Renaissance: Impact on English Literature Essay Sample

“Renaissance” is a Gallic word which means metempsychosis. reawakening or resurgence. In literature the term “Renaissance” is used to denote the resurgence of ancient classical literature and civilization and re-awakening of human head. after the long slumber in the Medieval Ages. to the glorification. admirations and beauty of man’s earthly life and nature. The great literary motion. Renaissance began in Italy with the autumn of Constantinople in 1453. But its influence was non felt in England till the last old ages of the 15th century when the English bookmans who visited Italy at the clip came back to England nourished on the Renaissance humanitarianism. The Renaissance. nevertheless. had its full flowering in the Elizabethan period ( 1551-1603 ) . This late blossoming of the Renaissance was due to the spiritual discord ( Reformation ) which swept over England before Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. The most interesting important merchandise of the early Renaissance was the interlingual rendition of Greek and Roman literature. The transcribers opened for their countrymen a window into the enchanted universe of classical antiquity which appeared with all the freshness of a new find. the universe of the Gods and the goddesses of Greece and the great soldiers and solons and the Roman Empire.

Furthermore they brought their readers excessively into contact with the life and idea of modern-day Europe. and particularly of Renaissance Italy. The innovation of the printing imperativeness placed the interlingual renditions within the range of the common people. The transcribers amassed rich shops of stuff for the playwrights and poets of the hereafter. Let us now consider the impact of the Renaissance on Elizabethan poesy. play and prose. Under the influence of the Renaissance English poesy awoke as from a long slumber at the tribunal of Henry VIII. The English poesy was kindled into new life by contact with the Italian Renaissance. There appeared a group of courtier-poets who. under the influence of Renaissance individuality. inaugurated a new manner of composing verse forms of personal sort ( for the great feature of mediaeval poesy was its impersonal character ) covering peculiarly with love. The two members of this group-Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey were the captains of the new literary motion.

Wyatt abandoned the conventions of the long verse form and the fable which had hampered the late medieval poets and produced the freaks of Lydgate and Hawes. He imparted a new self-respect and a new power the short verse form. He introduced into English poetry the sonnet. the most compact signifier for the short verse form. Surrey is more decidedly a humanist poet than Wyatt. He was influenced by Petrarch and like Wyatt he translated from the Italian. He translated from Martial. Horace and Virgil and his interlingual renditions have something of the clarity. concision and elegance of the masters. If Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English. it is Surrey who introduced clean poetry. the great heroic poem and dramatic step in English. His interlingual rendition of the two books of Virgil’s Aeneid is double important as the first English poetry interlingual rendition of Virgil and besides as the first illustration of clean poetry ; one of the effects of the survey of the classics was to decrease the prestigiousness of rime. Surrey’s clean poetry was a definite measure in the way of a literary signifier in which the greatest Elizabethans won their highest victory. The Renaissance turned England into a immense nest of singing birds.

The gusto for life was one of the gifts of the Renaissance. and this zest found its look in vocals. This vocal is everyplace ; it resounds in the drawing-rooms. it wanders along the roads ; it is in the town and in the state. it abounds on the phase and in the novel. Indifferent to the plastic humanistic disciplines. England became the ardent lover of vocal. One of import consequence of the Renaissance was the resurgence of classical literature. the resurgence which normally goes by the name of humanitarianism. Of the Elizabethan poets Spenser was most influenced by the Renaissance humanitarianism. He is justly called the kid of the Renaissance. He frequently borrowed from classical author such as Aristotle. Plato. Virgil. and others. The Shepherd’s Calendar is modeled on the unreal pastoral popularized by the Renaissance and inspired by Virgil and Theocritus. In this verse form he sets himself to deliver English poesy from the “rascally rhymes” into whose custodies it had fallen and to reform it in its sort. meter and action.

In his program and behavior of The Faerie Queene he follows the classical theoretical account of a heroic verse form and takes a batch from the classical authors. Sir Guyon’sVoyage to the Bower of Bliss is baded upon a similar ocean trip in Homer’s Odyssey. Spenser besides shared in the rich sensuous life the Renaissance had thrown unfastened to work forces. His verse form. The Faerie Queene in peculiar offer us a rich banquet for our sense. Similarly. the Renaissance exercised a great influence on the Metaphysical Poetry. Metaphysical poesy is preponderantly rational and analytical. In it an emotion or feeling is expressed through the working of the mind. The poets who wrote successfully in the metaphysical manner were all rational. Donne. the leader of the metaphysical’s. for case. links up a wider scope of thoughts. In Metaphysical poesy emotions are shaped and expressed by logical logical thinking. and both sound and image are subservient to this terminal. Wordss dedicated to poesies are eschewed because these words are charged with accrued emotion.

Like Wordsworth they prefer words in mundane usage. but their pattern goes even further than his theory. Wordsworth proposed to utilize the natural linguistic communication of ardent feeling. But the metaphysical poets use the natural linguistic communication of work forces when they are gravely engaged in commercialism or in scientific guess. so that the words themselves. apart from their significance in the context. have no reverberation. Similarly. the Renaissance exercised a great influence on the class of the English play. It is under its influence that the moralities underwent a sort of gradual secularisation and evolved into a signifier of the play called the interludes. And though the purpose of the interludes is still didactic. it is non so closely concerned with the redemption of psyche harmonizing to the church instruction. Again. the characters on the interludes were existent work forces and adult females. and non personified abstractors. as in the moralities. The regular English play is the merchandise of the Renaissance. The classics began to be studied avidly with the consequence that the range of the play was widened. In comedy the chief influences were the play of Plautus and Terence and the Italian comedies written in imitation of Latin theoretical accounts. In calamity the chief influence were the calamities of Seneca.

The most of import comedies in English in the early Renaissance period are Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton’s Needle. both of which were profoundly influenced by Plautine and Terentain theoretical accounts. Like the dramas of Terence and Plaututs. both these comedies are rich in complicated state of affairss and the chief secret plans are intermingled with subplots. they are divided into five Acts of the Apostless with stiff attention over the Renaissance rule that a new act begins when the phase is au naturel. and a new scene when a character joins or leaves those who are in conversation. The first English calamity Gorboduc is modeled on Seneca. It is divided into five Acts of the Apostless. The action takes topographic point behind the scenes and each act ends with a chorus. in imitation of the Seneca calamities. Likewise. Shakespearian play is deeply concerned with switching power dealingss within society. “The person was a new force on relation to the province. The menace of rebellion. of the overturning of established order. was forcefully brought place to the Elizabethan populace by the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. one time the Queen’s favourite” ( 93: Routledge ) . The modern-day argument questioned the relationship between single life. the power and the authorization of the province. and the establishing of moral absolutes.

Where medieval play was mostly used as a agency of demoing God’s designs. play in Renaissance England focuses on adult male. and becomes a manner of researching his failing. corruptions. defects and qualities. Shakespeare’s subjects are often the great abstract. cosmopolitan subjects. seen both on the societal degree and the single degree: power. aspiration. love. decease. and so on. The linguistic communication of the characters is recognizably the same as they speak. From Kings to ordinary soldiers. from immature lovers to old prostitute. Shakespeare’s characters speak modern English. The linguistic communication of Shakespeare is the first and permanent avowal of the great alterations that took topographic point in the 16th century. go forthing the Middle English of Chaucer behind. Among the prose-writers the main advocates of the Renaissance are Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Erasmus’ Praise of Folly and More’s Utopia demo how the English bookmans of the clip were imbued with the spirit of the classical Renaissance. Praise of Folly gives the best look in literature of the onslaught that the Oxford reformists like Linacre. “Colet and Lyly were doing upon mediaeval system.

It is like a vocal of triumph for the Renaissance which reigned supreme in the Middle Ages. Utopia is the merchandise of the Renaissance idea. It revolts against all the ideals dear to the Middle Ages. It is built upon Plato’s Republic which embodies the dream of an ideal province and remainders on the urge to respond against the stiff inert construct of society which obtained in the Middle Ages. The timeserving useful doctrine of secular success and self-aggrandizement as enunciated by Machiavelli in his The Prince greatly influenced the Elizabethan authors. Machiavellian doctrine deeply impressed Bacon. His essays give the fullest look to the practical wisdom that makes for success in human life.

Philosophic prose author. Bacon’s part to English literature is that of a innovator. He did more than present a new literary genre. English prose before him was cumbersome. It could lift. but it could non easy drop. The new manner of bacon fitted itself as easy to edifices and gardens or to suers and ceremonials. as to truth and decease. It could drop to the acquaintance of comparing money to muck. non good unless it is dispersed or rise to a comparing between the motions of the human head and those of the celestial organic structures. In his Essaies he treats such elevated subjects as justness and truth on the one manus. and such piddling subjects as masks and cabals on the other.