Renaissance Period

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RENAISSANCE PERIOD

The Renaissance [from French: Renaissance "re-birth", Italian: Rinascimento, from

rinascere "to be reborn"] was a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly

from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and laterspreading to the rest of Europe. Thus, the “renaissance” was a rebirth in the thinking of

the people who began to accept this world with a much more optimistic attitude. They

enjoyed their present life and realized that the earthly life was really beautiful and

interesting, and they men had the right to live and enjoy their life. However, though

availability of paper and the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of

ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly

experienced across Europe.

As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular

literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical

sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch, the development of linear

perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting, and

gradual but widespread educational reform.

In politics, the Renaissance contributed the development of the conventions of diplomacy,

and in science an increased reliance on observation. Historians often argue this intellectualtransformation was a bridge between the Middle Ages and Modern history. Although the

Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political

upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of

such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term

"Renaissance man".

Elizabethan Era – English Colonial Empire – Colonizing the New World

The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–

1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of

Britannia was first used in 1572 and often thereafter to mark the Elizabethan age as a

renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion,

and naval triumph over the hated Spanish foe. In terms of the entire century, the historian

John Guy (1988) argues that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and

more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time in a thousand years.

This "golden age" represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the

flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for theatre, as William



Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of

theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the

Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the

Spanish Armada was repulsed. It was also the end of the period when England was a

separate realm before its royal union with Scotland.

The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly largely because of the periods before and after. It

was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the

battles between Protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the

monarchy that engulfed the seventeenth century. The Protestant/Catholic divide was

settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and parliament was not yet

strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.

The discoveries of Christopher Columbus electrified all of Western Europe, especially

maritime powers like England. And England was also well-off compared to the other

nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of

foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in its own religious battles that

would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. In part because of this, but also

because the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent, the

centuries long conflict between France and England was largely suspended for most of

Elizabeth's reign.

The one great rival was Spain, with which England clashed both in Europe and the

Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604. An

attempt by Philip II of Spain to invade England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 was

famously defeated, but the tide of war turned against England with an unsuccessful

expedition to Portugal and the Azores, the Drake-Norris Expedition of 1589. Thereafter

Spain provided some support for Irish Catholics in a debilitating rebellion against English

rule, and Spanish naval and land forces inflicted a series of reversals against English

offensives. This drained both the English Exchequer (/iks’t∫ek∂/] and economy that had

been so carefully restored under Elizabeth's prudent guidance. English commercial and

territorial expansion would be limited until the signing of the Treaty of London the year

following Elizabeth's death.

England during this period had a centralized, well-organized, and effective government,

largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically, the country began

to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.



English Literature in Renaissance or Elizabethan Literature

Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen

Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603), and is considered to be one of the most splendid ages of English

literature. The Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the

fields of poetry and drama. The Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek

and Roman theatre. This revival of interest was instrumental in the development of the

new drama, which was then beginning to make apart from the Old Mystery and Miracle

plays of the Middle Ages.

Earlier Elizabethan plays include the history plays Gorboduc by Sackville and Norton, and

The Spanish Tragedy by Kyd, which is thought to have been among the sources for Hamlet.

William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright. Shakespeare was

very gifted and incredibly versatile. Though most dramas met with great success, it is in his

later years that he wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: Hamlet, Romeo

and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest , a

tragicomedy that inscribes within the main drama a brilliant pageant to the new king.

Other important figures in Elizabethan literature include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas

Dekker, John Fletcher, Anthony Burgess, Francis Beaumont, John Donne, John Lyly,

Arthur Golding, Robert Greene, Sir John Harington, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Thomas

Middleton, Thomas Nashe, George Puttenham, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John

Webster and Isabella Whitney.

Shakespeare’s sonnets

William Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnets. The sonnet was first

introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. Poems intended to be

set to music as songs and became popular as printed literature was disseminated more

widely in households. Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 sonnets, dealingwith themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a

1609 quarto entitled “SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. Never before imprinted”. A

Shakespearean sonnet consists of 14 lines; each line contains 10 syllables and written in

iambic pentameter , in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed

syllable is repeated five times. The rhythm scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b,

c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, and g-g . Three four-sentence parts are three stanzas; meanwhile the last

two lines are called as a couplet. The rhyme scheme of a line in sonnets is “ta TUM ta

TUM ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM”.



Shakespeare’s sonnets are about an emotional friendship between the poet and a

handsome young man who was always praised by the author; and about a love affair

between the poet and an attractive charming Dark Lady, who was a source of his

happiness and unhappiness and who has been still unknown up to now. One point we

can be certain of is that there were moments when Shakespeare was given to deep

emotions as a man in love.

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Literature Terminologies and Devices for Literature Analysis

1. Form in poetry refers to the principles of arrangement in a poem—the ways in

which words and images are organized, including the length of lines, the

placement of lines, and the grouping of lines.

2. The Shape of a Poem

The most basic element of poetic form is the physical arrangement of words on

the page.

End-stopped lines are lines in which the end of the line is the end of a thought, a

clause, or a sentence. End-stopped lines are signaled by a period, hyphen, or

semicolon, as this line from "The World Is Too Much with Us" illustrates:

3. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Run-on lines are lines in which the thought continues into the next line or further.

Notice the run-on lines in this excerpt from "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above

Tintern Abbey":

4. The day is come when I again repose

5.

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

6. These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,

A stanza conveys a particular idea or a set of related ideas and is usually

characterized by a common pattern of rhythm, rhyme, and number of lines. Some

stanzas are named for the number of lines they contain. For example, a couplet is

a two-line stanza, a tercet is a three line stanza, a quatrain is a four-line stanza,

and a cinquain is a five-line stanza.



3. Rhythmic Patterns in Poetry

Three important terms to keep in mind as you study poetry of this period include

the following:

Rhyme Scheme: a pattern of similar sounds in words (in poetry)

Meter—the regular repetition of a rhythmic unit in a line of poetry

Foot—a unit of meter consisting of one stressed syllable and one or two

unstressed syllables

Iambic pentameter—a type of meter in which the line is made up of five feet,

each consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

I met a traveler from an antique land.

4.

Literary DevicesSymbol: A symbol is a person, place, object, or activity that stands for something

beyond itself. A heart, for example, is a symbol frequently used to stand for love.

Imagery: Imagery is the use of words and phrases that create vivid sensory

experiences for the reader. The majority of images are visual, but imagery may

also appeal to the senses of smell, hearing, taste, and touch.

Metaphor: Comparing things that are basically unalike to make the reader see

them as similar in some ways:

a. Stated (direct) metaphor: stated directly (The thief was a fox. She is a

doll.); metaphors may follow linking verbs such as become or remain (The

boy remained a rock for his family during the tragedy.)

b. Implied metaphor: the connection between two things is suggested rather

than stated (He strutted across the room.)

c.

Extended metaphor: a comparison developed in detail, i.e., throughout anentire poem

Simile: a comparison of things that are basically unalike by using the words like,

as, as if , than, such as, or resembles. "I wandered lonely as a cloud," uses a simile to

add deeper meaning to the speaker's experience. She eats like a bird.

Apostrophe: An apostrophe is a figure of speech in which an object, an abstract

quality, or an absent or imaginary person is addressed directly, as if present and

able to understand.



Personification: technique in which an author gives human characteristics to

nonhuman things (animals, natural forces, objects, ideas, etc.); examples are Jack

Frost, Old Man Winter , Mother Nature, etc.; sentences with personification are as

follows: The angry sky thundered overhead. The land was glad rain finally

came. The waves danced upon the beach. The tree stood tall like an old warrior.

Speaker(s): The speaker in a poem—the voice that "talks" to the reader — is not

necessarily the voice of the poet; poets sometimes create a speaker other than

themselves in order to achieve a particular effect.

Mood: The feeling or atmosphere that a writer creates for the reader is referred

to as mood. One element that contributes to the mood of a poem is imagery —

the words and phrases that re-create sensory experiences for the reader.Sound Devices: Sound devices may draw attention to words a writer wants to

emphasize, connect words, or create special moods.

Onomatopoeia: the use of a word that suggests the sound it makes; creates clear

sound images and helps a writer draw attention to certain words; examples

include buzz, pop, hiss, moo, hum, murmur , crackle, crunch, and gurgle.

Alliteration: the repetition of initial (first) consonant letters or sounds in word

groups; term comes from the Latin word allitera, meaning "adding letters";

examples include wild and wooly, sweet sixteen, through thick and thin, dime a

dozen, and big blue balloon; recognized by sound, not by spelling (know and nail

alliterate, and know and key do not).

Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound within words —for example, the

repetition of the long e sound in the following line: When I have fears that I

may cease to be. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds within and at the ends of

words, like that of the st and z sounds in this line: Thou watchest the last

oozings hours by hours.

Renaissance Period

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