The Renaissance: Non-Dramatic Literature to the Death of Spenser

The literary decline was caused by various political reasons. Until the end of
the War of the Roses, early literature and art was strongly connected with
the noble families. As they were destroyed, the country, part of the European
family, started to feel the influence of the movement called Renaissance.
As the critics say, the Renaissance was - an intellectual rebirth-. It was
marked by essential changes as the effort of the individual to free him-self
from the Middle Agess institutions, from the feudalism and the Church, the
main institution at that time, and to preserve his right to live and to express
what he thinks in a free manner.At the same time with this freedom, the man
was starving for a knowledge through scientifc experiment and for achive
enjoyments from art and literature.
One of the main characteristc in the Reinassance, was the desire to know the
world of antiquity which was possible through the recovery of the writings
and work of art of the classical period.
The idea of living the life for its present opportunities of development, had a
strong influence on men. This influence was entitled Humanism and it was
applied to the study of the classic.
Also, the example of perfection from, offered by classical poets, sculptor or
architects become the model around which the new taste for beautiful was
created.
Italy was apprehended as -the teacher of Europe in philosophy, in art, and in
classical scholarship- ( page 61). Apart it, other nations supplied elements of
the new world which was being created. For example, Germany contributed
the invention of priting and took a lead in the movement through which the
consience from the Church should pe emancipated.
In the Early Renaissance, England was standing behind the more premature
nations such as Italy and France. William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre went to
Italy in order to study with the Italian humanists. The main aim of their return
was to give Oxford an international reputation as the home of Greek studies.
To attain this, the Dutch Erasmus came there to study.
The younger generation, these men of the new learning, were the exponents
of the early progress of the Renaissance. All
were seen as reformes.Another stong influence was manifested from the
court. Henry VII as Henry VIII ruled in the spirit of the modern state.They
supported manufactures and trade and all of this increased the wealth of the

country. In this way, the court became the sector for the display of individual
ambition.
Having a particular
lovingness for art, learning and magnifience, Henry
VIII showed the taste of the Renaissance. During his reign, several changes
occured. For example, Italian architect built Hampton Court Palace, known as
one of the best examples of English Renaissance ; also, the German painter,
Hans Holbein, came to England and all the court adopted an luster regarding
the dress, the entertaiments and manners.
One of the most important figures from both the Oxford reformers and from
the court of Henry , is Sir Thimas More. His interest in intellectual movement
never fade and as an example we have his famous Utopia. It can be
understood as an account of imaginary commonwealth in which the scoial
wrongs of Englad under the Tudors were righted. In addition, it can be seen as
an dream of the future, a strongly belief in the improvement of the nation
and of human nature.
One of the main interests presented in the Utopia, is represented by the state
as a work of art. Furthermore, there was an uncommon interest for that time,
the improvement of the men by culture and education.
Paralleled by the development of the prose on the two main subjects : culture
and religion, poetry was also experiencing some modern transformations. The
las poet of the old school of imitators of Chaucer was John Skelton. His
poetry, marked by a rough and short metre, outlined the cry against church
and stare, He affords a contrast to two poets of the close Henry-s region, who
revive the poverty of English with forms imported from Italy. They are Sir
Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard.
Wyatt visited Italy, and also Spain and France. This represents the main
reason why his poems are, for the most part, imitations or translation of form
characteristic of Italian poetry, especially the love sonnet.. Wyatt-s poetry
draw the idea that, even if his poems are realised according to a conventional
from, they are marked by his expression and feeling and personal religious
emotion.

Wyatt-s comapanion poet was Surrey. Comparing to Wyatt he is more

exuberant and has a charm of youth and promise. He also imitates the Italian
love poet but the most significant oof his poems are those of friendship such
as the sonnets to Clere and to Wyatt and the elegy on the Duke of Richmond.
These are full of feeling, are initimate and very personal.
Like Wyatt, he enrichies its sources with foreign forms. The most important is

the blank verse, used in Italy a few years before he realise the translation of
the two books of the Aeneid.
Surrey s greatest virtue is that of identifying the foreign forms which were
applicable to the Ehnlish tongue. Shakespeare sonnet is Surrey-s adaptation.
He did his work very fast, without any labors of experiemennt and this makes
him not a man of letters but a man of action, a soldier.( page 67)
Through the reign of Henry VIII and the greater part of the reign of Elizabeth,
English literature gives a little promise of the outburst which was to mark the
closing years of the country. This expansion was the effect of a sudden
enthusiasm the whole nation shared. After the accession of Elizabeth, in
1558, the force of the Renaissance manifested itselfmore widely. The new
nalns beyond the sea, the many things combined to give individual distincion
to character offered various opportunity for action.The world appeared richer
and wider.
There existed a profound nation feeling that made itself known through the
literature of the time, for example in the choruses of Shakespeare-s Henry V
and later in Spenser s Faerie Queene.
The drama was popular on a large scale because it was the only form in
which the Elizabethan was at all sure of his art. In other kinds of writing he
was an experimenter, a learner.
John Lyly had a superficial cleverness but he was still able to write a
successful account of the culture of the period in Euphue or the Anatomy of
Wit and then in Euphues and his England.
Euphunes, a work of fiction, brings together a succession of conversations,
letters and essays and also treats subjects as love, education, religions and
manners. Regarding the content, it illustrates the main interest of the time in
intellectual development.
One of the most important accomplishments of the Renaissance was the
elevation of social life into a fine art and Euphues highlights this in an ideal
way.The most relevant characteristics of his works are the artificial language,
the arrangement of word in antithesis, the contrast being marked by
alliteration.
In Lyly-s own generation, distiguished for its interest in all sorts of artistic
experiments, we find one of the most forcefulc of the literary dilattantes of
the age, Sir Philip Sidney. His name stand for the greatness of national and
persona ideal which we traditionally associate with the age of Elizabeth. He
wrote for himself and for a few friends and not for the public, that-s why his
writings are less eminent than his life. Published first in pirated editions, his

mainworks were Arcanda in 1590 and Astrophel and Stella in 1591. These are
followed by a collection of songs and sonnets adressed to Lady Penelope
Devereaux and afterward Lady Rich. It is impossible to say if he Sidney
actually loved her or he wrote the sonnets as a literary exercise but, in none
of the many sonnets cycles of the age, execpt Shakespeare-s and Spenser-s
sonnets, we dont find so much the stamp of personality upon it.
Attempting the enrichment of style, Sydney worked as Lyly and, as
consequence, he used the antithesis and other mechanical devices. The real
source of pleasure as we reading his greatest work Arcadia, comes from the
enthusiasm that gives to the book its exuberance, fulness and color.
Sidne and Sir Edward Dyer and others were, in verse as in prose, amateurs
and experimenters. Their main aim was to cultivate Latin metres to the
exclusion of the rhyming verse natural to the English tongue. This strong
desire gave birth to a club called Areopagus.
In 1579, when Stephen Gosson published a pamphlet called The School Of
Abuse in which he attacked the art of the age and especially the drama,
Sidney replied with his Defence of Poesie. This was claimed to be the earliest
piece of English criticism in which Sidney showed his approval of play build
on the Latin model but also, he defended English poetry.
Amateurs like Sidney or like Spenser looked for support to the patronage of
the rich from the Queen. They were men of university education and they
showed the imapatience of social or moral restrain that accompanied the
assertion of individuality in the Renaissance.
Robert Greene began his career imitating Lyly since he wrote Menaphon, a
pastoral tale in which he clearly imitated Sidney-s style. His most individual
work is Greene-s Repentance and A groat-s Worth of Wit. These are inspired
by his own life lessons of morality.
Thomas Nash, the journalist of the group and the author of several
pamphlets, represent the interest of the public such as the authority of the
bishops. He is remembered for his story Jack Wilton. What makes his work
significative are the fictitious references to historical events and persons.
Thomas Lodge, with his romance Rosalynde (1590), is known as the author of
the perfect fiction of the time. He recognized his obligations to Lyle but his
style is less artificial that of his prototype.
These writers represent the eccentric, ornamented, often lossely constructed
profe of the Renaissance (page 76). Their prose will become the typical style
of the seventeent century. Beside them, Richard Hooker is a writer that
stands for intellectual development of literary style. He wrote Ecclesiastical

Polity, four books. He developed a very competent form of English prose in

order to fulfill a the intellectual purpose.
The experiment and studies in foreign form, made by Wyatt and Surrey,
prepared a fruitful period of poetic achievement.So, in non-dramatic poetry
stands Edmund Spenser, the poet of The Faerie Queene. Sir Walter Raleigh
came in 1589 to visit him in Ireland and he was the first who saw the three
books of this work. Under his advice, he went to London in the following year,
to read them to the Queen.Because of his immediate success, the poem was
published. Being busy for some year with his mariage and courtship, he
preserve them in the sonnet seris, the Amoretti and his wedding song
Epithalamion. Coming in London to publish the second three books of The
Faerie Queene, he wrote the Hymn of Heavenly Love and the Hymn of
Heavenly Beauty.
The three places where Spenser spent his life had a strong influence upon his
character and work. At Cambridge, he found the ideas of the Renaissance,
the Plato-s philosophy which influences The Faerie Queene and the Hymns.
Also, Cambridge is the place were he came to know literature of France and
Italy and where he came into contact with the idea put forward but Sidney
and his friends, that English verse should be written according to Lartin rules
of prosody.
During the time he lived there, he wrote The Shepher s Calendar, a series of
twelve pastoral poems or eclogue. The poems contained are characterised by
a variety in metre and by a rusticity of the writing.
In London, Spenser experienced a strong emotion for national life and gained
a broad view of world politics. His living in Ireland stimulated his moral
enthusiasm through the conflict between the English race and opposing
forces. In this context, The Faerie Queene is the ideal morality of the time
and summarise the English race experience at one of the great moments of
its history.
Because Spenser-s and his contemporaries-s main aim was related to the
morality as essential to the greatesr art, The Faerie Queene was the way to
show the character of an ideal knight, in twelve books, eache devoted to one
of the twelve qualities of a perfect chivalry. The first book is given to the Red
Cross Knight, who represents the Holiness, the second to Sir Guyon, or
Temperece; the third to Britomarte or Chastity, the fourth to Cambel and
Triamond, or Friendship; the fifth to Sir Artegall, or Justice; the sicth to Sir
Calidore, or Courtesy.In thir adeventures appears, from time to time, the
perfect knight, Arthur, who is himself in search pf the Faerie Queene.
The allegory is complicated as it needs a political turn, and the characters,
besides representing ideal qualities, refer directly to actual persons. In this

context, Belphobe and Britomarte also represents Elizabeth, Arthur is

Leicester, the false lday Duessa is Mary Queen of Scots.
Even if Spenser chosed as the model of his work the Orlando Furioso of
Ariosto, there are significant difference between them. Both Ariosto and
Spenser deal with chivalry but while Aristoto pictures chivalric actions
because of the dramatic and the excitiment, Spenser belives in it and
because he deals with action not because he wants to, but because he must
to. What is more, Ariosto wrote in ottava rima, in stanzas of eight lines while
Spenser built a complicated stanza of his own. What makes Spenser an
illustrious writer is that he knows to adapt his stanzas to the demands of the
narrative, descriptive and moral poetry.

George Chapman was one of the most beamful literary men of the time.His
name stands for his first important work Ovid-s Banquet of Sense and then
for Hero and Leander. Also, he translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. His great
work was a series of tragedies concerning subjects from the history of France
during the time of Catherine de Medici s influence.
In his works, the greatfullness of Elizabetham poetry tend to obscurity. As a
result, he chose the old English ballad metre for the Iliad and this produce a
monotony in place of Homer-s rapidity and nobility. What is more, Chapman is
indirect and fanciful contrasting the Homer-s direct and simple style.
It is belived that the only long poems of the Elizabethan period which are still
read are Spenser-s Faerie Queene and Marlowe-s and Chapman-s Hero and
lEander. The those day-s poets could not make a distinction between prose or
verse and this is the main reason why the gave verse form not only to
history, but also to politics, geography and science. Their conception about
writing consisted in a distance between the poetic gift and the volume of
unpoetical material.
One of them is Michael Drayton, a man who dedicated himself to history and
whose greatest works is Baron-s Wars. He gained the most fruitful inspiration
from history the proof is Ballad of Agincourt. Dryton is not known for his lyric
spirit but for a descriptive geography of England contained in Polyolbion.
As Drayton did, Samuel Daniel admired the historical muse but he also wrote
a poem called A general defence of all learning. Among them, we can place
William Warner-s Albion-s England, Lord Brook-s Poems of Monarchy and
Treaties on Religions.
The glory of Elizabethan verse is not offered by these works but by a quality
of the lyrics that can be felt in all of this period-s poems. Even if not all the

poets published their own cycle of love songs and sonnets, there are several
significant poets such as Constable-s Diana, Daniel-s Delia, Drayton-s Idea.
Also, the colllections of songs published by miscellaneous writers are very
well-known for this time. Some of the most representative are Phoenix Nest,
England-s Helicon and the Poetical Rhapsody.
As many of the lyrics of the period are doubtful attribution or altoghether
anonymus, most of the songs that cand be assigned to one writer belong to
Thomas Campion. His verse is adapted to the musical requirements as a
resulat of his naive conception that a song is made to be sung. Like many of
his contemporaries, Campion is not scared by death. Instead he is moved by
a trust in the Creator and in the world he had made.
The lyrical gift was common in the las years of Elizabeth-s reign. The proof
can be found in the group of literary courtiers, of whom Sidney was the chief.
Sir Walter Raleigh is known for his History of the World accepted as a
-monument of English prose in the next century- (page 86)/ The fragment of a
long poem Cynthia, the sonnet introductory to The Faerie Queene and other
various verse show that he had a poetical sense.
Another member of the group of the courtly poets was Sir Edward Dyer
rememberedas for wrting - My mind to me a Kingdom isBoth the lyric and the drama must be considered the great literary forms that
marked this period. They represented =truth to feeling and truth to life( page 86). This ages have the stamp of imitation, of learning from the
classical and foreign and this was experienced as well by the poets. Their way
was sinuous because of the requirement of convention and by absurd
theories regarding the ban of rhyme. The only directions from which they
would have gained were poetry and drama and they really did.