Part I The Anglo-Saxon period
1. Brief history
After the withdrawal of Roman troops, Anglo-Saxons and Jutes arrived in England from northern Germany and Denmark in about 5th century. They were different tribes of Teutons(Germanic people). England, the name comes from Angle-land. The Angles is an important Teutonic (Germanic) tribe. The language they spoke is called old English.
2. Anglo-Saxon literature
Writings in old English, c.650—1150. Old English poetry is heroic, drawing on Germanic myth and custom, or Christian. Nearly all of it survives in only four manuscripts, and it is the literature closest to Germanic oral sources.
Widsith (7th cent.) or The Traveler’s Song is an early example. The epic Beowulf, based
on oral sagas, survives in an 8th century Christian version. The elegiac undercurrent in
Beowulf is central to such poems as Deor, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer, which contrast a
happy past with a desolate present. Heroic battles are the theme of The Battle of Maldon and
The Battle of Brunanburh. Of the Christian poets, Caedmon and Cynewulf are known by
reputation. The Dream of the Rood is the earliest dream vision poem in English.
Old English verse is alliterative and unrhymed. Prose was written in Latin before King Alfred, who had many works translated. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued for several centuries from Caesar’s conquest to some time after Alfred’s death. Two preeminent prose writers were Aelfric and Wulfstan, authors of homiletic sermons.
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3. Alfred 871-899, the Saxon king, was a great warrior and scholar. He fought Danish Viking invaders and staved them off the kingdom. He used the peace he had won to concentrate on his work of founding schools to improve education, and restoring monasteries to invigorate religious life. Famous scholars came to Alfred’s court at Winchester to help him to translate from Latin the first books to be written in the English language. Alfred also had the chance to frame laws and so civilize his subjects. The most important law by him was, “Do not to others what you would not have them do to you.”
4. The song of Beowulf
It is an English epic reflecting the features of the tribal society of ancient times. It has over 3000 lines, divided into two parts with an interpolation between the two. The whole song is essentially pagan in spirit and matter, while the interpolation is obviously an addition made by the Christian who copied it.
5. The subject matter
It recounts Beowulf’s struggle with the water monster Grendel and Grendel’s mother; the hero’s victory in old age over a dragon; and his death and funeral. The poem in alliterative verse fuses Christian elements with a picture of old Germanic life.
6. Alliteration
repetition of the first sound or letter of a succession of words. e.g. safe and sound.
7. Theme
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Thematically the poem presents a vivid picture of how the primitive people wage heroic struggle against the hostile forces of the natural world under a wise and mighty leader. The poem is an example of the mingling of nature myths and heroic legends. For instance, the battle between Beowulf and the dragon symbolically represents that phase of Winter and Summer myth in which the Summer God, here embodied by Beowulf, fights his last battle against the Winter Dragon in order to rescue the treasures of earth, that is, the golden corn and ruddy fruits. Having given them back to men, Beowulf himself dies of the Winter’s breath.
8. Artistic features of Old English poetry
(1) Old English poetry is composed without rhyme. Its lines are usually divided into two halves with a pause in between, and each half line has two strongly stressed syllables which give musical effects to the poem with an indeterminate number of unstressed ones.
(2) Almost all this poetry is strongly characterized with structural alliteration.
(3) To set the verse apart from normal speech and mark it out as a special mode of discourse, it makes use of vivid poetic diction and parallel expressions for a single idea, especially those of compound words, i.e. a word picture, such as : “swan-road” or “whale-path”
(sea);
“sea-wood”
or
“wave-floater”(ship);
“shield-bearer,”
“battle-hero” or “spear-fighter” (soldier),etc. All these qualities are exemplified in the epic poem Beowulf.
9. Features of Old English prose
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Lucid & powerful, be it history, romantic adventure, righteous indignation or the subtleties of theological argument.
The lucid and powerful homilies of Aelfric and Wulfstan (d. 1023) reveal a complete mastery of the medium and show that southern England had an advanced prose literature in Europe.
Part II The Anglo-Norman Period
1. William Langland and his Piers the Plowman
William Langland 1330?—1400? A clerk in London, was born probably in Worcestershire, the son of a poor freeman, and in his early life lived in the fields as a shepherd. Later he went to London with his wife and children, getting a hungry living as clerk in the church by singing masses for the dead. Gazing through the gay surface of London life, he came to see the wretchedness and corruption beneath; and all that he thought and felt he put into his poem. Piers Plowman was his life’s work. It exists in three versions. Considered one of the greatest English poems of medieval times, this work bitterly satirizes corruption among the clergy and the secular authorities, and upholds the dignity and value of labor, personified by Piers Plowman.
It is written in a style of imaginative vigor and clarity with strong alliterations. The poem takes the form of a dream vision---a favorite device of medieval poetry---describing a panorama of medieval society. Within the dream are woven recountings of a series of journeys in the search for truth--- that is, the love of God.
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It is a long poem of over 7,000 lines. The author adopts the unrhymed alliterative versification with its varying number of syllables but constant number of stresses. He further elaborates the texture of the poem with repeated words, internal assonance (e.g. Twinkle, twinkle, little star,/ How I wonder what you are.) and rhyme, which contributes to the rhetorical effect. He writes in a tradition characterized by structural expansiveness, digression and inconclusiveness. One fascination of Langland’s verse is the number of voices it accommodates, from the cries of street vendors and the exclamations of the poor to the honeyed words of Lady Meed and the eloquence of moral lawyers. His social satire and religious allegory also ally him with later writers in the puritan tradition such as John Milton and John Bunyan.
2. Sir Thomas Mallory and his Le Morte d’Arthur ca. 1405—1471
Towards the close of the 14th century, English prose was becoming a natural medium for conveying ideas. The most enduring and magnificent prose work of this era however is the le Mort d’Arthur of sir Thomas Malory. Originally it is The Book of King Arthur and His Knights
of the Round Table, consisting of 8 romances. Malory was a knight and completed his work in 1470. In subject matter the book belongs to the medieval age; but Malory himself, with his desire to preserve the literary monuments of the past, belongs to the Renaissance. It is a kind of final summing-up of Arthurian legend, a body of highly diverse narrative materials built up from 12th to 15th cent. in the 21 books. Malory links up the various threads of the legend, which include the stories about Merlin, Guinevere, his knights of the Round Table and about the quest for the Holy Grail.
Malory creates a wide-ranging literary style appropriate to a 15th-century gentlemen, a style that is at once colloquial, polished and resonant. Despite the great variety of incident
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and the complications of plot in his work, the dominant theme is the need to sacrifice individual desire for the sake of national unity and religious salvation, the latter of which is envisioned in terms of the dreamlike but intense mystical symbolism of the Holy Grail.
3. Popular ballads
(1) Origin of the ballads
The word “ballad” comes from the old French, referring to a song accompanying a dance. It is thought that ballads were originally oral forms of verse to be sung or recited by the unlettered people. It belongs to the early periods of primitive societies such as that of the English-Scottish border region before written literature was highly developed.
(2) Stylistic features of the ballads
a. oral nature----simple, colloquial,
b. Couplets usually heroic*, or quatrains, rhyming abcb, with the first and third lines carrying 4 accented syllables and the second and fourth carrying 3. There are great variations in the number of unstressed syllables.
c. Story that deals with the culminating incident or climax of a plot. So usually the hero would die of his wound and the heroine of her sorrow.
d. They are intensely dramatic, involving an explosive situation, highly volatile characters and a short time span.
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e. Use of refrains and repetitions.
(3) Subjects of the ballads.
a. “border ballads” narrating incidents on the English-Scottish border, bloody battles fought on the border of England and Scotland, e.g. Chevy Chase The Battle of Otterburn both refer to the same battle fought in 1388 between the Scots and the English.
b. the series of 37 ballads of different lengths in Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, telling the wonderful deeds of Robin Hood, the outlaw and his men.
c. love theme.
d. sea ballads. e.g. Sir Patrick Spens*
Sir Patrick Spens is a great ballad that derives most of its power from counterpoint. In “Sir Patrick Spens”, the king’s wine is contrasted with the water swallowed by the sailors he sends to the sea. The reluctance of the Scottish nobles to wet their feet is set against the description of their bodies sinking underneath their hats; the image of men lost at sea is set against the elegant ladies safe on shore.
*heroic couplet e.g. Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of god to man.
Part III The Age of Chaucer 1350—1400
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1. history of the period
Two great movements may be noted in the complex life of England during the fourteenth century. The first is political, and culminates in the reign of Edward III. It shows the growth of the English national spirit following the victories of Edward and the Black Prince on French soil, during the hundred years’ war. In the rush of this great national movement, separating England from the political ties of France and, to a less degree, from ecclesiastical bondage to Rome, the mutual distrust and jealousy which had divided nobles and commons were momentarily swept aside by a wave of patriotic enthusiasm. The French language lost its official prestige, and English became the speech not only of the common people but of courts and Parliament as well.
The second movement is social; it falls largely within the reign of Edward’s successor, Richard II, and marks the growing discontent with the contrast between luxury and poverty, between the idle wealthy classes and the overtaxed peasants.
Aside from these two movements, the age was one of unusual stir and progress. Chivalry was in its Indian summer. Trade and its resultant wealth and luxury were increasing enormously. Following trade, the English began to be a conquering and colonizing people.
In 1347, the Black Death (bubonic plague) ravaged Europe and England, leaving one third of the population dead.
2. five writers of the age
a.W. Langland Piers the Plowman voicing the social discontent, preaching the equality 第 8 页 共 51 页
of men and dignity of labor.
b. Wyclif c. 1328-1384, greatest of English religious reformers, giving the Gospel to the people in their own tongue. He brought about Wyclif Bible, the first English translation of the Latin Bible.
c. Gower 1330?-1408, English poet, a friend of Chaucer, criticizing this vigorous life. His
Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession) is a 33,000-line Middle English poem, a
collection of stories illustrating the Seven Deadly sins.
d. Mandeville the traveler, romancing about the wonders to be seen abroad. ( These stories fascinated Western Europeans, as did the more reliable stories of Marco Polo. One way of understanding Western interest in the rest of the world is to see the process by which interest became research, research became knowledge, and knowledge became power. By the time Europe was able to expand in the 16th century and later, it was far better equipped to understand, and if necessary undermine, other cultures than other cultures were to understand Europe.)(This is taken from the internet)
e. Chaucer, scholar, traveler, business man, courtier, sharing in all the stirring life of his times, and reflecting it in literature as no other but Shakespeare has ever done. Outside of England the greatest literary influence of the age was that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose works, then at the summit of their influence in Italy, profoundly affected the literature of all Europe.
3. life of Chaucer and his career (ca. 1343-1400)
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He was son of wealthy wine merchant in London. While young he served as a page in the royal household. At 19, he served with the English army in France, where he was taken prisoner and later ransomed by the king. His marriage to Philippa related him to Prince John of Gaunt, who later became his patron. In 1367, he entered the service of King Edward III and was sent as the king’s emissary to France and Italy, which brought him into direct contact with French and Italian writers. He also held various positions in the home government: controller of customs, justice of the peace, member of Parliament, clerk of the king’s works, and deputy forester for a royal forest. He died while still at work on his poetry and was buried in Westminster Abbey in London.
his poetry is generally divided into three periods: the French, the Italian and mature (English).
First period: His early poetry was in the artificial manner of the great French poets; dream visions and allegories. His earliest work, Romaunt of the Rose is a free translation of a 13th-century French poem, The Roman de la Rose. The Book of the Duchess is an elegy for John of Gaunt’s first wife, Blanche, who died in 1369. In a dream the poet encounters a grieving knight in black (Gaunt) who movingly recounts his love and loss of “good fair White” (Blanch). The theme (praising the deceased and consoling the bereaved) and the form (dream and allegory) are conventional.
Second period: His journey to Italy in 1372 exerted a profound influence on his literary development. During this period, he mainly wrote three longer poems. The House of Fame, which gives a humorous account of the poet’s frustrating journey in the claws of a giant golden eagle to the palace of the goddess Fame, may be read as a light-hearted imitation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Troilus and Criseyde was adapted from Boccaccio’s The
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Love-Stricken. Later, Henryson, Shakespeare and Dryden also took the subject and rewrote it. It was also Boccaccio who provided the source for his lovely, cryptic love vision, The Parliament of Fowls, in which he witnesses an inconclusive debate about love among the different classes of birds. The Legend of Good Women, another love vision about faithful women who died for love.
Third period: His masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales, one of the most famous works in all literature, fills the third or English period of his life. The plan of the work is magnificent: to represent the wide sweep of English life by gathering a motley company together and letting each class of society tell its own favorite stories. Though the great work was never finished, he succeeded in his purpose so well that in the Canterbury Tales, he has given us a picture of contemporary English life, its work and play, its deeds and dreams, its fun and sympathy and hearty joy of living, such as no other single work of literature has ever equaled.
4. plan of Canterbury Tales
Opposite old London, at the southern end of London Bridge, once stood the Tabard Inn of Southwark. This Southwark was the point of departure of all travel to the south of England, especially of those pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. A group of pilgrims set out together with the “Jolly innkeeper”, Harry Baily, who becomes their “governor” and proposes that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two more on the way back. The pilgrims being 32 in all, the total number of tales, according to Chaucer’s plan, was to exceed that of Boccaccio’s Decameron, but the author failed to carry out his plan and only 24 tales were written.
5. form of Chaucer’s poetry
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There are three principal meters to be found in Chaucer’s verse.
a. In Canterbury Tales he uses heroic couplets. Lines of ten syllables and five accents each, and the lines run in couplets:
His eyen twinkled in his heed aright
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.
b. In Troilus and Criseyde he uses rime royal, which is a stanza of seven lines of iambic pentameter riming ababbcc.
c. In the Book of the Duchesse he uses the eight-syllable line with four accents, the lines riming in couplets.
6. his contribution to English literature.
His claim upon English gratitude is twofold:
First, for discovering the music that is in English speech.
Second, for his influence in fixing the Midland dialect as the literary language of England.
Part IV Renaissance
1. Renaissance (Fr. = rebirth), term used to describe the rich development of Western civilization that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. In Italy the
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Renaissance emerged by the 14th century and reached its height in the 15th and 16th century; elsewhere in Europe it may be dated from the 15th to the mid-17th century. In outlook the Renaissance brought new importance to individual expression, self-consciousness,
（human values and capabilities are the central focus, emphasis on secular studies, a conscious return to classical ideals and forms, and a rejection of medieval religious authority.）
and worldly experience;
(to exalt human nature, human beings are glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection. By emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. They also expressed their rebellious spirit against the tyranny of feudal rule and ecclesiastical domination.)
culturally it was a time of brilliant accomplishments in scholarship, literature, science,
(Copernicus 1473-1543, Galileo 1564-1642. Greeks advanced medical knowledge in anatomy and physiology, diet, exercise and other areas, and provided the Hippocratic oath. Romans improved public health through their sophisticated sanitation facilities. English physician William Harvey demonstrated circulation of blood and the role of heart as a pump. Caxton, the first British printer. The age of learning was helped by the invention of movable metal type which made printed material more widely available. The invention of firearms was sweeping away the age of heavily-armed knight, the main stay of private armies kept by
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medieval barons.)
and the arts. More generally, it was an era of emerging nation-states and exploration,
(Venturesome seamen, chiefly the Portuguese, were exploring the oceans outside Europe for the first time. Columbus discovered America and was once the admiral and governor of all new lands, he also discovered Puerto Rico, Venezuela, etc. Except in very remote areas, it was becoming less and less necessary for people to live in castles or walled towns. English sailors were challenging the Spaniards in the new rich Spanish colonies in America. Seamen like the famous Francis Drake, John Hawkings or Martin Frobisher made daring raids on the Spaniards and captured their treasure ships. Drake became the first Englishman to sail round the world1577-1580 and John Hawkins designed and built ships in Devon shipyards which were the best and fastest galleons in the world.)
and the beginning of a revolution in commerce.
(a revolution in commerce=mercantilism, an economic policy of the major trading nations during the 16th century, 17th, and 18th cent., based on the premise that national wealth and power were best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in return. State action, an essential feature of the mercantile system, was used to accomplish its purposes—to sell more than it bought in order to accumulate bullion and raw materials. Under a mercantile policy, a government exercised much control over economic life by regulating production, encouraging foreign trade, levying duties on imports to gain revenue, making treaties to obtain exclusive trading privileges, and exploiting the commerce of the colonies. In England, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Oliver Cromwell pursued mercantilist policies. Superseding the medieval feudal organization in Western Europe, mercantilism did not
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decline until the coming of the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850 and the doctrine of Laissez Faire.)
Mercantilism tariff import quota )
(1) In Italy: The Renaissance first appeared in Italy, where relative political stability, economic expansion, wide contact with other cultures and a flourishing urban civilization provided the background for a new view of the world. Fine libraries and learned academies and universities flourished. Scholars, poets, craftsmen, and artists were supported by such great patrons as the Medici family of Florence, Popes Julius II and Leo X, the doges of Venice, and the Sforza family of Milan. The increased interest in and knowledge of the classical age was reflected in the works of Petrarch, and the intellectual orientation was toward a secular humanism, exemplified by the works of Lorenzo Valla.
(Lorenzo Valla, c. 1407-1457. Italian humanist. At 26 he wrote On Pleasure, an analysis of pleasure and a humanistic condemnation of scholasticism. His masterpiece is On the Elegance of the Latin Language, a brilliant and influential philological defense of classical
Latin.)
In literature, the romance of the renaissance was expressed by Boccaccio; Machiavelli provided its most telling political commentary.
(Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Italian political philosopher and statesman. His most famous work, The Prince describes the means by which a leader may gain and maintain power. His “ideal” prince is an amoral and calculating tyrant capable of unifying Italy.)
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The humanist emphasis on the individual was typified in the ideal of the Renaissance man, the man of universal genius, best exemplified by Leonardo Davinci. This ideal also led to the courtier, the ideal gentleman whose behavior was codified by Castiglione.
(Castiglione, 1478-1529, Italian author and statesman. His Book of the Courtier, a treatise on etiquette, social problems, and intellectual accomplishments, contributed to a renaissance ideal of aristocracy embodied in the life of Sir Philip Sidney.)
Humanism in art found expression in a more realistic view of nature, seen in the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, while renaissance architects such as Alberti, Brunelleschi, Bramante, and Michelangelo utilized classical forms.
(2) In France, classicism in literature was displayed by Pirre de Ronsard and Joachim Du Bellay.
(Ronsard 1524?-1585, French renaissance poet, leader of the Pleiade (A group of seven 16th-cent. French poets took the name Pleiade.) They included Ronsard and Du Belley. Their purpose was to encourage the writing of French as against Latin so as to establish a vigorous literary language. They cultivated the use of classical and Italian forms, e.g. the sonnet. Named poet royal, he wrote prolifically, producing poems on many themes, especially patriotism, love and death.)
Rabelais expressed the renaissance sensual vitality.
(3) In Germany: the renaissance interacted closely with the Protestant Reformation and was somewhat more somber.
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(protestant reformation: religious revolution in western Europe in the 16th century. Beginning as a reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church, the reformation ultimately led to freedom of dissent. The movement, and its fruit, Protestantism, has continued to exert influence to the present day, with its emphasis on personal responsibility and individual freedom, its refusal to take authority for granted, its influence in breaking the hold of the church upon life and the consequent secularization of life and attitudes.)
(Protestantism: form of Christian faith and practice that originated with the principles of the reformation. The term, used in many senses, applies to Christians not belonging to the Roman Catholic church or to an orthodox eastern church. Two distinct branches of Protestantism grew out of the reformation. The evangelical churches of Scandinavia and Germany were followers of Martin Luther, and the reformed churches in other countries were followers of Calvin and Huldreich Zwingli. A third major branch, Episcopacy, developed in England. But since the Oxford Movement in the 19th cent. Many Anglicans reject the term because they tend to agree with Roman Catholicism on most doctrinal points except the primacy of the pope.)
(4) In Netherlands: there was Erasmus, the most notable of all the humanists.
(5) In England: Thomas More Francis Bacon William Shakespeare were representatives in learning and literature.
(6) In Spain: Cervantes wrote Don Quixote
(7) In Sweden: Queen Christina, patron of Descartes (French) encouraged scholarship, literature, and the arts at court. (Descartes 1596-1650, French philosopher, mathematician,
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and scientist, founder of analytical geometry, intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge. “I think, therefore I am.”
The renaissance intellectual outlook and its concomitant cultural manifestations were gradually replaced by those of the enlightenment. The term renaissance is now often used to designate the flowering of various civilizations and eras.
2. Renaissance in England
(1) Historical changes
It was a period of the breaking up of feudal relations, agrarian system, chivalry, manorial system, papal dominance and the establishing of the political centralization, money economy, secularization of life, justification of salvation by faith, religious freedom.
Manufactories were developing and the wool trade was rapidly growing. The enclosure of commons drove peasants off their lands and many of them settled in towns.
According to Thomas More, it was a time when “sheep devoured men”.
At the beginning of the 16th century absolute monarchy was formed in England. King Henry VIII broke off with the pope, dissolved all the monasteries and abbeys in the country, confiscated their lands and proclaimed himself head of the English church.
King Henry disbanded the private armies of the feudal barons to strengthen his own rule.
With trade there arose a new class, middle-class, class of bourgeoisie, who were the main
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supporters of the absolute monarchy.
Absolute monarchy in England reached its summit during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1558-1603.
Elizabeth had a natural talent for wise moderate government and Parliament was very strong in her time. She made possible the gradual spread of the new protestant religion, without offending the Catholics too much.
Her court became a center of culture for English musicians, poets, scholars and artists. W. Byrd, Nicholas Hillyarde, Sir Walter Raleigh.
She had talent for inspiring loyalty and had considerable courage. When the English fleet won a great victory against the Armada in 1588, her subjects felt great pride in their country, their navy, and their queen.
This was also a time, too, when England was becoming important in the world, and English sailors were challenging the Spaniards in the new, rich Spanish colonies in America.
The 16th century also saw many uprisings of peasantry who were deprived of their homes and means of subsistence.
Responding to the new interest in learning of all kinds, the queen in 1571 reorganized and chartered the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
3. William Shakespeare 1564—1616
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(1) Writers before Shakespeare 1400-1550
The fifteenth century was an age of preparation, of learning the beginning of science, and of getting acquainted with the great ideals,---the stern law, the profound philosophy, the suggestive mythology, and the noble poetry of the Greeks and Romans. The books worthy of remembrance which appeared in England during this period are as follows:
1)Thomas More’s Utopia written in Latin, translated into all European language speedily, published in 1516 is a powerful and original study of social conditions, unlike anything which had ever appeared in any literature. More learns from a sailor, of a wonderful kingdom of Nowhere, in which all questions of labor, government, society, and religion have been easily settled by simple justice and common sense. In this Utopia we find for the first time, as the foundations of civilized society, the three great words, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, which retained their inspiration through all the violence of the French Revolution and which are still the unrealized ideal of every free government.
2)Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament (1525). William Tyndale c. 1494-1536, made his translation from the original Greek, and later translated parts of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. It was the foundation for the Authorized Version, which appeared nearly a century later, and became the standard for the whole English-speaking race.
3)Wyatt(1503?-1542) and Surrey(1517?-1547)
In Tottel’s Miscellany, the first printed collection of miscellaneous English poems, half of the poems were the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt and of Henry Howard, earl of Surrey. Both together wrote amorous sonnets modeled after the Italians, introducing a new verse form
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which has been a favorite ever since with English poets. Surrey is noted for his translation of two books of Virgil in “strange meter”. The strange meter was the blank verse, which in the hands of Shakespeare and Milton was used to make the world’s masterpieces.
(2) His life
Born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon, son of a small farmer, later a businessman of gloves. At 7 he attended the local grammar school, learned Latin and Greek. He distinguished himself at school because in his younger years he was a school master in the country. There is a legend according to which he had poached upon the lands of a certain Sir Thomas Lucy, a rich landlord and country magistrate. He was caught and severely punished. He avenged himself by composing a satirical ballad. Very soon it became so popular throughout the countryside that wherever Sir Thomas Lucy appeared he was met with the strains of the ballad. Sir Thomas was enraged and redoubled his persecution to such a degree that Shakespeare was compelled to leave Stratford and seek refuge in London.
In 1582 he married a farmer’s daughter Anne Hathaway. A son was born to him, the boy was named Hamnet, obviously after Hamlet, the hero of the tragedy written by Thomas Kyd.
In London he became acquainted with certain theatrical company, became an actor and playwright. Later he became a shareholder of the theater. His activities as a dramatic poet, actor and proprietor lasted till the year 1612 when he retired from the stage and returned to Stratford. He died in 1616.
(3) Dramatic career
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a. First period 1587-1595
His first period of dramatic career was one of the apprenticeships. It is marked by youthfulness and exuberance of imagination, by extravagance of language, and by the frequent use of rimed couplets with his blank verse
Typical works of this period are his early poems, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Richard III.
b. Second period 1595-1600
It is the period of rapid growth and development. The plays show more careful and artistic work, better plots, and a marked increase in knowledge of human nature.
e.g. The Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream ,As you Like it, Henry IV. c. Third period 1600-1607
A period of gloom and depression, from 1600 to 1607, which marks the full maturity of his powers.
The Sonnets with their note of personal disappointment, Twelfth Night, which is Shakespeare’s “farewell to mirth,” and his great tragedies, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar, belong to this period. d. Fourth period 1607—1612
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A period of restored serenity, of calm after storm, which marked the last years of the poet’s literary work.
The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest are the best of his later plays.
Non-dramatic poems
His non-dramatic poetry consists of two long narrative poems and sequence of 154 sonnets. Narrative poems Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece. He borrowed the outline of Venus and Adonis from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but took details from some of the other stories. The poem tells the story of how Venus the Goddess of Love was in love with the handsome boy Adonis and how the latter was killed by a boar while hunting. The poem contains some vivid pictures of amorous Venus and wayward Adonis, a frank eulogy of earthly love, which can be regarded a healthy anti-dote to the asceticism of the Middle Ages.
The Rape of Lucrece is a tragic tale about the chaste Roman dame Lucrece who, after
being raped by the terrible Tarquin, committed suicide and then was revenged. It condemns lust and tyranny and praises healthful love.
4. Sonnets
(1) General introduction to Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets.
154 sonnets are the only direct expression of his own feelings, for his plays are the most impersonal in all literature.
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Among the sonnets, numbers 1-126 are addressed to a young man, beloved of the poet, of superior beauty and rank but of somewhat questionable morals and constancy.
Sonnets 127-152 form a less coherent group. They involve a mistress of the poet, a mysterious “Dark Lady”. The poet’s attitude to her is frankly lustful, with occasional pangs of conscience and feeling of revulsion. The final two sonnets are translations or adaptations of some version of a Greek epigram, and they evidently refer to the hot springs at Bath.
(2) Definition of sonnet:
A poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme. There are two prominent types: the Petrarchan, composed of an octave and a sestet (rhyming abbaabba cdecde/cdccdc/cdedce); and the Shakespearean, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet (rhyming abab cdcd efef gg). Sonnets were highly popular in Renaissance Italy, and thereafter in Spain, Portugal, France, and England. German and English romantics revived the form, which remains popular. Notable sonneteers include, besides Petrarch and Shakespeare, Dante, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Meredith, Edna St. Vincent Millay and W. H. Auden.
e.g. Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser
5. Shakespeare’s place and influence
He holds, by general acclamation, the foremost place in the world’s literature, and his overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to criticize or even to praise him. His genius included all the world of nature and of men. To study nature in his works is like exploring a
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new and beautiful country; to study man in his works is like going into a great city, viewing the motley crowd as one views a great masquerade in which past and present mingle freely and familiarly, as if the dead were all living again. And the marvelous thing, in this masquerade of all sorts and conditions of men, is that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every face, lets us see the man as he is in his own soul, and shows us in each one some germ of good, some “soul of goodness” even in things evil. For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of our own. Good always overcomes evil in the long run; and love, faith, work, and duty are the four elements that in all ages make the world right. To criticize or praise the genius that creates these men and women is to criticize or praise humanity itself.
He influenced many great writers, e.g. Goethe; his influence upon the English language and thought is beyond calculation. Shakespeare and King James Bible are the two great conservators of the English speech. One who habitually reads them finds himself possessed of a style and vocabulary that are beyond criticism. Even those who read no Shakespeare are still unconsciously guided by him, for his thought and expression have so pervaded English life and literature that it is impossible, so long as one speaks the English language, to escape his influence.
Summary of the Age of Elizabeth ( I )
This period is generally regarded as the greatest in the history of English literature. Historically, we note in this age the tremendous impetus received from the Renaissance, from the Reformation, and from the exploration of the New World. It was marked by a strong national spirit, by patriotism, by religious tolerance, by social content, by intellectual progress, and by unbounded enthusiasm.
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Such an age, of thought, feeling, and vigorous action, finds its best expression in the drama; and the wonderful development of the drama, culminating in Shakespeare, is the most significant characteristic of the Elizabethan period. Though the age produced some excellent prose works, it is essentially an age of poetry; and the poetry is remarkable for its variety, its freshness, its youthful and romantic feeling. Both the poetry and drama were permeated by Italian influence, which was dominant in English literature from Chaucer to the Restoration. The literature of this age is often called the literature of the Renaissance, though, the Renaissance itself began much earlier, and for a century and a half added very little to English literary possessions.
In the study of the age we have noted:
1. The non-dramatic poets
The poets who did not write for the stage.
(1) The center of this group is Edmund Spenser whose Shepherd’s Calendar (1579) marked the appearance of the first national poet since Chaucer’s death in 1400. His most famous work is The Faery Queen.
The Shepherd’s Calendar is about his love and his melancholy over the lost love. The themes are generally rural life, nature, love in the fields; and the speakers are shepherds and shepherdesses. It consists of twelve pastoral poems, or eclogues, one for each month of the year.
The Faery Queen. The original plan of the poem included twenty four books, each of
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which was to recount the adventure and triumph of a knight who represented a moral virtue. Spenser completed only six books, celebrating holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy. For The Faery Queen, Spenser invented a new verse form, which has been called since his day the Spenserian stanza. It is in nine lines, eight of five feet each and last of six feet, riming ababbcbcc.
Characteristics of Spenser’s poetry:
1. perfect melody;
2. a rare sense of beauty;
3. a splendid imagination;
4. a lofty moral purity and seriousness;
5. a delicate idealism
(2) minor poets associated with Spenser
1) Thomas Sackville 1536-1608 earl of Dorset and Lord High Treasurer of England. In imitation of Dante’s Inferno, he formed the design of a great poem called The Mirror for Magistrates. He wrote also, in connection with Thomas Norton, first English tragedy, Ferrex and Porrex = Gorboduc 2) Michael Drayton 1563-1631 most voluminous, chief work is Polyolbion, an enormous poem of many thousand couplets, describing the towns, mountains, and rivers of Britain,
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with the interesting legends connected with each. Two other long works Baron’s Wars, Heroic Epistle of England and “Ballad of Agincourt”.
3) George Chapman 1559-1634, wrote chiefly for the stage. His plays, which were for the most part merely poems in dialogue, fell far below the high dramatic standard of his time and are now almost unread. His most famous work is the metrical translation of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. He is also remembered as the finisher of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, in which, apart from the drama, the Renaissance movement is seen at perhaps its highest point in English poetry.
4) Philip Sidney 1554-1586, the ideal gentleman, more interesting as a man than as a writer. His life expresses, better than any single literary work, the two ideals of the age, --- personal honor and national greatness. As a writer, he is known by three principal works, all published after his death. Arcadia is a pastoral romance. Apologie for Poetrie = Defense of Poesie, appeared in answer to a pamphlet by Stephen Gosson called The School of Abuse, in which the poetry of the age and its unbridled pleasure were denounced with puritan thoroughness and conviction. Astrophel and Stella is a collection of songs and sonnets addressed to Lady Penelope Devereux, to whom Sidney had once been betrothed.
2. The rise and development of the drama in England
First the need, then the story, then the play; that seems to be the natural development of the drama in its simplest form. The great deeds of a people are treasured in its literature and later generations represent in play or pantomime certain parts of the story which appeal most powerfully to the imagination. To act a part seems as natural to humanity as to tell a story; and originally the drama is but an old story retold to the eye, a story put into action by
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living performers, who for the moment “make believe” or imagine themselves to be the old heroes.
In Europe, as in Greece, the drama had a distinctly religious origin. The first characters were drawn from the New Testament, and the object of the first plays was to make the church service more impressive, or to emphasize moral lessons by showing the reward of the good and the punishment of the evil doer. In the latter days of the Roman Empire the church found the stage possessed by frightful plays, which debased the morals of a people already fallen too low. So the corrupt drama was driven from the stage, and plays of every kind were forbidden. But mankind loves a spectacle, and soon the church itself provided a substitute for the forbidden plays in the famous Mysteries and Miracles.
(1) Miracle and Mystery plays
In France the name miracle was given to any play representing the lives of the saints, while the mystery represented scenes from the life of Christ. In England this distinction was almost unknown; the name miracle was used indiscriminately for all plays having their origin in the Bible or in the lives of the saints; and the name mystery, to distinguish a certain class of plays, was not used until long after the religious drama had passed away. By the year 1300 the miracles were out of ecclesiastical hands and adopted eagerly by the town guilds.
(2) Morality plays
The second period of drama is shown by the increasing prevalence of the morality plays. In these the characters were allegorical personages, --- life, death, repentance, goodness, love, greed, and other virtues and vices. The morality marks a distinct advance over the
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miracle in that it gave free scope to the imagination for new plots and incidents. Of the known authors of moralities, two of the best are John Skelton, who wrote Magnificence and David Lindsay. They satirize or denounce abuses of church and state, and introduce living personages thinly disguised as allegories; so that the stage first becomes a power in shaping events and correcting abuses.
(3) Interludes
It is impossible to draw any accurate line of distinction between the moralities and interludes. In general we may think of the latter as dramatic scenes, sometimes given at banquets and entertainments where a little fun was wanted. The interludes originated, undoubtedly, in a sense of humor and was raised to the distinct dramatic form known as comedy by Heywood 1497?-1580? The Play of the Weather, The Four P’s
(4) Artistic period of the drama
The artistic is the final stage in the development of the English drama. It differs radically from the other in that its chief purpose is not to point a moral but to represent human life as it is. The first true play in English is the comedy, Ralph Royster Doyster by Nicholas Udall. The story is that of a conceited fop in love with a widow, who is already engaged to another man. Gammer Gurton’s Needle, a domestic comedy, representing the life of the peasant class.
The first English tragedy, Gorboduc, was written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton. It is the first play to be written in blank verse.
(5) Dramatic unities
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In the classic play the so-called dramatic unities of time, place, and action were strictly observed. Time and place must remain the same, the play could represent a period of only a few hours, and whatever action was introduced must take place at the spot where the play began. The severe simplicity of the classical drama seemed only to hamper the exuberant English spirit. The English drama, on the other hand, strove to represent the whole sweep of life in a single play.
(6) Two schools of drama
The university wits generally upheld the classical ideal and ridiculed the crudeness of the new English plays. Sackville, Norton, Sidney were of this class.
Lyly, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, these popular playwrights were against these. They recognized the English love of action and disregarded the dramatic unities in their endeavor to present life as it is.
John Lyly 1554?-1606, known as having developed the pernicious literary style called euphuism. His two prose works Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit; Euphues and His England. The style is affected and overelegant, abounds in odd conceits, and uses hopelessly involved sentences.
Thomas Kyd. Spanish Tragedy, melodrama of passion, copied by Marlow and Shakespeare.
Robert Greene 1558-1592, plays the chief part in the early development of romantic comedy. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
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Christopher Marlowe 1564—1593. In addition to Hero and Leander, he is famous for four dramas, known as one-man type of tragedy, each revolving about one central personality who is consumed by the lust of power. Tamburlaine, is the story of Timur, the Tartar. Faustus is of a scholar who longs for infinite knowledge. The Jew of Malta, is a study of lust for wealth. Edward II, is a tragic study of a king’s weakness and misery.
Marlow is the only dramatist of the time who is ever compared with Shakespeare. When we remember that he died at 29, probably before Shakespeare had produced a single great play, we must wonder what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty; but in dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of woman’s character, in the delicate fancy----in a word, in all that makes a dramatic genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlow simply prepared the way for the master who was to follow.
(7) Variety of the early drama
1) Chronicle plays, founded on historical events and characters. Of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, ten are true chronicle plays of English kings.
2) The domestic plays began with crude home scenes introduced into the miracles and developed in a score of different ways, from the coarse humor of Gammer Gurton’s Needle to the comedy of manners of Jonson and the later dramatists. Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Merry Wives of Windsor belong to this class.
3) The so-called court comedy was marked by elaborate dialogues, jests, retorts, and
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endless plays on words, rather than by action. It was made popular by Lyly’s success, and was imitated in Shakespeare’s “Lylian” comedies, such as Love’s Labour’s Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona 4) Romantic comedy and tragedy suggest the most artistic and finished types of the drama, brought to perfection in The Merchant of Venice , Romeo and Juliet , The Tempest .
5) a. classical plays, favored by cultivated audiences.
b. melodrama, favorite of the groundlings.
c. tragedy of blood, such as Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth.
3. Conclusion: Shakespeare is the only dramatist whose plays cover the whole range of the drama. He raised the drama from a blundering experiment to a perfection of form and expression which has never since been rivaled.
Summary of the Age of Elizabeth (II)
1. Shakespeare’s successors.
(1) Ben Jonson 1573?—1637
His life: son of an educated gentleman who was thrown into prison by Queen Mary, whose property was confiscated. From his mother he received certain strong characteristics. His father died before he was born. His mother married a bricklayer. He may have studied in Cambridge for a short time, but his stepfather soon sent him to learn the bricklayer’s trade.
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He ran away from this, and went with the English army to fight Spaniards in the Low Countries. There he fought a duel with one of the enemy’s soldiers. He killed the man. Then he became an actor and reviser of old plays. He killed an actor in a duel and only escaped hanging by pleading “benefit of clergy”, but he lost all his poor goods and was branded for life on his left thumb. Jonson’s masques won him royal favor, was made poet laureate.
With his great learning, ability and commanding position as poet laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries and the romantic tendency of the age. He fought bravely for two things---- to restore the classic form of the drama and to keep the stage from its downward course. Apparently he failed. Nevertheless his influence lived and grew more powerful till, aided largely by French influence, it resulted in the so-called classicism of the eighteenth century.
His work is in strong contrast with that of Shakespeare. Alone he fought against the romantic tendency of the age, and to restore the classic standards. Thus the whole action of his drama usually covers only a few hours, or a single day. He never takes liberties with historical facts, as Shakespeare does, but is accurate to the smallest detail. His dramas abound in classical learning, are carefully and logically constructed, and comedy and tragedy are kept apart, instead of crowding each other as they do in Shakespeare and in life. In one respect his comedies are worthy of careful reading, --- they are intensely realistic, presenting men and women of the time exactly as they were. From a few of Jonson’s scenes we can understand---better than from all the plays of Shakespeare---how men talked and acted during the Age of Elizabeth.
His works:
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His first comedy: Every Man in His Humor is a key to all his dramas. The word “humor” in his age stood for some characteristic whim or quality of society. He gives to his leading character some prominent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the most characteristic feature of a face, and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities are lost sight of. It is the first of three satires. Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city. The second, Cynthia’s Revels, satirizes the humors of the court; while the third, The Poetaster, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries, was leveled at the false standards of the poets of the age.
Three best known comedies: Volpone= The Fox The Alchemist, The Silent Woman
Volpone is a merciless analysis of a man governed by love of money. Alchemist is a study of quackery on one side
and of gullibility on the other, founded on the medieval idea of the philosopher’s stone. The Silent Woman is a
prose comedy abounding in fun and unexpected situations.
His tragedies: Sejanus Catiline
His masques: The Satyr Masque of Blackness Masque of Beauty etc.
masque: courtly form of dramatic spectacle popular in 17th-cent. England. Characterized by the use of masks and
mingling of actors and spectators, it employed pastoral and mythological themes, with
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an emphasis on music and
dance. The foremost writer of masques was Ben Jonson.
(2) John Webster 1580?—1634
His extraordinary powers of expression rank him with Shakespeare; but his talent seems to have been largely devoted to the blood-and-thunder play begun by Marlowe. His two best known plays are The White Devil, (1612) The Duchess of Malfi (1623).
(3) Thomas Middleton 1570? --- 1627
best known by two plays.
The Changeling tragicomedy Women Beware Women tragedy
(4) Thomas Heywood 1580? — 1650?
Wrote for market, 220 plays. Good work was impossible if one writes for market.
His best: A woman Killed with Kindness, The Fair Maid of the West
(5) Thomas Dekker 1570---?
His works show happy and sunny nature, pleasant and good to meet. The Shoemakers’ Holiday, a humorous study of plain working people.
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2. The prose writers
(1) Francis Bacon 1561—1626
The most notable prose writer of the Elizabethan period.
His life: In him we see one of those complex and contradictory natures which are the despair of the biographer. If the writer be an admirer of Bacon, he finds too much that he must excuse or pass over in silence; and if he takes his stand on the law to condemn the avarice and dishonesty of his subject, he finds enough moral courage and nobility to make him question the justice of his own judgment. Ben Jonson thought highly of him, but Hallam not. On one side he is the politician, cold, calculating, selfish, and on the other the literary and scientific man with an impressive devotion to truth for its own great sake; here a man using questionable means to advance his own interests, and there a man seeking with zeal and endless labor to penetrate the secret ways of nature. Bacon was apparently one of those double natures that only God is competent to judge, because of the strange mixture of intellectual strength and moral weakness that is in them.
He was son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and learned Ann Cook, sister-in-law to Lord Burleigh, greatest of the queen’s statesmen. At 12 he went to Cambridge, but left it after two years, declaring the whole plan of education to be radically wrong, and the system of Aristotle to be a childish delusion. Next year, in order to continue his education he accompanied the English ambassador to France, where he studied statistics and diplomacy. He then took up the study of law and was admitted to the bar in 1582. He wrote the tract “On the Greatest Birth of Time” which was a plea for his inductive system of philosophy, reasoning from many facts to one law, rather than from an assumed law to
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particular facts, which was the deductive method. In his famous plea for progress he demanded three things: the free investigation of nature, the discovery of facts instead of theories, the verification of results by experiments rather than by argument. In our day these are the A, B, C of science, but in Bacon’s time they seemed revolutionary. He devoted himself to Essex, the young and dangerous favorite of the queen, won his friendship, and then used him skillfully to better his own position. When the earl was tried for treason it was partly through Bacon’s efforts that he was convicted and beheaded. During Elizabeth’s reign Bacon had sought repeatedly for high office, but had been blocked by Burleigh and perhaps also by the queen’s own shrewdness in judging men. With the advent of James I (1603) he devoted himself to the new ruler and rose rapidly in favor. He was knighted and soon afterwards married a rich wife. In 1613 he was made attorney-general, and speedily made enemies by using the office to increase his personal ends. In 1617 he was appointed to his father’s office, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and next year to the high office of Lord Chancellor. When Parliament assembled in 1621, Bacon was accused of accepting bribes, political corruption. He was deprived of office, sentenced to pay the fine of 40,000 pounds, to be imprisoned. Though the imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was largely remitted, his hopes and schemes for political honors were ended. In the spring of 1626, while driving in a snowstorm, it occurred to him that snow might be used as a preservative instead of salt. He stopped at the first house, bought a fowl, and proceeded to test his theory. The experiment chilled him, and he died soon after from the effects of his exposure.
His works: Instauratio Magna (Latin) = The Great Institution of True Philosophy, but he completed only two parts: Advancement of Learning (1605); Novum Organum (1620, Latin)= New Instrument. The object was to bring practical results to all the people.
Essays (English), marvelous, terse, pithy, packed with thought.
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The New Atlantis is a kind of scientific novel describing another Utopia as seen by Bacon.
His place and work
One can’t read his works without becoming conscious of two things, --- a perennial freshness, and an intellectual power which marks him as one of the great minds of the world.
In an age when men were busy with romance and philosophy, he insisted that the first object of education is to make a man familiar with his natural environment; from books he turned to men; from theory to fact, from philosophy to nature,--- and that is perhaps his greatest contribution to life and literature.
(2) Sir Walter Raleigh 1552?---1618
His life is an almost incomprehensible mixture of the poet, scholar, and adventurer; now leading an expedition into the unmapped wilds of the New World, capturing the gold-laden Spanish galleons and now writing history and poetry. He is the restless spirits of the Elizabethan Age personified. His chief prose works are: Discovery of Guiana, History of the World.
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could advise thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the star-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!”
(3) Thomas North 1535?---1601?
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Translator of The Parallel Lives by Plutarch A.D. 46?—c. 120, Greek essayist and biographer. The Parallel Lives are biographies of Greeks and Romans. North’s translation (1579) profoundly affected English literature, e.g., supplying the material for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra The Puritan Age
1. The half century between 1625 and 1675 is called the Puritan period for two reasons: first, because Puritan standards prevailed for a time in England; and second, because the greatest literary figure during all these years was the Puritan, John Milton. Historically the age was one of tremendous conflict. The Puritan struggled for righteousness and liberty, and because he prevailed, the age is one of moral and political revolution. In his struggle for liberty the Puritan overthrew the monarchy, beheaded Charles I, and established the Commonwealth under Cromwell. The Commonwealth lasted but a few years, and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 is often put as the end of the Puritan period. The age has no distinct limits, but overlaps with the Elizabethan period on one side, and the Restoration period on the other.
The age produced many writers, a few immortal books, and one of the world’s great literary leaders. The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and the diversity is due to the breaking up of the ideals of political and religious unity. This literature differs from that of the preceding age in three marked ways: 1. it has no unity of spirit, as in the days of Elizabeth, resulting from the patriotic enthusiasm of all classes. 2. In contrast with the hopefulness and vigor of Elizabethan writings, much of the literature of this period is somber in character; it saddens rather than inspires. 3. It has lost romantic impulse of youth, and become critical and intellectual; it makes us think, rather than feel deeply.
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2. Puritanism, in the 16th and 17th cent., a movement for reform in the Church of England that had a profound influence on the social, political, ethical and theological ideas in England and America. Originating in the reign of Elizabeth I, the movement opposed the ecclesiastical establishment and aimed at purifying the church---hence the name Puritan. Many Puritans sided with the parliamentary party in the English Civil War and held great power between 1640 and 1660. They were cast out of the Church of England after the Restoration. In America the early New England settlements were Puritan in origin and theocratic in nature. The spirit of Puritanism long persisted there, and the idea of congregational democratic government was carried into the political life of the state as a source of modern democracy. It had two chief objects: the first was personal righteousness; the second was civil and religious liberty. In other words, it aimed to make men honest and free.
3. Literature of the Puritan period
(1) The transition poets=Jacobean poets.
They are called so, because they show clearly the changing standards of the age. Of whom Samuel Daniel 1562-1619 is chief. He is interesting for two reasons,---for his use of the artificial sonnet, and for his literary desertion of Spenser as a model. Delia, “Complaint of Rosamond”, “Civil Wars”.
(2) The song writers Thomas Campion 1567? --- 1619 Nicholas Breton 1545? ---1626? Lyric poets of a mixture of the Elizabethan and Puritan standards. They sing of sacred and profane love with the same zest. Development of music and French influence.
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(3) The Spenserian poets
Giles Fletcher 1588? ---1623 a follower of Spenser in the noble simplicity and majesty of his lines, suggestive of Milton. “Christ’s Victory and Triumph”
George Wither 1588---1667 covers two periods. Hymns and Songs of the Church, varied life, dull poetry, epitome of the age.
(4) The Cavalier poets
gallant, opposite to Puritan who is serious and rational. Write songs generally in lighter vein, gay, trivial, often licentious, but can’t altogether escape the tremendous seriousness of Puritanism.
Herrick, John Suckling, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew,
(5) The metaphysical poets
The name given by Dr. Johnson in derision, because of the fantastic form of Donne’s poetry, is often applied to all minor poets of the Puritan age. Of all these poets, we can consider here only Donne and Herbert, who in different ways are the types of revolt against earlier forms and standards of poetry. In feeling and imagery both are poets of a high order, but in style and expression they are the leaders of the fantastic school whose influence largely dominated poetry during the half century of the Puritan period.
The metaphysical poetry
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The term is commonly used to designate the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. With a rebellious spirit, they tried to break away from the conventional fashion of Elizabethan love poetry, in particular the Petrarchan tradition, which is full of refined language, polished rhyming schemes and eulogy to ideal love. They favored for a more colloquial language and tone, a tightness of expression, and the single-minded working out of a theme or argument. Their tendency toward logical reasoning of the things, psychological analysis of the emotions of love and religion, their fondness of the novel and shocking, their use of the metaphysical conceit, and their ignoring of the conventional metric devices resulted frequently in obscurity, rough verse, and strained imagery. Their poetry is more realistic with daily-used language, rough excess in poetic measure, with paradox or contrast to avoid smoothness and plainness. They also look for a connection between their emotion and mental concepts. The immediacy and intensity of the emotional appeal to the reader does not rule out intellectual subtlety. Since John Donne links up a wide range of ideas, explores a complex attitude of the mind, and uses his wit and ingenious conceits to put human experiences into poetry, he is generally regarded as the leading figure of this school. Other members include George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell and Abraham Cowley. They greatly influenced 2oth-cent. poetry.
John Donne 1573—1631
Life:
Son of a rich iron merchant. On his father’s side he came from an old Welsh family, and on his mother’s side from the Heywood and Sir Thomas More’s family. Both families were catholic, and in his early life persecution was brought near; for his brother died in prison for harboring a proscribed priest, and his own education could not be continued in Oxford and
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Cambridge because of religion. He studied law and was investigating the philosophic grounds of all faith. Gradually he left the church in which he was born, renounced all denominations, and called himself simply Christian. He joined the expedition of Essex. Returning home, he became secretary to Lord Egerton, fell in love with latter’s niece, Anne More, and married her; for which cause he was cast into prison. Later Sir George More forgave the lovers and made an allowance to his daughter. When his wife died her allowance ceased, and Donne was left with seven children in extreme poverty. Then he became a preacher, rose rapidly by sheer intellectual force and genius, and in four years was the greatest of English preachers and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
His poetry:
He threw style and all literary standards to the winds, and precisely for this reason he is forgotten, though his great intellect and genius had marked him as one of those who should do things “worthy to be remembered”. He is good reading to those who exalt feeling and thought above expression. He influenced English literature in the way of boldness and originality.
The Puritan Period (II)
1. John Milton 1608---1674
Shakespeare and Milton are the two figures that tower above the fellowship of men who have made English literature famous. Each is representative of the age that produced him, and together they form a suggestive commentary upon the two forces that rule humanity---the force of impulse and the force of a fixed purpose. Shakespeare is the poet of
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impulse, of the loves, hates, fears, jealousies, and ambitions that swayed the men of his age. Milton is the poet of steadfast will and purpose, who moves like a god amid the fears and hopes and changing impulses of the world, regarding them as trivial and momentary things that can never swerve a great soul from its course.
His life:
His father is said to have turned Puritan while a student in Oxford and to have been disinherited by his family; whereupon he settled in London and prospered greatly as a scrivener, or notary. In character the elder Milton was a rare combination of scholar and business man, a radical puritan in politics and religion, yet a musician and a lover of art and literature. His mother was a woman of refinement and social grace, with a deep interest in religion and in local charities. He grew up in a home which combined the culture of the Renaissance with the piety and moral strength of early Puritanism. His parents took charge of his training, encouraging his natural tastes, teaching him music, stories, the ideals, the poetry. At 12 he was already a scholar in spirit, unable to rest till after midnight because of the joy with which his study was rewarded. He studied at St. Paul’s school for a short time before he went to Cambridge university. While at Cambridge it was the desire of his parents that he should take orders in the Church of England; he refused it. A long period of retirement followed Milton’s withdrawal from the university in 1632. At his father’s country’s home in Horton he gave himself up for six years to solitary reading and study, roaming over the wide fields of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian and English literatures, and studying hard at mathematics, science, theology, and music. From Horton he traveled abroad, through France, Switzerland, and Italy. When the English Civil War broke out he hurried to England. He was called to be Secretary for Foreign Tongues in the new government.
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He had married three times. His first wife, the daughter of a Royalist, tiring of the austere life of a Puritan household, abandoned him for a time. Then she returned to him and soon died. A few years later he married another woman who died after fifteen months. In 1663 he married a third wife, who helped the blind old man to manage his household.
From boyhood the strain on his eyes had grown more and more severe; but even when his sight was threatened he held steadily to his purpose of using his pen in the service of his country. Blindness fell upon him before it was finished, and from 1652 until his death he labored in total darkness.
With the Restoration all his labors and sacrifices for humanity were apparently wasted. He was immediately marked for persecution; he remained for months in hiding; he was reduced to poverty, and his books were burned by the public hangman. His daughters, upon whom he depended in his blindness, rebelled at the task of reading to him and recording his thoughts. He died peacefully in 1674, the most sublime and lonely figure in English literature.
His early poetry: “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” (ode) “L’Allegro”=The Joyous Man “Il Penseroso”=The Thoughtful Man
“The Masque of Comus” Its theme is that virtue and innocence can walk through any peril of this world without permanent harm.
“Lycidas” a pastoral elegy
Sonnets
His prose: Areopagitica=On the Freedom of Press
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His later poetry: Paradise Lost Paradise Regained Blank verse: a succession of unrhymed iambic pentameters.
Paradise Lost: to sum up the argument of the twelve books, as follows:
Book I opens with a statement of the subject, the Fall of Man, and a noble invocation for light and divine guidance.
Book II is a description of the council of evil spirits, of Satan’s consent to undertake the temptation of Adam and Eve, and his journey to the gates of hell, which are guarded by Sin and death.
Book III transports us to Heaven again. God, foreseeing the fall, sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve, so that their disobedience shall be upon their own heads.
Book IV shows us paradise and the innocent state of man.
Book V shows us Eve relating her dream to Adam, and then the morning prayer and the daily employment of our parents.
Book VI shows Raphael tells them of the revolt of the fallen spirits.
Book VII Raphael tells the story of the creation to them.
In Book VIII Adam tells Raphael the story of his own life and of his meeting with Eve.
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Book IX is the story of the temptation by Satan, following the account in Genesis.
Book X records the divine judgment upon Adam and Eve.
Book XI God accepts Adam’s repentance, but condemns him to be banished from paradise.
Book XII Michael’s prophetic vision of the destiny of man.
2. John Bunyan 1628---88
A tinker by trade and a Parliamentary soldier, he became a Baptist lay preacher and wrote to defend his beliefs. Arrested in 1660 for unlicensed preaching, he spent 12 years in prison. There he wrote his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and other books. Imprisoned a second time, he began his masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come. The allegory of Chritian’s journey from the City of
Destruction to the Celestial City, it is written in a prose that unites biblical eloquence with the clarity of common speech.
3. Minor prose writers
a. Thomas Browne 1605---1682
A physician Religio Medici=The Religion of a Physician
It was one of the few religious works which saw in nature a profound revelation.
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b. Jeremy Taylor 1613---1667
The Holy Living and Dying
c. Izaak Walton 1593---1683
The Complete Angler book on fishing
4. summary of the Restoration Period
The chief thing to note in England during the Restoration is the tremendous social reaction from the restrains of Puritanism, which suggests the wide swing of a pendulum from one extreme to the other. For a generation many natural pleasures had been suppressed; now the theaters were reopened, bull and bear baiting revived, and sports, music, dancing,--- a wild delight in the pleasures and vanities of this world replaced that absorption in “otherworldliness” which characterized the extreme of Puritanism.
In literature the change is no less marked. From the Elizabethan drama playwrights turned to coarse, evil scenes, which presently disgusted the people and were driven from the stage. From romance, writers turned to realism; from Italian influence with its exuberance of imagination they turned to France, and learned to repress the emotions, to follow the head rather the heart, and to write in a clear, concise, formal style, according to set rules. Poets turned from the noble blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, from the variety and melody which had characterized English poetry since Chaucer’s day, to the monotonous heroic couplet with its mechanical perfection.
The greatest writer of the age is John Dryden, who established the heroic couplet as the
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prevailing verse form in English poetry, and who developed a new and serviceable prose style suited to the practical needs of the age. The popular ridicule of Puritanism in burlesque and doggerel is best exemplified in Butler’s Hudibras. The realistic tendency, the study of facts and of men as they are, is shown in the work of the Royal Society, in the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, and the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, with their minute pictures of social life. The age was one of transition from the exuberance and vigor of Renaissance literature to the formality and polish of the Augustan Age.
John Dryden 1631—1700
In 1668 became poet laureate
Plays: the heroic Conquest of Granada, comedy Marriage a la Mode
Blank verse masterpiece All for Love
Critical prefaces and discourses: “Essay of Dramatic Poesy”
Thomas Hobbes 1588—1679
Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth. (self-interest is the only
guiding power of humanity, and blind submission to rulers is the only true basis of government).
John Locke 1632—1704
Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
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(a study of nature of human mind and of the origin of ideas) human knowledge is based on experience.
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