay:
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows,
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
-set out to become the greatest English poet of his age
-from a modest family, yet received impressive education
-met Sidney who was trying to promote a new kind of English poetry
-Spenser’s contribution - The Shepheardes Calender (1579), dedicated to Sidney, archaic
language, describes the life of a shepard through 12 months, 12 eclogues
-Spenser – a prolific experimenter, innovator, called ‘the poet’s poet’
-Amoretti – a sonnet cycle
Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene
-epic poem and a fantastical allegory, celebrates the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I
-verse – Spenserian stanza (each stanza has nine lines in iambic pentameter followed by a
single ‘alexandrine’ line in iambic hexameter (the final line has six feet or stresses known as
‘alexandrine’). The rhyme scheme of these lines: ABABBCBCC.
-follows several knights – examines different virtues, they embody abstract moral values
-dense network of allusions to events, issues, real persons in England and Ireland
-an epic (Virgil as a model), classical & medieval sources
-celebration of Queen Elizabeth, the Protestant faith, the English nation
The first stanza from Spenser's Faerie Queene
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.
