University of Kurkuk

Collage of Education for Human Sciences

English Department

(Renaissance on English literature)

By
 Rebeen Sattar Mohammed

 Dawan Naji Talb

Supervised By
Mr.(Omer Ali Daud)

2021A.D 1442H
 Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to express our deepest

thanks to all those people who provide us with invaluable support
and help.

In particular, we would like to express our special gratitude to Mr.

(OmerAli Daud)

our research supervisor for his guidance, assistance and valuable

feedbacks.

We are deeply indebted to all our teachers without any exception.

I
 Abstract

The English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in

several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were
literature and music. Visual arts in the English Renaissance were much
less significant than in the Italian Renaissance. The English period began
far later than the Italian, which was moving into Mannerism and the
Baroque by the 1550s or earlier. In contrast, the English Renaissance can
only truly be said to begin, shakily, in the 1520s, and it continued until
perhaps 1620.

English Renaissance Theatre

The Elizabethan Era is perhaps most famous for its theatre and the
works of William Shakespeare. English Renaissance theatre began with
the opening of "The Red Lion" theatre in 1567. Many more permanent
theatres opened in London over the next several years including the
Curtain Theatre in 1577 and the famous Globe Theatre in 1599.

The period produced some of the world's great playwrights including

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Today Shakespeare is
considered the greatest writer of the English language. Popular genres of
theatre included the history play, the tragedy, and the comedy .

II
 Table of Content

Item Page
No.

Acknowledgements I

Abstract II
Table of Content III

Introduction
Chapter 1 2
1-1 Literature Review
1-2 Historical Background 5
1-3 ‘Renaissance’ ideas 10
1-4 The age of broken certainties 13

Chapter 2 17

The Impact of Renaissance on Prose, Poetry and

Drama
2-1 The Prose Of Renaissance 17
2-1 The Poetry Of Renaissance 19
2-3 The Drama Of Renaissance 21
Conclusion 22
References 23

III
Introduction
The term Renaissance means “Rebirth”.  The movement had its origin in Italy
and it gradually spread throughout Europe. The movement had significant
influence over the English Literature.

After the end of the War of the Roses (1453-87), Tudor Dynasty came to power
in England. Henry VIII was the ruler of English from 1509-1547. He desired to
annul his first marriage as he had no heir from his wife.

However, polygamy was prohibited under the rule of the Catholic Church. Thus
he fell into conflict with the Church.

He was even excommunicated by Church but he did not pay heed to it. To fulfil
his desire he, for the first time in the History of England, ended the rule of the
Catholic Church and established himself as both the head of the state as well as
of the Church.

This step of his influenced every aspect of English including life, culture,
literature, thoughts etc from that time onward.

Writers
1. MARTIN LUTHER: Protestantism originated with Luther’s 95 Theses in
Wittenberg in 1517. Later it became the official national religion of England.
2. CHARLES DARWIN: His work On the Origin of Species (1859) undermined
the religious and biblical beliefs and led to the emergence of new ideas that
challenged the old beliefs.
3. ERASMUS: He challenged the narrowness of the Catholic Church. He
criticised the unnecessary rituals, the sale of pardon paper etc. He wished to
return to the values of the early Church. In order to do so, he produced a
Greek edition of Scriptures in place of existing Latin one.
4. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: He travelled in search of the Indies in 1492
and landed first in the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola and was credited with
having discovered the Americas. This discovery also opened the eyes of the
world.
5. COPERNICUS AND GALILEO: They established and postulated
scientifically that Earth is not the centre of the universe as believed by the
people.

Chapter 1
1-1 Literature Review
1
 Renaissance is an artistic movement that developed in Italy
in the 14th century and spread throughout Europe reaching its
peak with the 16th century art of the Italian masters Leonardo
da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Renaissance, a French
word meaning "rebirth", indicates the period that came after
Medievalism and saw the humanistic revival of classical art.
Moving away from the religious atmosphere that dominated
the Middle Age, Renaissance artists turned their attention to
the beauty and mystery of the natural world and to the
individual man, who was considered the centre of this new era.

Renaissance developed when Humanism, the philosophy that

focused on human interests and needs, considering people
rational beings, was spreading throughout Italy and Europe.
It followed followed the Middle Ages when art was almost
exclusively religious and although a religious view of the
world continued to play an important role in art, in
Renaissance there was a growing interest in the natural world
and in the individual human being. In their canvas
amongst religious themes, Renaissance artists also included
other subjects such as Greek and Roman mythology, history
and portraits of individuals. The main aim was to represent
subjects not in an idealistic vision, as it was the case in
Medievalism (i.e. the period before Renaissance) but in a more
humanistic way. The focus on the human body, which led
artists like Leonardo to study human anatomy in detail,
allowed them to paint figures that looked human and real. The
bodies of Christ and other religious figures have no ideals and
sacred connotations, but instead they emphasise the dignity
and worth of the person.

2
This new trend towards realism in the arts, which characterised
Renaissance art, was expressed also by the development of
new artistic techniques that allowed the painting's subjects and
background to look like real: from the Sfumato painting
technique of Leonardo daVinci to the birth of
perspective by Brunelleschi.
According to these declarations, Renaissance art can be
summarised in three major points:
1. Formulation of the rules of
linear perspective that organized the unitary space;
2. Focus on the human being as an individual, both on its
anatomy and on the representation of emotions;
3. Rejection of the decorative elements and return to the
essential.

Renaissance art, along with the Renaissance Humanist

philosophy, spread throughout Europe influencing both artists
and their patrons with the development of new techniques and
new artistic sensibilities. Notable artists of
Renaissance include among
others Botticelli, Mantegna and Titian for the Early
Renaissance, and Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael for
the Late Renaissance. Discover more about the movement in
the History of Renaissance.

At the dawn of the Renaissance there was a strong sense of

living in the end of days. Obscured by the shadow of the
Middle Ages, the desire for a renewed identity, shaped by both
humanitarian and scientific learning, was in its infancy. Artists
and scientists began the work of dismantling of everything that
3
for centurieshad been taken for granted. The Italian
Renaissance contributed significantly to breaking down the
boundaries – those of ideas as well as those of geography or
demarcated by political power.The new entrepreneurship
coming into force in Medicis Florence, in Venice under the
Dodges and in Milan dominated by Ludovicoil Moro, taking
place as a result of advances in the textile industry and in the
wake of the Italian Renaissance, extended beyond the
geographic and political borders and found profitable links
with Flanders and, therefore, with the Renaissance in the Low
Countries (corresponding roughly to the present-day
Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). It was in Flanders
that the innovator and influential cartographer Gerardus
Mercator (1512–1594) depicted the ‘outside’ world - that
world beyond normal individual experience which had until
then been precluded from view – thus paving the way for long-
distance exchanges.
The Renaissance has been a long thread stretched across
centuries: from the earlier European Renaissance at the of the
Middle Ages to Japan of the TogugawaPeriod (1603–1868);
the Timurid Renaissance and then the Bengali Renaissance of
the Indian subcontinent, from which arose personalities such
as the scientist Nath Bose (1894–1974); the American
Renaissance at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth
century; and from the “New Culture Movement” which began
in 1917 up to the present day, with the Chinese Renaissance
taking after centuries of oblivion of the Middle Kingdom.
Do today’s artistic and cultural upheavals in human and
physical sciences herald a new Renaissance which could both
affect and blend with entrepreneurship?

1-2HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
4
In England there was an important change in religion and
politics when King Henry VIII made himself the head of the
Church of England, bringing church and state together (1529-
39). He cut all contact with Catholic Church and the Pope in
Rome, part of a reaction against the Catholic Church in many
parts of Europe. Protestantism became more and more
important and gave a whole new vision of man’s relations with
God. The king or queen became the human being on earth who
was closest to God, at the head of the Great Chain of Being
which led down to the rest of mankind, animals, insects and so
on. The Dutch thinker, Erasmus, wrote of mankind as central
to the world, and this humanist concern was the basis of most
Renaissance thought. The Tudors inherited much of the
medieval view of the world which consisted of numberless but
linked ‘degrees’ of being, from the four physical elements
( air, fire, earth and water) up to the pure intelligence of
angels. Also, the whole universe was governed by divine will;
Nature was God’s instrument, the social hierarchy a product of
Nature. Everything had their natural place in the unity of the
whole: both within the family and state (which it is believed,
should be governed by a single head). At the same time, this
order, which was founded on Nature, existed for man’s benefit,
and man was an integral part of it. His godlike qualities had,
unfortunately been ruined by the Fall (as described in the
Bible) and he was constantly troubled by such things as wars
and plaques. Nevertheless, provided that he treated this world
as preparation for the next, and, with the help of human reason,
he kept his body subject to his soul; he had it within his
powers to enjoy civilized happiness. Daugther of Henry VIII
and Anne Boleyn, Queen Elisabeth(1533-1603), became the
symbol of the Golden Age, the period of stability from 1558 to
1603. Following her mother’s execution, Elizabeth was
declared illegitimate by parliament (1537), and suffered a
5
lonely childhood, much of it spent in the company of her
young brother Edward. She was rigorously educated, studying
5 Latin and Greek. The accession of her sister as Mary I in
1553 increased the insecurity of Elizabeth’s position, she was
an opponent of religious extremism, she was seen as natural
focus for the protestant faction. Accused of involvement in Sir
Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion, she was imprisoned in Tower
before being placed under house arrest at Woodstock (1554).
At her accession in 1558 Elizabeth inherited a nation deeply
divided by religious strife. She set about restoring the
moderate Anglicanism of her father: Mary's grants to the
Roman Catholic orders were reclaimed; the Anglican service
was reintroduced (1559). Economic reforms included the
calling in of the debased coinage of the previous three reigns.
Elizabeth appointed as her chief secretary William Cecil, who
remained her trusted advisor and friend until his death in 1598.
Parliament, anxious to secure the Protestant succession, urged
her to marry but she refused, although throughout her reign she
used marriage as a diplomatic counter in her relations with
France. She conducted romantic relationships with a number
of men, for example, with Robert Devereux, earl of Essex. As
prudent financially as she was cautious diplomatically,
Elizabeth financed government from her own revenues and
called Parliament to vote supplies only 13 times during her
reign. Her management of Parliament was marked by a
willingness to compromise and demonstrated a political skill
lacking in her Stuart successors. By her evident devotion to the
welfare of her subjects, she helped create a national self-
confidence that bore fruit in the last 15 years of her reign,
notably in literature and in the works of such writers as
Marlowe, Spencer and Shakespeare. Being the last monarch of
the House of Tudor, Elizabeth was a Protestant (a term used
for those who broke away from the Roman Catholic Church).
Her predecessor, Mary I (on the throne 1553-1558), had been a
6
repressive Catholic, married to the most fanatically Catholic
sovereign in Europe, Philip II of Spain). Although Elizabeth
cut the ties with Rome, her tolerance and her ability to
compromise won her the loyalty of both Catholic and Puritans
(Protestant reformers who insisted on simplicity in religious
forms). In 1588 Philip’s attempt to conquer England led to the
defeat of great Spanish fleet known as the Armada. Sir Francis
Drake (1540-1596), a national hero, was one of the
commanders of the English fleet. This victory was a great
triumph for Elizabeth and through her nation. England’s
enemies, Spain in particular, were defeated, and the English
controlled the seas of the world, exploring and bringing
valuable goods from the New World. This was closely linked
with the Renaissance search for new ways of believing, new
ways of seen and understanding the universe. The Renaissance
was the beginning of the modern world in the areas of
geography, science, politics, religion, society and art. London
became not 6 only the capital of England, but also the main
city of the known world. And English, in the hands of writers
like Shakespeare, became the modern language we can
recognize today. The invention of printing meant that all kinds
of writing were open to anyone who could read. Many new
forms of writing were developed. But the most important form
of expression was theatre. This was the age of Shakespeare,
and the Golden Age of English Drama. We can distinguish
three periods of literature of English Renaissance. The first
period covers the end of the 15th and the first half of the 16th
centuries. In England the first scholars and humanists
appeared, they studied and investigated the antique
philosophy, literature. In Oxford and Cambridge Universities
the first generations of the English humanists were trained, the
development of the book printing was of importance for
humanistic culture. The first English printer William Caxton
(1422-1491) learnt the art of printing at Cologne in the early
7
1470-s (Guttenberg in Germany in 1440). In 1470-s he
returned to England. In 1577 the first book was issued from his
press at Westminster, Earl ‘Rivers’ ”Dictes and Sayengs of the
Phylosophers”. Between them and his death Caxton produced
about 80 complete volumes, including Chaucer’s “The
Canterbury Tales”, and also found time to work on
translations. In this period the English humanistic literature
was mainly of theoretical character, Thomas More (1478 –
1535), was the most outstanding writer of the first stage of
English Renaissance. He was Lord Chancellor of England
from 1529-1532), scholar and saint. He trained as a lawyer,
entered parliament in 1504. He resigned in opposition to Henry
VIII’s religious policies and was arrested for refusing to swear
the oath to the Act of Succession and thereby deny papal
supremacy. He was convicted on the perjured evidence of Sir
Richard Rich after a remarkable self-defense and was
executed. He was canonized in 1935. Thomas More was a
renowned scholar and a friend of Erasmus, his writings
including ‘Utopia’ are a description of an ideal society. His
main work “Utopia” was written in 1516 in Latin, the
international language of those times. The book consists of
two parts and is written in the form of dialog between Thomas
More and a seaman RafailHitlodey, the traveler all over the
world. The political system of Europe of those days was
sharply criticized in the conversations of the authors and
Hitlodey; the wars of conquest, cruel legislative power against
poor, the problems of enclosures were discussed (The
extensive enclosure («огораживание») by landlords of the
peasants fields was used for sheep farming, the peasants were
turned out of their lands by landlords). On this concern
RafailHitlodey, the seaman, considered that “Sheep devour
(eat up) people”. The antithesis to the political system of
Europe is the ideal life on the island Utopia, in Greek it means
7 “nowhere”. The picture of life and the society on the island
8
Utopia is imaginary, not real: the political system is
democratic, the labour is the main duty, there is no money at
all, but there is an abundance of products; all the citizens are
equal in rights and compose successfully the mental and
physical work. We still use the word “utopia” to determine
something unreal, i.e. unreal society. The second period, the so
called Elizabethan one covers the second half of the XVI
century and the beginning of the XYII. It is the time of
flourishing the English Renaissance literature, the time of
creating of the new literary forms: Shakespeare’s masterpieces
are created in this period. The third period – the time after
Shakespeare’s death and up to 1640 (the forties of the 17th
century), it was the time of declining the English Renaissance
literature

1-3 ‘Renaissance’ ideas

9
Intuition that, as Einstein said, is a sacred gift; imagination that
begins with intuition; creativity that thrives when life and the
surrounding environment are far from perfect; rewards for
creative people; investments in new ideas that challenge the
power of the Pope and sovereign rulers, that give impetus to
science and give birth to the new class of merchant nobles
creators of wealth with their businesses; the many questions
which stand out in the societal context and exceed the answers;
freedom from formal education with its teaching kit, exams
and specialization that stifle intuition and imagination; the
powers of observation unencumbered by preconceived
assumptions and expectations; the 'bottega', the place where
talents are nurtured, new techniques are at work and new
artistic forms come to light; artists competing among
themselves, but also ready to work together: all this and much
more is what has been named 'Renaissance'.

Ideas awaken the world; they do it reborn. They are, in

short, 'renaissance' ideas. “No matter what anybody tells you,
words and ideas can change the world" - so exclaimed Robin
Williams, the great interpreter of the movie " Dead Poets
Society" (1989).Since his seminal work of 1986, three years
before that movie, the economist Paul Romer explained that
due to the non-rivalry of ideas – the fact, namely, that one
person's use of an idea does not prevent others to make another
use: to say, for example, 'I use your idea in a field other than
yours' – innovations that arise from them enable the economy
to free from the chains of diminishing returns for which,
doubling the input, the output change less than proportionally.

By leveraging ideas, increasing returns (additional

production inputs yield more than proportionate returns) would
10
change the economic world for the better because they would
raise the material living standards. Hence, make the world to
move are the ideas, not the objects. The world is no longer
caught between scarcity of resources and limits to growth. On
the contrary, it is a playground for almost unlimited
opportunities, where new ideas create new products, new
markets and new possibilities of generating wealth.This is
especially true in our times, as access coststo knowledge
dependent on technology are declining thanks to social media,
digital services and applications for smartphones. Those who
remain firmly standing are the costs related to the governance
of education and educational processes that inhibit the
emergence of new ideas, not allowing learners to gain access
to sources of 'renaissance thinking' such as failure and creative
ignorance.

There are moments in human history in which ideas, the

most culturally different from each other, look like the threads
that weave stories and projects with a major impact on the
social and economic fabric. Meeting one another from diverse
backgrounds, engaging in new and more effective dialogues,
and also clashing: the intersection of artistic, scientific,
business, and policy ideas is the outcome of the creative
process dubbed "ideation".A process triggered by that social
phenomenon which Frans Johansson (2004) has called "Medici
effect", going back to the driving force of innovation across
the board attributed to the famous dynasty of bankers and
rulers of Florence - the Medicis.In fact, in the Medicean
Florence the ideation performs the whole cycle: from the
generation of the idea to its realization that, as Paul
Romerwould say, comes in the guise of a recipe better than
those hitherto produced.

The Medicis-inspired Renaissance shows how important

11
was the role of the leaders of the city – the Lords of that time –
in outlining new trends and discovering talents whose original
ideas would have resulted in recipes for a better world. We live
now in a time when the great migrations combined with the
international mobility of the knowledge nomads envisage a
future in pursuit of the primacy of the cities where the majority
of the world population will beconcentrate by 2050. It seems
that once again it depends on the quality of the local elites
andleadershipsthe appearing over the horizon of a
phenomenon comparable to that which from Florence spread
to the urban centres of Europe of the Medicis time.

Cities aspiring to breath the crisp cool area of the Renaissance

shape and attract unique entrepreneurial talents. The similarities
offered by history turn their attention to the distinctive
characteristics of the Renaissance cities. Entrepreneurs of the
Medicean Florence excel in textiles, banking and financial
services, and, led by such families as the Medicis, they are the
patrons of the arts and science.Genoese entrepreneurs of the
maritime economy open up new trade routes to the Northern
Europe and the West, in the wake of the accidental discovery of
their illustrious fellow citizen Christopher Columbus, who was
seeking a new route to the Indies '‘buscando el
levanteporilponente' (seeking the Orient by moving Westwards).
In Venice, the sea traders bring to Western Europe exotic goods
and cultures of the Near and Far East.

1-4 The age of broken certainties

12
Broken the dam of medieval certainties, uncertainty coached
with the exercise of intelligence opened the window on the
landscape of the Renaissance whose perspective, starting with
the Renaissance style, had its cradle in the theory of vision,
optics and light developed in Baghdad, during the golden age
of Muslim civilisation, by the mathematician Ibn al Haithan
(965-1039), known in the Western world with the name of
Alhazen. It was the beginning of a long happy time, visible in
the ascent of GDP per capita in Italy and the Netherlands
where that window was wider than elsewhere, as shown in the
chart below taken from the research conducted by two scholars
of the pre-industrial economy.

As Voltaire (nom de plume of François-Marie Arouet,

1694–1778) tells us in his work The Age of Louis
XIV(Voltaire, 1751), Florence was at the heart of the third
glorious age, preceded by the eras of Philip and Alexander,
Caesar and August, and followed by the age of the Sun King,
Louis XIV. ‘Then’, wrote Voltaire, ‘a family of private
citizens was seen to do that which the kings of Europe should
have undertaken. The Medicis invited to Florence the learned,
who had been driven out of Greece by the Turks; this was the
age of Italy’s glory. The polite arts had already recovered a
new life in that country; the Italians honored them with the
title of “Vertu”, as the first Greeks had distinguished them by
the name of Wisdom. Everything tended toward perfection’.

Make believe that we are in Florence between the late

Middle Ages and the early modern period when prominent
figures such as those of the monk and the knight give way to
the merchant and craftsman who perform a function
comparable to that of silkworm which later will become the
13
'butterfly' of a class with outstanding entrepreneurial skills –
the ‘merchants of light’ who saw into distances most could
not. This is the dawn of discontinuous changes leading to the
opening of untrodden and unusual pathways that threaten the
authority of holders of knowledge. Thanks to the severing of
the old social bonds and the emphasis placed on the rights of
individuals and on secular studies, artists, humanitarians,
scientists and urbanites of mercantile cities exhibiting a spirit
of entrepreneurial adventure start travelling those paths.
Masaccio (1401–1428), the first great exponent of Renaissance
painting, combined pictorial art and mathematical art of
perspective. Born in San Giovanni Valdarno, near Florence,
the Tuscan artist was a pioneer of that cultural cross-
fertilization which made the Italian Renaissance unique and
universal. Recombining creatively the most diverse segments
of art – sculpture, painting, mathematics, geometry,
architecture – Masaccio contributed significantly to the
cultural literacy that characterizes the Age of the Renaissance
and leads to the scientific revolution and enlightenment.

The city of Florence experienced the beginning of the

Renaissance which, with the publication in 1486 of Oratio de
hominisdignitate by humanist Pico dellaMirandola (Mirandola,
1486), gave life to ‘Renaissance man’, free of all chains,
including those of the guilds that had restricted his movements
in the Middle Ages. Such ever-increasing individualism
eroded the collective ideals of the Middle Ages. Man was
placed at the centre and its creativity is the key that opens the
doors of entrepreneurship in unison with innovation.

The guilds controlled and kept the secrets of the trades

they represented. Their attitude towards technological and
entrepreneurial innovations was inconsistent: some guilds
were more conservative than others. If innate conservatism
14
was not the primary cause of stifling innovation, change
nonetheless depended on the leadership of a hierarchical
decision-making process. Individuals who felt unfettered by
corporatist schemes shaped the craft shops of those who would
become raised to the status of the greatest Renaissance artists.
In the centre of the scene there were those who cooperated
freely with one another, to achieve a common goal. From this
era arose the foundations of our anthropocentric age, with
innovative start-ups heralding the entrepreneurship renaissance
of the twenty-first century. Supported by digital technologies
that create the infrastructure of ‘knowledgefication’ whose
force of transmission is comparable to that of the electricity
networks of the early twentieth century, the growing power of
the human mind voluntarily builds its future using mental
gymnastics to manage the uncertainties, being unable to
predict what tomorrow will bring.

Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, free-thinking

Venice shaped another great Renaissance backdrop. Thanks to
special relationships developed between the Venetian Republic
and Flanders, options and possibilities for artistic innovations
coexisted with others entrepreneurial in nature (consider, for
example, possibly the first assembly line, conceived and
installed at the Arsenale di Venezia).

In 1482, and for the next fifteen years, Milan stood on the
shoulders of a giant at the service of Ludovicoil Moro (1452-
1508). Leonardo da Vinci – this is our giant, acknowledged as
a universal genius, whom Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) in his
work The Lives of the Artists (Vasari,1685) described as a
‘truly admirable painter, sculptor, art theorist, musician, writer,
mechanical engineer, architect, scenographer, master
metalworker, artillery expert, inventor, scientist’ – not only
gave Milan and its surroundings an artistic identity, but also
15
helped to mark the transition from the feudal to the capitalist
mode of production. Thus a new era began in Milan and its
surroundings, introducing the profile of what would become
the modern manufacturing entrepreneur.

16
 Chapter 2
The Impact of Renaissance on Prose, Poetry and
Drama

2-1 THE PROSE OF RENAISSANCE

The most important prose writers who exhibit well the

influence of the Renaissance on English prose are Erasmus, Sir
Thomas More, Lyly, Sydney. Erasmus was a Dutchman who,
came to Oxford to learn Greek. His chief work was The Praise
of Folly which is the English translation of his most important
work written in England. Erasmus wrote this work in 1510.
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia was the “true prologue to the
Renaissance”. It was the first book written by an Englishman
which achieved European fame; but it was written in Latin
(1516) and only later (1555) was translated into English. The
word “utopia” is derived from the Greek word “outopos”
meaning no place. More’s utopia is an imaginary island which
is the habitat of an ideal republic.
By the picture of the ideal state is implied a kind of social
criticism of contemporary island. More’s indebtedness to
Plato’s Republic is quite obvious. However, More seems also
to be indebted to the then-recent discoveries of the explorers
and navigators like Vasco da Gama-who were mostly of
Spanish and Portuguese nationalities. In Utopia, More
discredits medievalism in all its implications and exalts the
ancient Greek culture.

Passing on to the prose writers of the Elizabethan age- the age

of the flowering of the Renaissance- we find them markedly
17
influenced both in their style and thought-content by the
revival of antique classical learning. Sydney in Arcadia, Lyly
in Euphues, and Hooker in The Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity write the English which is away from the language of
common speech; and is either too heavily laden- as in case of
Lyly and Sydney- with bits of classical finery, or modeled on
Latin syntax.
Further in his own career and his Essays, Bacon stands as a
representative of the materialistic, Machiavellian facet of the
Renaissance, particularly of Renaissance Italy. He combines in
himself the dispassionate pursuit of truth and the keen desire
for material advance.

18
2-1 THE POETRY OF RENAISSANCE:
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) and the Earl of Surrey (1517-47)
were pioneers of the new poetry in England. After Chaucer,
the spirit of English poetry had slumbered for upward of a
century. The change in pronunciation in the fifteenth century
had created a lot of confusion in prosody which in the practice
of such important poets as Lydgate and Skeleton had been
reduced to a mockery. Wyatt had traveled extensively in Italy
and France and had come under the spell of the Italian
Renaissance.
It must be remembered that the work of Wyatt and Surrey does
not reflect the impact of the Rome of antiquity alone, but also
that of modern Italy. So far as the versification is concerned,
Wyatt and Surrey imported into England various new Italian
metrical patterns. Moreover, they gave poetry a new sense of
grace, dignity, delicacy, and harmony, which was found by
them lacking in the works of Chaucer and the Chaucerian’s
alike.
Further, they were highly influenced by the love poetry of
Petrarch and they did their best to imitate it. Petrarch’s love
poetry is of the country kind, in which the pining lover is
shown as a “servant” of his mistress with his heart tempest-
tossed by her neglect and his mood varying according to her
absence or presence.
It goes to the credit of Wyatt to have introduced the sonnet into
the English literary, and of Surrey to have first written blank
verse, both the sonnet and blank verse were later to be
practiced by a vast number of the best English poets. Though
in his sonnets, Wyatt did not employ regular iambic
pentameters yet he created a sense of discipline among the
19
poets of his times who had forgotten the lesson and example of
Chaucer and, like Skelton, were writing “ragged” and “jagged”
lines which jarred so unpleasantly upon the ear.
Wyatt wrote in all thirty-two sonnets, out of which seventeen
are adaptations of Petrarch. Most of them (twenty-eight) have
the rhyme scheme of Petrarch’s sonnets; that is, each has the
octave a b b a a b b a, and twenty-six out of these twenty-eight
have the c d d c e e sestet. Only in the last three, he comes near
what is called the Shakespearean formula, that is, three
quatrains and a couplet. In the thirteenth sonnet, he exactly
produced it; this sonnet rhymes a b a b, a b a b, a b a b, c
c. Surrey wrote about fifteen or sixteen sonnets out of which
ten use the Shakespearean formula which was to enjoy the
greatest popularity among the sonneteers of the sixteenth
century.

Surrey’s work is characterized by exquisite grace and

tenderness which we find missing from that of Wyatt.
Moreover, he is a better craftsman and gives greater harmony
to his poetry. Surrey employed blank verse in his translation of
the fourth book of The Aeneid, the work which was first
translated into English verse by Gavin Douglas a generation
earlier, but in heroic couplets.

Surrey’s work is characterized by exquisite grace and tenderness

which we find missing from that of Wyatt. Moreover, he is a better
craftsman and gives greater harmony to his poetry. Surrey employed
blank verse in his translation of the fourth book of The Aeneid, the
work which was first translated into English verse by Gavin Douglas a
generation earlier, but in heroic couplets.

20
2-3 THE DRAMA OF RENAISSANCE:
The revival of ancient classical learning scored its first clear
impact on England drama in the middle of the sixteenth
century. Previous to this impact there had been a pretty
vigorous native tradition of drama, particularly comedy.
This tradition had its origin in the liturgical drama and had
progressed through the miracle and the mystery, and later the
morality, to the interlude. John Heywood had written quite a
few vigorous interludes, but they were altogether different in
tone, spirit, and purpose from the Greek and Roman drama of
antiquity.
The first English regular tragedy Gorboduc and comedy Ralph
Roister Doister were very much imitations of classical tragedy
and comedy. Gorboduc is a slavish imitation of Senecan
tragedy and has all its features without much of its life.
Like Senecan tragedy, it has revenge as the tragic motive, has
most of its important incidents, narrated on the stage by
messengers, has much of rhetoric and verbose declamation,
has a ghost among its dramatis personae, and so forth. It is
indeed a good instance of the “blood and thunder” kind of
tragedy.
Later on, the “University Wits” struck a note of independence
in their dramatic work. They refused to copy Roman drama as
slavishly as the writers of Gorboduc and Roister Doister. Even
so, their plays are not free from the impact of the Renaissance;
rather they show it as amply, though not in the same way. 
In their imagination, they were all fired by the new literature
which showed them new dimensions of human capability. In
this respect, Marlowe stands in the forefront of the University
Wits. Rightly has he been called “the true child of the
Renaissance”.
21
 Conclusion
1. The Renaissance The beginning of the Modern Period A period
of transition
2.  Major Themes of the Renaissance • Humanism (both secular and
religious) – Human potential, human progress, expansion of
human knowledge • Secularism-greater emphasis on non-
religious values and concerns • Individualism-focus on the
unique qualities and abilities of the individual person
3. Background of the Renaissance- High and Late Middle Ages •
Increased trade and commercial activity during the High Middle
Ages • Urbanization-growth of cities and towns • Commercial
and business developments (banking) • Middle class merchant
elite developed • Decline in feudalism • A decline in the
Church’s hold and control on society and government • Growth
in vernacular literature/growing literacy • Rise of universities and
the expansion of learning
4. IMPACT of RENAISSANCE on ENGLISH LITERATURE
What is renaissance? Over view of Renaissance .Investigations
about Renaissance .England’s place in the world .Beginning of
English Renaissance .English literary history .Renaissance artists
and authors .Religious Prose , Instructive Prose , Bible
Translation , Drama.
5. The Coming of the Renaissance • The Renaissance was a
flowering of literary, artistic and intellectual development that
began in Italy in the fourteenth century. • Renaissance means
“Rebirth”/ “Revival” What started the Renaissance • Religious
devotion of the Middle Ages gave way to interest in the human
being’s place on this earth • Universities introduced a new
curriculum. – Humanities: including history, geography, poetry,
and languages • Invention of printing made books more available
• More writers began using the vernacular
6.  Figures of the Renaissance • Mostly Italians • Petrarch, Spenser,
Shakespeare (poets) • Leonardo Da Vinci, a painter, sculptor,
architect, and scientist Renaissance Man • Da Vinci typifies a
Renaissance man—a person of broad education and interests
whose curiosity knew no bounds. • A person who encompassed a
wide range of interests and abilities.
22
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