The Middle Ages

ca. 450: Anglo-Saxon conquest

597: Beginning of Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity

871-899: Reign of King Alfred

1066: Norman Conquest

ca. 1200: Beginning of Middle English (ME) literature

1360-1400: The peak of ME literature with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer

including Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

1485: William Caxton prints Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur

The Middle Ages in the English literature includes more than 800 years from the

end of the 7th century up to the end of the 15th century. This period is divided into two

parts: the earlier centuries are called the Dark Ages while the later centuries are

referred to as the Middle Ages and they represent the peak of the European history.

English ME includes two different periods of literature, the Old English and the

ME. These two periods are divided by the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The Anglo-Saxons and the Heroic Ideal

The Anglo-Saxons included three tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.

Although each of these tribes was independent, they were very closely allied and

related to each other because of their common Germanic heritage. They shared the

same ancestor; their tongues only differed by some dialects of a common language

and their customs were very similar.

In that period the Germanic society has been divided into families: the head of

each family was the leader of his close relatives and the family formed an independent

political unit. As time passed, the unit of society gradually became larger and larger

because a number of families united under the leadership of a superior leader called

the "king". But this unit became very large only in some occasions when a very

successful king attracted others to himself in order to do some battle. But in normal

situations, the unit remained limited in size. The normal organization of the society

consisted of a number of bands or groups who shared a sense of community esp. in

front of a common enemy such as the Englishmen. The complete union of all

Englishmen was achieved only after the Norman Conquest.

For the Anglo-Saxons the ideal of kingly behavior was very important. It was the

main spiritual force and creative power that formed their history and literature. It was

called the heroic ideal. The king who was at the same time a hero tried to do better

than anyone else the things that a migratory life like that of the Anglo-Saxons needed.

His main duty was to fight, but he also did other difficult affairs. The main

characteristics of such a hero-king were skill and courage.

This heroic ideal in the oldest form was only proper for a king, but because society

was very united, all the other important male members of the society imitated this

kind of heroic behavior and bear in mind that in the Germanic society, only males

were important and there is nothing mentioned about females ☺. The king was the

leader of a group of warriors and a mighty king was able to gain the loyalty of his

followers.

The heroic ideal had two advantages: first of all it won practical success for the

king and another thing which is more important was that it achieved eternal fame for

the hero. In cultures like the Germanic culture in which nothing has been mentioned

about the life after death, eternal fame was regarded as immortality. Of course the

hero was dependent for his fame on the poet who created the heroic poem and a good

poet or bard (one who writes a heroic poem) was a valued member of the court. These

heroic poems were called "epic". They were not written down, but recited orally so

most of them have been lost. Form the Germanic epics the main survivor is Beowulf

written in the Old English.

Christianity and Old English Culture

The literature that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to the Britain was merely

in the oral form. They could only write their literary works when they were converted

to Christianity. For a period of 150 years after the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon

invasion, Christianity was only limited to the more distant regions of the country

where the Anglo-Saxons could not reach. In 597, St. Augustine was sent by Pope

Gregory as a missionary to the court of King Ethelbert of Kent, one of the

southernmost regions in the island, and about the same time missionaries from all

over the Ireland began to deliver Christianity to the northern regions of the kingdom.

Within 75 years the island was once more Christian. The first written work in the Old

English language is a code of laws created by the King of Ethelbert and this shows the

close connection between Christianity and writing.

In the following centuries up to the Norman Conquest, England produced many

important churchmen. One of the earliest of such persons was Bede (Ecclesiastical

History of the English People). In the next generation, Alcuin became the friend of

the emperor Charlemange and helped in making the court of this emperor a center of

learning. But the greatest development in the English culture was caused by a non-

clergy: Alfred the king of the West Saxons who united all the southern kingdoms and

beat off Vikings. He translated some works from Latin (the most important of which

was Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy). In this period Bede's History was also

translated into Old English and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begun to be written.

Old English Poetry

The Anglo-Saxons brought with them the heroic tradition and the alliteration

(use of similar sounds) technique to the Old English poetry. Because they wrote

nothing until they became Christian and because the Christian ideals and the heroic

ideals were so much different, no poetry except Beowulf has survived from the pre-

Christian period before the Anglo-Saxons were converted into Christianity. Thus the

majority of the Old English poetry is Christian and the main theme of these poems

was religious issues. However almost all these poems are in the heroic form. The Old

English poets combined the strange and unfamiliar world of the Bible with many of

the values of their own history (Germanic history) in order to make it more

understandable. Thus Moses and Christ, etc. were represented as heroes who

performed heroic deeds. The examples of such works include Dream of the Rood and

Cadmon's Hymn. Another theme of such poems was the combination of the sad

awareness of the transitoriness of all earthly goods and the compulsion to try harder

and harder which was the characteristic of the heroic poetry. This theme appears in

two works (the Wanderer, the Seafarer) more prominently than others.

The atmosphere of the Old English poetry is dark and narrow with limited laws

and humor. Men are said to be happy, but they only think of war, of possible triumph

and of more possible failure. Romantic love can hardly be found. Men rarely rest and

relax: they are always ready to test their courage and their abilities against their fate

and destiny. The world of such poetry is a depressing one and it is given a high

spiritual excitement by the use of ironic understatement (i.e. actions and things are

represented as less than they really are in order to show that they are more than they

really are). The dignity and the ancient traditions assigned to such poetry prevent the

works from having some humor. Old English poetry represents cruel reality

throughout using extraordinary subtlety and intensity.

The Norman Conquest and its Effects

The first effect of the Norman Conquest on the English literature was to remove it

from the control of aristocracy and to take away the cohesive spirit it had in the

Anglo-Saxon period. The important aristocratic families were broken up and the

English aristocracy was put into the service of the Normans. Even the English

language seems to be abandoned for a long time because very little survives between

the Norman Conquest and the year 1200. Educated men wrote either in Latin or in

Anglo-Norman but the Anglo-Norman did not last too much. Latin which was the

language of the churches all over the world produced many literary works in England

during this period esp. in the 12th century.

But while the educated men wrote their works in other languages than English, the

uneducated people composed many works in English. In fact, ME literature is a very

popular literature. Its main contrast with the Old English literature was that its works

were mostly related with the lives of people in the social classes below aristocracy

(workers, middle class, etc.). Most of the works in the Old English were uttered by a

single aristocrat talking about aspirations and ambitions while the ME literature is

uttered by many voices and it deals with many topics in different tones and genres.

Originality of thought can not be found in the literature of ME. Because the many

different voices in the work say exactly the same thing as each other.

However, ME literature has some advantages over its Old English counterpart:

• because the writers addressed the popular audience, they gained greater fame

• the modern reader easily understands the world these writers are talking about

• the hero is more sympathetic if less idealized who not only fights but also

laughs and cries and falls in love, etc.

• the role of women in society was recognized in the literature of this period

The life which is represented in the ME literature is shallow and it has little depth

but it can easily evoke our sympathy and compassion. It is represented sometimes as a

lively and colorful world full of surprises and it attracts our appreciation. It presents

accurately the details of life and humor which is the main characteristic of the ME

literature can be seen anywhere.

The lack of originality in the ME literature which was mentioned before is

somehow because of the attempt of many writers both religious and secular (i.e.

worldly) to make their works follow the principles of medieval Christianity. The

subject of personal salvation, the emphasis on the moral responsibilities of a human

being instead of his social or ethical duties is so obvious in the works of this period

that you would think the Middle Ages was a period of intellectual and social

unchangingness.

Between the years 1066 and 1485 England experienced great political and social

changes: developments in feudalism, the gradual growth of Parliament, the evolution

of cities and the middle class and the increase in foreign trade. But most of the writers

did not record these changes in their works except Chaucer and Langland's Piers

Plowman.

However these changes were very obvious in the daily lives of people. In fact the

inevitability of change for the worse is one of the prominent themes of ME

literature. This theme is the result of the violent life in the Middle Ages; constant

wars against enemies at home or outside the country, the powerful members of the

society supplying themselves from the hard works of the poor, the strictness of the

laws and the failure to apply them to the powerful members, and the famine and

pestilence are the reasons why medieval people expect a change for the worse.

But the funny side is that most of the ME literature is concerned with the normality

and its less preoccupied with the violence of the period, possibly because people in

that time never had saw a life without violence; in other words they had got used to

violence and difficulties.

Middle English Literature

The first important ME poem is Layamon's Brut (ca. 1205) which has been

written in the alliterative form and has clear connections with the Old English poetic

measures. Layamon's Brut is also the first poem in English in which the legend of

Arthur is told. Alliterative poetry was always composed; this is suggested by its

reappearance in written form in the period of "alliterative revival" in the 14th century

and reaches to its peak in Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Both Layamon and the poet of Beowulf dealt with legendary materials and sources

and they thought of these materials as history. Layamon's method, however, is

different of that of the poet of Beowulf: it makes use of romance; the romance has

some characteristics: it often deals with knights and it involves too much fighting and

many other adventures; it freely uses impossible events, and supernatural things and

it's most of the time involved with the romantic love; the heroes and heroines could

easily move from one romance to another; the plot often involves many events and the

same events may happen many times within the same romance and the style is easy

and colloquial.

Just a few skillful poets wrote in romance. The majority of those who composed

romance were uncultivated poets who addressed a semi-literate audience. The golden

age of medieval romance was the 12th and early 13th centuries and it was originated

from the aristocratic society of France by the work of such poets as Chretien de

Troyes. The ME poets of romance introduced the French romances into English. But

the aristocratic ideals of behavior of a different period and an unfamiliar society and

culture were replaced by those kinds of behavior that could be easily understood by

the lower-class and middle-class Englishmen.

The majority of ME literature is religious. The church has domination on literacy

during much of the Middle Ages and anyone who learned to write and read wanted to

become a cleric and work in the church and those who didn't want to do so, were

given a very basic education. Moreover, the church was a great producer of books.

And even secular literature might sometimes be lost because the churchmen had no

interest in keeping them because they did not express some Christian idea.

The majority of ME religious literature can hardly be regarded as literature:

sermons, manuals for priests, mystical writings, lyric poems, stories of miracles,

moral allegories, etc. were not very rich literary works.

Because almost everyone who knew how to write worked in the church, the

secular literature was very limited and by the way, many of this secular literature did

not survive because the churchmen did not approve them. Owl and the Nightingale is

one of the few works which survived this period.

During the last twenty-five years of the 14th century, ME literature suddenly

flowered in three great poets:

• the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight produced the best romance of

the period and some of the best religious poetry such as Patience and The

Pearl

• William Langland in Piers Plowman in which he faces the great religious and

social issues of the period

• Geoffrey Chaucer who had the greatest success

This sudden success is partly because of the patrons.

But patrons did not always make a poet great. Chaucer's friend, John Gower, was

supported by a royal patron but he did not succeed that much as Chaucer did. His

works include a work in Latin, a work in Norman French and also Confessio

Amantis in English.

The 15th century is a period in which popular literary genres flowered; they include

lyrics, ballads, dramas (mystery plays, morality plays, etc.).

Medieval English

The differences between the OE and the ME regarding the form are:

• OE has many inflections for different parts of speech while the inflection

system is weaker in the ME

• The vocabulary of the OE is almost entirely Germanic while the ME borrows

most of its words from the French

The main difficulty of the ME for the modern reader is its spelling system and the

fact that it has no standard language but it is composed of many regional dialects,

each one of them has its own sound system and writing.

Old and Middle English Prosody

All of the Old English poems are written in the same verse form. The verse unit is

a single line and there is no rhyme to connect one line to another. The device used to

organize the line is alliteration. The Old English alliterative line contains four main

stresses. This line is divided into two half-lines. Each one of them has two stresses

and the two half-lines are divided by a strong pause or in technical terms a caesura

([siː' ʒʊərə]). These two half-lines are connected using alliteration:

Oft Scyld Scefing sceapena preatum

Also any vowel alliterates with any other vowel. In addition to this alliteration, the

length of the unstressed syllables and their number and pattern follows complex rules.

The majority of the ME poems is either in the form of the stressed rhymed verse or

in the alliterative verse. The difference with the Old English in this regard is that in

the ME alliterative verse, all four stressed words may alliterate.

In a summer season when soft was the sun

Also a line may contain five, six or even more stressed words of which all or only

the minimum may alliterate:

A fair field full of folk found I therebetween

Like the Old English, any vowel may alliterate with any other vowel.

There are two general types of stressed rhymed verse:

• stressed and unstressed syllables alternate regularly (xXxXxX)

• two unstressed syllables intervene (xxXxxXxxX)

• a combination of the two (xxXxXxxXxX)

Rhyme in ME may be between adjacent (next to each other) or alternate lines or in

more complex patterns.

Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400)

1370: The book of the Duchess

1372: First journey to Italy; contact with Italian culture

1385: Troilus and Criseide

1386: Starting Canterbury Tales

Facts from Chaucer's Literary Career

• one of his earliest works was the translation of the Roman de la Rose, a 13th

century French poem

• at the end of the 1360s he wrote his first major work, the Book of the Duchess;

an elegy for John of Gaunt's first wife who died in 1369

• The Book of the Duchess is one of the most derivative and original works of

Chaucer

• In the first period of his literary career, Chaucer modeled his works on the

French authors but a deep knowledge of Latin can be seen in all his works

• His favorite Latin author was Boethius

• Chaucer's philosophical attitude was that you should immerse in the physical

world while staying spiritually detached from it

• The journey of Chaucer to Italy in 1372 was an important event in his literary

career

• In Italy he studied the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio

• Boccaccio's moods and attitudes were very similar to that of Chaucer and he

provided a great source for some of Chaucer's best poems including much of

the Canterbury Tales and the Parliament of Fowls

• His longest poem, Troilus and Criseide, is an adaptation of Boccaccio's

Filostrato

Chaucer's Art

Chaucer was all over his life involved with many jobs and occupations. This

practical aspect of his life is considered as one of the main reasons as to why he is a

great poet. He dealt with all kinds of people, the high and the low. He understands

both the high and the low but he remains detached and separated from both and it is

this detachment which distinguishes the art of Chaucer from that of his

contemporaries.

The aristocrats of the medieval society were attributed with all kinds of idealism

and Chaucer regards life in terms of the ideals of these aristocrat families. However,

he also regards life as a completely practical subject. Chaucer's art was to be involved

in and at the same time detached from any situation.

This double vision (involving in and detaching from) in the poetry of Chaucer

resulted in images with an extraordinary clarity. For example the character of nun in

the Canterbury Tales is an example of the human paradox which opposes what people

are with what they think they are or what they pretend to be. The element of the

portrait of the nun are divided into the critical and the admiring: a poet who is very

satiric and critical only captures the critical side and the audience think only about the

nun's weaknesses; while a sentimental poet emphasizes on the admirable aspects of

her character. However, Chaucer pays attention to both sides and he just expresses the

paradox and does not solve it.

Canterbury Tales

The original plan for the Canterbury Tales includes 120 stories, two for each

pilgrim to recite on the way to Canterbury and two more stories on the way back. But

Chaucer completed only 22 of these stories. The first concepts for writing the

Canterbury Tales came to Chaucer's mind in 1386 when he was living in Greenwich.

From his house he could see the pilgrim road that led toward the shrine of the English

saint, Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Collections of stories which are linked by such techniques were common in the

later Middle Ages. John Gower used it in his Confessio Amantis; Boccaccio narrated

one hundred tales of his work, Decameron, through ten characters and another Italian

writer, Sercambi, told a series of stories throughout a leader of a group of people

riding on the horseback.

However, Chaucer's artistic use of this technique was his own invention. In the

tales of Gower and Sercambi, only one speaker tells all of the stories; and in

Boccaccio, although there are different speakers, there's no logical relationship

between any of the speakers and the story they tell, so we can assign each story to any

speaker we want. But in the Canterbury Tales there is a beautiful connection between

the speaker and his story, so that the speaker grows with the story and the story

reveals some facts about the speaker. Chaucer relates two stories at the same time-

that of an individual tale and that of the speaker whom the tale is related to. He

develops the second story through the interchanges among the pilgrims between two

tales when one pilgrim finishes his tale and the other one is beginning to narrate his

own. These interchanges sometimes lead to a kind of hostility among the pilgrims.

The effect of each tale is enhanced by the hostility of its teller. In addition to such

strategies, the personality and mind of the reporter- Chaucer himself- helps in making

the meaning of the poem rich and attracting.

Some of the characters in the poems are Miller, Friar, Summoner, Wife of Bath,

Physician, Reeve, Carpenter and Franklin among others.

Everyman (ca. 1485)

Everyman is the best example of a kind of medieval drama known as the morality

play. Morality plays in England were acted by trade groups and they were written by

only one person. Their main purpose was a religious one.

The difference between the moralities and the mysteries was that the mysteries

tried to make Christianity more real to the uneducated by dramatizing important

events in the Bible and to show what these events mean to the human being and what

a human can learn from them. The morality plays, on the other hand, used allegory to

dramatize the moral conflict within every man: the actors of the play are every man

and different characteristics of him and the plot includes his reactions to the

persuasions or temptations of these qualities. The purpose of the moralities is more

didactic and instructive but the common point between moralities and mysteries is

that both contain humor.

This humor is represented in the Everyman when at the end suddenly all of the

hero's friends leave him when he needs their help.

Everyman teaches its uncomplicated lesson by the simplicity and directness of its

language.

The main theme of the poem is that the human being can take with him from this

world nothing that he has received (e.g. beauty, strength, friends, etc.), only what he

has given (i.e. good deeds).

In Everyman, allegory has been used in its most obvious form. Each actor

represents a quality within Everyman and his name shows this quality. So the reader

has no problem in figuring out that which character symbolizes which quality.

Popular Ballads

Ballads are narrative sons that have been transmitted orally from one generation to

the next and their composers are unknown. Ballads are often associated with primitive

societies such as the American society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The origins of the popular or folklore ballads are controversial. Some say that they

were first composed by the attempts of a group of people and they were used as songs

in the ritual dances of the primitive people; but this theory has not been proved and it

probably seems wrong.

The English ballads were composed during 1200 to 1700 but most of them were

printed only after the 18th century.

Bishop Thomas Percy was one of the first people who became interested in the

ballads and he published some ballads he had found in a manuscript in a book named

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry and by this, he encouraged others like Sir

Walter Scott to go to the places were these ballads were originally sung and write

them down with the original dialect.

The common feature of all the popular ballad was their spareness (quality of

having no extra parts): they only deal with the climax and they describe that climax

with compression and they avoid any comment or anything which is considered extra.

This was possibly due to the fact that the ballads were transmitted orally and the

human memory could not remember the extra parts easily.

The fact that the ballads were originally songs is very important. This affected the

verse form (usually a quatrain with four stresses in each line) and made the narrative

simpler.

Using refrains (verse or phrase that is repeated during a song or poem) caused the

reader or hearer to pause which in turn provides suspense. The use of refrains also

gives the ballad the quality of a ritual.

The subject of most of the best ballads is a tragic event, often a murder or an

accidental death and this tragic event usually involves supernatural elements. Lord

Randall, Edward, The Wife of Usher's Well, Three Ravens and Sir Patrick Spens

are examples of ballads with a tragic plot. However not all the ballads have a tragic

ending. For instance, Thomas Rhymer involves a happy ending.

The subject of some ballads is a real historical event. For example, Bonny Earl of

Murray and Bonny George Campbell express their sorrow for the political murders

of two popular nobles.

St. Stevens and King Herod is hardly a ballad. It was probably not transmitted

orally because it has some Latin in it and it has not gone through more than one stage

of composition so it hasn't been revised.

Sir Thomas Malory (ca. 1405-1471)

1451: First experience in prison

ca. 1469-70: Morte Darthur completed in prison

1485: Morte Darthur printed by William Caxton

Malory's book, Morte Darthur has been based on the Arthurian romance. Arthur

was a British or Roman-British king who fought against the invasion of Anglo-Saxons

and beat them off in the 6th century. But his historical identity is not important. What

is important is that he has been a great character around whom the medieval ideal of

chivalry and courage has been developed. Chivalry is the quality that controls the

actions of the knight adventurer who gets on the back of his horse, searches for the

wrongs and tries to make them right. He is usually searching for a lady whom he

saves from a monster or other evil knights. The theme of all the works written

according to the Arthurian legends can be summarized in the following sentence:

"keeping order in a lawless land by the efforts of a person who fights for the right

against apparently undefeatable enemies".

The Arthurian legend involves many motifs such as the remainders of primitive

pagan religious rituals, strict morals of Christianity, an elaborate romantic love, and

others.

In 13th century the Arthurian legends were given a kind of order in a series of prose

narratives that later on formed the basis for writing Morte Darthur.

Morte Darthur is an important book for two reasons: firstly because it is the best

and most complete narration of the story of Arthur and his knights; secondly because

it is one of the greatest pieces of prose in English.

Malory was the first English writer who gave so much importance to the prose and

made it a very suitable tool for the narration.

The characteristics of his prose include naturalness and lack of self-consciousness,

simplicity, a harsh realism using naturalistic dialogue and understated characters who

express themselves in moments of great emotional conflict with the minimum number

of words.

William Caxton (ca. 1422-1491)

• William Caxton printed the first book in English (translation of the French

work Recueil des Histoires de Trioe or collection of the stories of Troy) and

he established the first printing press in England

• Among his first publications were Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

• Caxton did not believe so much in the historical validity of Arthur but he

encourages the reader to forger his own skepticism to accept or reject the truth

of Malory's work

• In treating the book Morte Darthur, he emphasizes its outstanding qualities and

he believes that one can learn pure conduct from them

• He also believes that the outstanding qualities have all a negative sense like

murder, hatred, sin, etc.

The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603)

1485: Accession of Henry VII; the Tudors start ruling the country

1509: Accession of Henry VIII

1517: The Reformation begins with the thesis of Martin Luther

1535: Henry VIII became the Head of Church of England

1557: Tottel's Miscellany was published; it contained poems by Wyatt,

Howard and others

1558: Accession of Queen Elizabeth I

1576: The Theatre was built

1588: The Spanish Armada was defeated

1603: Death of Elizabeth I; accession of James I, the first king of the

Stuart family

The 16th century in England can be seen as the age of the Tudor dynasty. There

were three generations of this family: they ruled from 1485 up to 1603. Before the

first king of Tudor comes to the throne, the Earl of Richmond who later on became

Henry VII defeated Richard III and won the crown. England was the place for the

battles between the families of York and Lancaster for more than thirty years. Henry

VII was from Lancaster and he married Elizabeth who was the sister of Edward V and

the niece of Richard III who as was earlier mentioned belonged to the house of York.

The lords and barons of the country could not oppose the power of Henry VII and the

church had already shown its alliance with Henry. So the Tudor government had a

strong authority, order and practical solutions to problems.

By the introduction of the printing industry by William Caxton at the end of the

15th century, more and more people could read English. Printing also made the books

cheaper and the number of books was increased and as a result there were more

opportunities to read and more motivations to learn to read.

The early years of the Tudor dynasty saw many important changes in trade and the

warfare. Henry VII started some commercial contracts with European countries;

England which was always famous for its sheep began to manufacture and export

cloth. Also many people migrated from the villages to the cities and London became a

great market and business began to develop. At the same time the old feudal structure

began to weaken because the introduction of firearms caused the armored knights and

the English bowmen to be abandoned and forgotten.

But these changes did not occurred over one night. Still many writers and common

people looked back instead of forward. They saw an uncertain future in front of them

which they scared to step into. So they looked back to an idealized past when

everything was peaceful and simple. But gradually these ideas changed and made the

background for the mentioned changes.

The best writers of the time of Henry VII were Scottish, not English. They include

William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas and David Lindsay.

Humanism

This movement began with the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 with influences

from the new cultural and intellectual movements in Italy.

One of the great leaders of this movement was Sir Thomas More, the Lord

Chancellor of Henry VIII. His masterpiece, Utopia, was written in Latin. It advised all

of Europe to reconsider their social institutions and gain economic equality and peace.

More in his controversial book, the History of Richard III, strengthened the Tudor

dynasty by darkening its predecessor (Richard III and the house of York).

Erasmus of Rotterdam, More's friend, had also a great influence in the field of

education. According to humanists, education was based upon the classics and the

Bible. It was to be liberal and free for everyone and also practical. Its purpose was to

prepare able people for the duties of government and for public service as in the

church. Elizabeth I herself was a good example of such an educational system.

Elizabethan education was based upon the medieval ideas of trivium (grammar,

logic and rhetoric) and quadrivium (astronomy, arithmetic, geometry and music).

Grammar was Latin grammar and rhetoric referred to the devices used in the classics.

The purpose of this system of education was to train students to speak and write good

Latin. For this purpose the school teachers used books in different levels of difficulty.

These books include Sententiae Pueriles for the beginners to Horace, Virgil,

Terence and Cicero's De Officiis. Also the teachers might use of the system of

double translation (Latin to English and vice versa) in order to develop the skills and

rhetorical elegance of the students, but they also knew that the development of a

person from childhood to adulthood needed moral teaching and the source of these

morals was Latin classics.

The most famous humanists are Colet, Elyot and Ascham.

By the way, authors had many difficulties in selecting the language of their works.

The vernaculars (Languages other than formal language) seemed unstable and new to

the educated men and for the person who wanted eternal fame, it's natural that he

should worry about the durability and stability of his language. Moreover, humanists

had emphasized the value of the classical languages like Latin and Greek. However,

many authors who liked their mother tongue criticized this idea. For example,

Joachim Du Bellay emphasized that the value of every language is not something

hereditary, and it depends on what great works are written in that language.

The Reformation: Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary

Humanists like Erasmus supported and practiced a critical study of the Scriptures;

on the other hand, humanists like More were opposed to the corruptness in the

churches and abuses like selling the pardons to the worshipers. But with Martin

Luther's thesis, Reformation was strengthened and Humanism and Reformation

seemed to be enemies for a while.

From the point of view of its supporters, Reformation was a return to pure

Christianity (cleansing the church of all the evil and idolatry that had been

accumulated over the centuries. From a less supporting point of view, it was a break-

up of western Christian world, the secularization of society, the establishment of

princely ascendancy over the church and the identification of religious feelings with

nationalistic ones. From the point of view of the Catholic church, it was a heresy.

The Reformation had not any ideological basis in England. The break-up with the

church of Rome was caused by a man who considered himself a Catholic hero against

Luther, Henry VIII. His motives were dynastic and not religious. He wanted a

legitimate son and he could not have one with the divorce which the Church of Rome

refused. He named himself the Supreme Head of the English church and required the

oaths of loyalty to him in that role.

Under Henry's son, Edward VI, the Reformation which had been started because of

some political reasons, gained a strong religious and spiritual force. Protestant

theologians from the Continent came to England in groups and the Book of Common

Prayer was published in 1549 and 1552.

The successor of Edward VI was his older sister Mary who was half-Spanish and

deeply Catholic. The Protestants either fled to the Continent or were burned due to

their heresy. The Reformation could be reversed ideologically, but some of its results

like the distribution of monastery lands among people could not.

Nationalism: Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. She was one of the greatest politicians

England had ever produced.

By the time of Elizabeth I, England's strength was its middle position in the

balance of power in Europe. It could support either sides of the power contest- Spain

or France. It could support or not to support the Protestant uprising in the Low

Countries. In addition, the queen was unmarried and the general assumption was that

she would marry. Her possible marriage was an important factor in European

diplomacy. England was united by the time it was too late to marry. What caused

England to become even more united was the papal bull of 1570 which expelled

Elizabeth from the throne; Englishmen supported their queen and she became the

symbol of Englishness and nationalism. The perseverance of her in the face of many

threats, her beauty, her wisdom and her divine mission to guide England became

articles of faith.

England's main weakness was its politico-religious division. The Catholics and the

Protestants were the two extremes. Between them were the majority of Englishmen

whose main desire was for order and peace in England and for them Elizabeth became

the symbol of order.

From the point of view of religion Elizabeth satisfied neither Catholics nor

Protestants. She forced a kind of religious services, compelled them to attend it and

left their consciences to themselves. The result was nationalistic; Christians looked

toward neither Rome nor Geneva as the source of authority, but to Elizabeth.

The desire for commercial profit also caused nationalistic feelings flourish into the

country. By the end of Edward VI's reign and as Protestantism progressed, many

fishing companies lacked work, for the sale of fish depended greatly upon the

Catholic belief of eating no meat on Fridays and other fast days. So they became

pirates and Elizabeth supported them privately.

Also the survival of Elizabeth I for so long provided the opportunity for

nationalistic feelings to be established.

Dramatic Literature

The end of the 15th century marks the beginning of modern dramatic literature that

should be acknowledged to John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor

of England under Henry VII. His plays were short and they were called "interludes".

Interludes continued to be popular down to Shakespeare's era, but the development

of drama into a sophisticated art form required another influence- the classics. The

Latin tragedies of Seneca had a similar effect on the English drama. These plays

were performed in five acts and had violent and bloody plots. They were full of

rhetorical speeches and ghosts could be seen among the characters in the play.

Moreover, Seneca is full of references to Fortune, a Roman goddess who turned

her wheel and brought those who had reached the top to the bottom.

The risky position of men in high status formed the basis for Elizabethan tragedy.

The mid-16th century contribution to this type of drama is a collection of verse

complaints called The Mirror for Magistrates. A mirror is a warning in the old sense

and magistrate is someone in power. The first regular English tragedy was Gorboduc

written by two lawyers.

The combination of classical form with English content made dramas more mature

and artistic. But such dramas must have an audience, a theater and professional actors.

The earliest English dramas were acted by clergies in the church. Medieval miracle

and mystery play were acted by amateurs, while morality plays and interludes were

produced by semi-amateur groups who traveled about.

The actors who traveled about did not have a respectable position and they often

had dubious characters. So they were often arrested. Some noblemen kept a group of

actors as their servants. They could travel and perform their plays whenever they were

not needed by their lords and they were free of any charge.

The earliest successful acting groups measuring by their acceptance at court were

groups of boys who regularly performed plays at court.

The adult actors played in various places- great houses, hall of an Inn, temporary

stages, etc. James Burbage in 1576 built the first theater to house their performances.

The public theaters had usually an oval shape, with an unroofed yard in the center

where some spectators stood, covered seats around the yard and a platform for

running the plays, surrounded on three sides by spectators. Plays were performed in

the afternoon and they were dependant on the weather. The private theaters were

indoors, with artificial lighting and they were patronized by more important

audiences.

The acting groups filled the roles of their plays from their inner members not from

outsiders and they performed different plays in consecutive days, not acting a single

play for several days.

Poet, Patron and Publisher

Most of the literature in the 16th century was under the influence of the court. But

we can't forget the role of the City of London on the production of different literary

works and on the taste of audience. The printing presses, the publishers and the

majority of the middle-class population who decided on the style of literature were in

London. The standards and tastes of the middle-class influenced every type of written

work. Because the writer finally had to sell his books and the majority of people who

came for visiting and buying the works of an author were from the middle-class not

from the courtiers.

Beside the court and the City of London, the most important sources of literary

works were the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. The person who entered these

two universities had either to remain as an academic person, to enter the church or to

go into medicine or law. Literature in that period was regarded as a secondary job, not

the main occupation.

Financial rewards for writing and publishing literary works came from two main

sources: patron and publisher. Of these two, patron was the most important source of

reward and this reward was usually in the form of a gift. The usual reward for the

dedication of a pamphlet or a small volume of verse was two to three pounds.

The other source of reward was the publisher. In that period there was no copyright

so the author beside the money he got by selling his work directly to the publisher,

never got anything else. And this reward was usually forty shillings .

The writer's troubles were not over when he sold his work to the publisher. He was

still responsible for the content of his work and he had to follow the strict rules of

printing by authorities. These authorities in the order of importance were:

1. The Privy Council and the Court of Star Chamber (the highest political

authority after the queen)

2. The Court of High Commissions (controlling the religious contents of the

works)

3. The Stationers' Company (to which the book should be registered)

The rules that governed the publication of books in that period were:

1. The number of printers were limited

2. Every book must be printed only in London, university of Oxford and

university of Cambridge

3. Everything printed must be approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the

Bishop of London or their representatives

4. Everything published in London must be registered in the Stationers' Company

Art, Nature, and Poetry

Those who want to read Elizabethan literature according to the time when it was

produced must adjust their mind to the differences between the aesthetic principles of

the 16th century and that of our period.

In the 16th century there were still signs of the medieval concept of arts as crafts

and every writer of the period had a great amount of information and knowledge of

many crafts. Shakespeare is a fine example who was familiar with gardening,

dressmaking, archery, etc.

What all these crafts had in common was that they all used the materials of nature

but took advantage of the cleverness of human being. The same principle was applied

to the art or craft of writing.

According to the Romantic movement, the works of art are usually unsuccessful

attempts at imitating the nature. This idea seemed strange to the Elizabethans. They

knew that nature was the basis of all, but there was no reason why the cleverness of

man should not be used in harmony with the nature. There was no conflict in the

Elizabethan mind between art and nature. So when something naturally beautiful was

extended to all aspects of life by art, arrangement or manipulation, there was no great

gap between literature and the various crafts.

For instance, some Elizabethans had built their houses in the form of the letter E

due to their honor to Queen Elizabeth and someone like John Thorpe designed his

house like his initials (T).

The verse forms used by the Elizabethans range from the very simple four-line

ballad stanza through the rather complicated form of the sonnet to the beautiful 18-

line stanza of Spencer.

Earl of Surrey also practiced a form of iambic couplet in which the first line had

twelve syllables and the second line fourteen. This verse form was called "poulter's

measure". It was the most common verse form in the 60s and 70s. When each line of

the poulter's measure is printed as two lines, it's called "short meter".

Sonnets are fourteen-line poems in iambic pentameter with complicated rhyme

schemes. The most common form is Italian or Petrarchan sonnet which Wyatt and

Sidney imitated. It consists of an octave (first eight lines) followed by a sestet (final

six lines). Its typical was abba abba cddc ee. English sonnet, introduced by Surrey

and practiced by Shakespeare is composed of three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming

abab cdcd efef gg. Spencer preferred a very complicated pattern: abab bcbc cdcd ee.

The six-line "Troilus stanza" and the seven-line rhyme royal stanza both practiced

by Chaucer were also among the verse forms of the 16th century.

Spenser's nine-line stanza called the "Spenserian stanza" adds to the Italian abab

bc bc an additional line of twelve syllables or an Alexandrine. The complex scheme

Spenser used in his Epithalamion perhaps is the climax of Elizabethan expertise in

verse. The eighteen lines of it rhyme ababcc, then we have various combinations in

the second six lines and finally three couplets. Lines 6, 11, and 16 are short. They

have only six syllables and the last line is an Alexandrine.

Genres and Conventions in Poetry

1) The pastoral poetry presents a simple and idealized world where shepherds

live and it’s not concerned with war, politics or commerce at all. Its business consists

of tending the flocks, friendly poetic competitions among shepherds, love, and

gaining of contentment and satisfaction rather than fame or fortune.

Pastoral lyrics express the joys of pastoral life or disappointment in love.

Pastoral eclogues are dialogues between shepherds in which a poetic competition is

held or there is serious satire against abuses in world disguised as the local concerns

of the folks. There are also pastoral dramas and romances which exhibit the same

values of leisure, freedom from pride and ambition and the pursuit of naïve

contentment.

2) Mythological-erotic poetry is mainly derived from Ovid. It allowed for

elaborate mythological decoration of the narrative without worrying about moral

principles or allegorical interpretation. Such poems require a courtly taste. They

validated the senses and they gave primacy to the physical beauty and the

imagination. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is a fine example.

3) Complaint poetry is essentially tragic and moral. In this genre the ghost of

someone who fell from a high place sorrows over his fate and warns others. If the

ghost is a woman, her fall was caused by the fragility of her sex and the poem may be

related to the Ovidian tradition.

4) Heroical epistle was practiced most notably by Drayton and it came from both

Ovid and the Mirror for Magistrates tradition.

5) Elizabethan sonnet depends upon a tradition by petrarch and his imitators in

Italy and France. In this tradition the poet complains of his mistress's coldness; he

describes the opposite feelings the lover experiences like love & hatred, Happiness &

Sorrow, etc; and he writes sonnets about the conventional themes of sleep, absence,

originality, abandonment and others. What love sonneteers had in common was an

ambition to give dignity and power to the theme of love by various rhetorical and

stylistic devices in the Petrarchan tradition.

6) Heroic poetry of which Spenser's Faerie Queene is the best example. The

classical epics by Homer and Virgil and the romantic Italian epics of Ariosto and

Tasso can also be mentioned.

Elizabethan Moods and Attitudes

• a medieval point of view like 14th and 15th centuries in the works of authors

such as Sir Walter Ralegh with concepts like "feeling of vanity" and

"transitoriness of all earthly ambitions and achievements

• a spirit of joy and gaiety and of innocence that comes from the folk and from

the love of Englishmen for their countryside. Its best expression can be seen in

the plays of Shakespeare.

• A mood of pastoral contentment, of reflective leisure, of the enjoyment of a

simple, idealized world (Spenser's Shepheardes Calender)

• The desire for conquest, for achievement, for surmounting all obstacles.

Elizabethans called it the "aspiring mind". The finest example is the works of

Christopher Marlow.

Sir Philip Sydney (1554-1586)

Sir Philip Sydney wrote a pastoral romance named "Arcadia" because of the

request of his beloved sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke.

This work includes two parts: the "Old Arcadia" and the "New Arcadia". The

complicated plot of these two romances is full of oracles, disguisings, mistaken

identities, melodramatic events and confusing love situations. Some of the parts of

this work have a political idea and Sidney tries to hide these political concepts when

he describes the book's purpose as entertainment and nothing else. The Arcadia also

contains many poems. They are in the form of eclogues (short pastoral poem, usually

in dialogue) and songs which are spread all over the plot and they represent Sidney's

first attempts at writing poetry.

Sidney in The Defense of Poesy (An Apology for Poetry) which is the answer to

the attacks of Stephen Gosson to the poets and players systematically defends poetry

and all other imaginative works. He names the advantages and values of the poetry.

He mentions the antiquity of poetry and its prestige in the ancient world and its

universality. He refers to the names given to the poets by the Romans (prophet) and

the Greeks (maker) to indicate their value and dignity in the ancient times.

However, he believes that the real defense of the poet depends not on what he is

but on what he does or writes. It is the work of a poet which defines his value. He also

believes that the poet can make a new world, more beautiful than the world he lives

in. Moreover, according to him, the poet represents the virtues and vices in a clearer

way than the world or nature does. The poet's duty is to teach and make happy at the

same time.

Despite the serious tone he uses in writing this work, it involves many happy and

delightful moments. Sidney's behavior in the book is easy and he perfectly deals with

the most difficult issues in a very casual and easy manner.

Astrophel and Stella is the one of the first Elizabethan sonnet cycles. It is an

imitation of the works of Petrarch or his French imitators and it follows a common

tradition; that the poet represents the contrasting feelings of the lover (hope & despair,

tenderness & bitterness) by using conceit or far-fetched metaphor. But Sidney tries to

keep his distance from these conventions when he says he uses no standard

conventional phrases and his poem is original and comes directly from his heart (this

sentence is conventional itself, my friend ☺). Sidney's sonnet cycle has a plot but it

does not tell a clear story.

Sidney's ability to dramatize, his use of colloquial dialogue and his heightening the

situation, make his sonnets extraordinarily fresh and attractive.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

Sir Thomas Wyatt spent some years in prison and his admiration of the peaceful

life in the country and his pessimistic comments about the foreign courts in his verse

epistles is because of this background.

His poetry includes sonnets which are modeled on the Italian sonnets and lyrics.

The lyrics all have short stanzas and refrains like those of the native English ballets or

dance songs.

The difference between the Petrarchan sonnets and the ballets is that the lover in

the Petrarchan sonnet is usually in a mood of sadness and despair; the poem is usually

in the form of a complaint and it involves many conceits; the lover is hopeless; he is

the slave of the lady and the coldness and bitterness of the lady is a suffering for the

lover. However, in the ballets the lover has a happy and manly independence from the

beloved.

Sonnets were introduced into English by Wyatt. He took the subject matter of his

sonnets from the Petrarchan sonnets but his rhyme scheme comes from the

Italian sonnets and it takes the form of three quatrains and a couplet and it often

rhymes abba abba cddc ee.

In aristocratic communities like the court, poems were transmitted hand to hand

through manuscripts and the common people could only read these poems if a

publisher found one of these manuscripts and published it in a collection known as

"Miscellany". Wyatt's miscellany is called The Court of Venus.

Other such collections are:

1. A Paradise of Dainty Devices

2. A Handful of Pleasant Delights

3. A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions

4. Tottel's Miscellany (the most important miscellany of all printed by Richard

Tottel)

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)

The importance of Surrey as a poet was that he continued working on the sonnets

after Wyatt introduced them into English poetry and he invented a new form of sonnet

known as the "English sonnet" with three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab

cdcd efef gg. Also he was the first English poet to use blank verse (unrhymed iambic

pentameter). The work in which he used the blank verse for the first time was the

translation of a part of Virgil's Aeneid.

Surrey was a courtier poet and he was interested in circulating his poems through

manuscript rather than publishing them. The majority of his poems appear in Tottel's

miscellany.

The difference between Surrey and Wyatt is that Surrey regularly maintained the

normal accent more than Wyatt who was not primarily concerned with regular accent.

Surrey is more fluent and musical. His poetic diction is clear and consistent. But he

often seems less vivid and energetic than Wyatt and he takes the figurative language

Wyatt uses less seriously.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)

• Raleigh in his time was familiar for his skeptical thoughts, his good

relationships with the queen, his hatred of Spain and his poetry

• He has a long poem named "Cynthia" which was dedicated to the queen; it

was never printed and today there are just a few lines in manuscript

• "The Lie", one of his poems, criticizes the social classes and institutions

• "Farewell, False Love" is one of the early poems of the author which was

accompanied with music by William Byrd

• His prose is narrative, descriptive and philosophical

• When in prison, he wrote his unfinished work "History of the World"; this

work does not deal with recent history and it is limited to the earlier times

• One of the best remarks of Raleigh in "History of the World" is "he who

follows truth too closely at the heels might get kicked in the teeth"

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

ca. 1587: Tamburlaine was written, introducing blank verse to the theater

ca. 1592-93: Dr. Faustus was produced

• Before Marlowe left Cambridge, he wrote his most successful play,

Tamburlaine

• Also before leaving the university of Cambridge, he wrote the tragedy of

Dido, Queen of Carthage, with the help of his Cambridge contemporary,

Thomas Nashe

• Tamburlaine was followed by a sequel (Tamburlaine, Part II) soon after the

production of the first version

• Tamburlaine narrates the adventures of a 14th-century Scythian shepherd with

the same name who conquered much of the world

• Marlowe uses this character to express the unlimited energy and ambition and

to show that one must try hard to reach absolute power

• He uses a special kind of blank verse in writing Tamburlaine which is suitable

to be performed on the stage

• In the six final years of his life, Marlowe wrote five more plays: a sequel to

Tamburlaine, The Massacre at Paris; two of these five were tragedies: The

Jew of Malta and Dr. Faustus and one of them was a chronicle history play,

Edward II

• His verse translations include the Amores of Ovid, the first book of Lucan's

Pharsalia and the Hero and Leander

• In all of Marlowe's major tragedies, Tamburlaine*, The Jew of Malta** and

Dr. Faustus***, we see a hero who passionately searches for power- the

power of rule*, the power of money** and the power of knowledge***. These

ambitions are more than the capacity of human being and as a result each hero

is defeated at the end, but the values for which the hero tried so hard are more

important than the forces which defeated him

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

1579: Publication of The Shepheardes Calender

1580: He goes to Ireland where he remains the rest of his life

1590: Publication of the first three books of The Faerie Queene

Spenser was a poet who loved physical beauty and always tried to reach to the

highest ideals but at the same time he was a purely moral person. However, his

morality was not of strict and repressive kind; his morality comes from his

understanding of the right action and of the temptations that persuade man as he tries

to do such good deeds.

Puritanism had a great influence on Spenser in the early years of his career. He

always remained a loyal Protestant and he is so much opposed with the Catholic

church that it is always represented as a monster or a bad guy in his poems. He is also

deeply patriotic and he loves England. As a result, Religion and nationality are two of

the most prominent elements of his works.

Spenser was also called the "poet's poet" because many later English poets have

learned poetry from him. His influence can be seen on poets like Byron, Keats and

Tennyson.

The Shepheardes Calender

There are twelve pastoral eclogues in the calender. Each of these eclogues refers to

one of the months of the year. In the introductory section and before the eclogue

begins there are some painted woodcuts which show the characters or the main idea of

the poem and picture the corresponding sign of the Zodiac for that month.

The pastoral convention in the 16th century often presented a simple and idealized

world where shepherds and shepherdesses live. These people were not concerned with

issues like war, politics or money and their main business was to care for their sheep,

to hold friendly poetic competitions, to love each other and finally to gain joy and

contentment from their lives. But most of the time a pastoral eclogue in addition to

representing a simple world, usually criticizes the world and many different evils in it

that are usually hidden in a well-made disguise. so these eclogues sometimes gain a

didactic or satirical value through criticizing the world. The eclogues all have been

commented by someone named "E. K." which is believed to be the pen name of

Spenser and divided into three categories-plaintive, recreative and moral. Among the

moral eclogues the final eclogue which at the same time is the climax point (October)

deals with a very complicated theme- the problems of poetry in the modern life and

various duties of the poet in the flow of time and this theme can be generalized to the

whole book. From the remaining eleven eclogues, four of them deal with love, one is

in praise of Elisa (Queen Elizabeth), one a lament for a maiden, four deal allegorically

with matters of religion or conduct and one describes a singing-match.

Spenser in writing his pastoral poetry intentionally used an antique language.

There are three possible reasons for this. First of all this choice of language could be

because of Spenser's honor to the medieval literature and especially Chaucer, because

Spencer was somehow in love with Chaucer and he called him Tityrus or the god of

shepherds. The other possible reason is that Spenser wanted to give a countryside

color to his work because he was writing a pastoral poetry. And the final reason could

be that because the Shepheardes calender was somehow an imitation of Virgil's first

work, the Eclogues so Spenser deliberately used an archaic language to stay loyal to

that work of Virgil.

But the interesting point here is that Sir Philip Sidney to whom the book is dedicated

did not approve this choice of an archaic language and he said that the archaic frame

which Spenser has used for his poetry has not been influenced by the great authors of

the past like Virgil, Sannazzaro and Theocritus.

The other important point about this work is that it is written in thirteen different

meters: three types of couplet, three types of four-line stanza, three types of six-line

stanza, an eight, a nine and a ten-line stanza and a sestina (six stanzas of six-lines and

a final triplet, all stanzas have the same words at the end of their lines in six different

sequences). Among these different meters, some of them were novel, some of them

were adapted.

Later on in 1595 Spenser published a sequel to some of his eclogues in the

shepheardes calender and he named this sequel Colin clouts come home againe.

Colin clouts was the protagonist of Spenser's eclogues in his work.

The poetic purposes of The Shepheardes Calender are as follows:

1) Recovering a native voice

2) Warning his nation and his Queen of dangers to England and to the English Church

from within and without

3) Seeking his own place in the affairs of his country, and a place among men of

letters.

4) The defeat of death

The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and it is one of

the longest poems in the English language. It is an allegory which is a story whose

characters and events have a symbolic meaning. The poem's setting is a mythical

"Faerie land," which is ruled by the Faerie Queene. This Faerie Queene according to

the letter that Spenser sent to Sir Walter Ralegh represents Queen Elizabeth I.

Spenser wrote a letter for Walter Ralegh in 1589. In this letter he explains about

the early plan for The Faerie Queene. He describes the allegorical presentation of

virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical "Faerieland." This letter contains the

plans for 24 books: 12 of these books were based on 12 different knights and each

knight represents a private virtue, and 12 more books which all of them were about

King Arthur and they represent 12 public virtues. The main source for selecting these

virtues according to Spenser was Aristotle but the influence of Thomas Aquinas can

be seen as well.

The Faerie Queene presents the following virtues, of course in the six finished

books of the collection:

• Book I: Holiness

• Book II: Temperance

• Book III: Chastity

• Book IV: Friendship

• Book V: Justice

• Book VI: Courtesy

Each Book of the Faerie Queene recites the story of a knight and it represents a

Christian virtue. The Faerie Queene takes place in a mythical land, but the purpose of

Spenser was to relate his work and the imaginary universe in the poem to his own

country, England especially in the area of religion. Spenser lived in post-Reformation

England, which had recently replaced Roman Catholicism with Protestantism as the

national religion. There were still many Catholics living in England, and, because of

this, religious protest was a part of Spenser's life. It was in this kind of atmosphere

that Spenser saw a Catholic Church full of corruption. This sentiment is an important

background for the battles of The Faerie Queene that often represent the "battles"

between London and Rome.

The themes of the work can be stated like this: that our native virtue must be

augmented or transformed if it is to become true Christian virtue. Spenser has a high

regard for the natural qualities of creatures; he shows that the satyrs, the lion, and

many human characters have an inborn interest for the good. And he believes that the

various evils in our lives can only be defeated by the Christian good.

The poem can be read on many different levels, it's an epic allegory, it's religious,

heroic, magical, medieval and It is Spenser's blending of such diverse sources with a

high-minded allegory that makes the poem unique and remarkable. For example if

you read the poem as a romantic narrative, it gives you some chivalric adventures by

Redcrosse knight that at the end he kills the dragon and rescues Una's parents and

then marries her, but if you read it from a spiritual and allegorical point of view it

gives you the story of any individual's struggle for defeating evil, for being good, for

salvation, for purifying himself from all the sins.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

ca. 1588-92: Lived in London as an actor and playwright

ca. 1592-98: Mainly writes chronicle histories and comedies

ca. 1601-09: Writes great tragedies and romantic comedies

ca. 1610: Retires to Stratford

• Venus and Adonis was a mythological-erotic poem which was dedicated to

the Earl of Southampton. He also dedicated The Rape of Lucrece to the

same person

• Francis Meres writes about Shakespeare that he was the best English writer in

producing tragedies and comedies for the plays

• Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus and Romeo

and Juliet are his famous tragedies

• Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's

Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Love's Labor's Lost and Love's Labor's

Won are considered as his best comedies

• All of his best tragedies except for Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus are

classified as chronicle history plays, kind of drama based on the history

books representing the events in the reigns of different English kings

• About the end of the 16th century he wrote his best romantic comedies

including As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing

• In the next decade, he wrote some great tragedies like Hamlet, Macbeth,

Othello, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra

• About 1610 he retired to Stratford but he continued to write alone (The

Tempest) and with the help of others (Henry VIII). In this period he wrote

some romances and tragicomedies like The Tempest, Cymbeline and The

Winter's Tale

• His plays contain different kind of songs: the aubade or morning song, the

happy pastoral songs, love songs, ballads and funeral songs. These songs

represent the gifts of Shakespeare in writing lyrics, his humor and his great

sensitivity to the country life of Englishmen

• Shakespeare's sonnet cycles, different from all the other cycles of his time, tell

a story but the details of this story are not clear. There are certain motifs in

these cycles: admiring the beauty of a young man and recommending him to

marry (and probably become ugly thereafter☺); praising a lady; sonnets about

a love triangle with two men as rivals and a woman; sonnets about the

destructive power of time and the unchanging nature of poetry; sonnets about

a rival poet; and some sonnets about morality

• The vocabulary of his sonnets is often easy to understand but his many uses of

metaphor and how properly and richly he makes use of them is his

distinguishing feature

• The structure of his sonnets reinforces the power of his metaphors. They are

divided into two groups: Petrarchan sonnet and English sonnet. In the English

sonnet, he uses the first three quatrains to prepare the conclusion at the final

couplet; in the Petrarchan sonnet, he lists some items in the octave but in the

sestet, he may change the direction and the mood of the poem

• Regarding the rhetorical structure of his sonnets, some begin with

remembering the memories of the past, some are imperative and others use a

proverb, then improve it and add to it

• The images he uses in his sonnets come from different sources such as

gardening, law, farming, business, astrology, etc.

• The moods of his sonnets are, beside the sad mood of the Petrarchan sonnets,

delightful, proud, shameful, disgusting and fearful

• Oh, I nearly forgot to write the name of one of his works. It was The Phoenix

and The Turtle (sorry for that ☺)

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)

• The famous philosophical romantic work of More, Utopia, derives partly from

Plato's Republic and as a result it is philosophical and partly from the tales of

travelers like Amerigo Vespucci and hence it is romantic

• Utopia is one of the great memorials of the Christian humanist awakening (the

name of a movement). Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus and More were the most

brilliant members of this movement

• Utopia was written in Latin

• Utopia can be classified as a traveler's tale which is told by an experienced

mariner who is also a philosopher to a group of skeptical companions as they

are sitting in a garden in one of the cities of Holland.

• Utopia is divided into two books: in the first one which is written in

dialogues, the corruption of the European civilization is criticized; in the

second book, one of the travelers named Hythloday describes the institutions

and organizations of Utopia; these descriptions ironically refer to the real

world

• The world of Utopia is not represented as a fanciful and dreamlike world. The

world comes out of the serious thoughts of More about the social problems of

his time. he felt that the social ideals he so much admired and praised were not

real in practice

• The central idea in his mind was the idea of community of property.

According to this idea, as long as private property is abolished or is not

allowed, no fundamental change and reform in society happens. In order to

support this idea, More defends it in the role of one of the characters in the

dialog against the main speaker, Hythloday

The Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)

1558: The Spanish Armada attacks England

1603: Death of Elizabeth I; accession of James from the Stuart

Family

1605: Last attempt of English Catholic extremists with the

Gunpowder Plot1

1620: First migration of the pilgrims to the New World2

1625: Death of James I; accession of Charles I

1641: Beginning of Civil War; theaters closed in 1642

1649: Execution of Charles I; beginning of Commonwealth 3and

Protectorate 4known as Interregnum 5(1649-60)

1660: Charles II returns to the throne

1688: Resignation of James II, the last king of Stuarts

The main social problems of the 17th century can be stated with their solutions at

that time:

1. In the religious context, the problem was that "how long and how far should

the Reformation of the Protestant church be done?" the solution was that "as

far as each individual religious group wanted"

2. In the political context, the issue was that "how much power should the king

have independent of the parliament?" the answer was that "almost none"

1 conspiracy plotted to blow up the English Parliament and to kill King James I of England on November 5th 1605 2 name given to the Americas during the time when they were first being explored and colonized by Europeans 3 the republican period of government in Britain between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 4 the English government from 1653 to 1659 5 period of time between the end of one king's rule and the beginning of the next, time when a country has no ruler or official government

Before and After the Puritan Revolt

It may be useful to describe the structure of the English society and the status of

literature before and after the Puritan Revolt.

Before the Revolt and under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the court was the

main center of power and authority, reward, patronage and intellect. London was the

center of England and the kingdom and the court was the center of London. This was

especially true in the case of intellect, literature and art. So the main sort of literature

under the reign of Elizabeth was courtly literature. The sonnet sequence, the pastoral

romances (e.g. Sydney's Arcadia), the chivalric allegory (Spenser's The Faerie

Queene), the sermons1, the erotic poems (Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis), the

masque2, the epic, all were courtly. Patrons were mostly from courtiers and the

money from the patrons was the only source of making a living for someone who

lived only by writing. The same pattern continued during the reign of James I and

Charles I. Poets like John Donne, Ben Jonson, Carew, Suckling and Lovelace

wrote almost only for court and courtiers or were themselves courtiers. So you

the domination of the court over all literary societies. And because the court was

rather small and limited in size, poets did not wait for their works to be published and

they used manuscripts and they could easily become famous among their fellow

can see

een.

hese themes was paying attention to the honor as the

ost important value of life.

poets.

The court had certain values and characteristics and these values formed the

framework for courtly writings. These values were a belief in the hereditary order

of the kings, obedience to the national church and loyalty to the king or qu

The popular themes among the courtiers were heroic love (not necessarily

marriage), warfare (mainly without a political context) and piety or religiousness.

The main principle behind all t

m

After the Puritan Revolt, this pattern changed 180 degrees. The court was no

longer the center of authority and intellect and it did not have that much social and

financial power. London which was the center of banks, merchants, financiers, etc.

1 lecture given by a clergyman for the purpose of religious instruction 2 dramatic and musical production (especially of the 16th and 17th centuries) for the entertainment of English aristocrats

soon became the main rival of the court. Another rival was the Parliament. The writer

did not only wrote for the court and the court was just one of the sources of writing.

Those writers who were conservative went towa

rd the court and those innovative

y

ore

nnounced their independence and began their development, each one of

t

t this new market. Another change was that

out

itical, social and religious matters without being that much worried that

Because of these changes the English society changed from a hierarchical society

a society based on the ideas of multiplicity, difference and toleration.

ones went toward the City of London and the members of Parliament went toward an

of these two according to the dominant situation.

And the church which, before the Puritan Revolt, was the dominant power in the

context of religion, after the Revolt, became just one of the several religious

communities. The Puritan factions which were members of the English church bef

the Revolt, a

them interpreting the biblical texts by its own method, following their own moral

principles.

New money from different enterprises and companies attracted new men to itself.

These men were respectable people but they were not interested in the courtly

behaviors or intellectualism. The kind of literature which they liked most was not tha

much moralistic and not that much about hell or heaven. It was more serious than the

literature of the Restoration period. Publishers who were aware of these issues, tried

to make their products suitable for this new group of men. Soon the writers put aside

the tradition of writing for honor and they realized that in order to gain money from

these men they should aim their works a

the courtly patrons were replaced by the booksellers so that the writers could much

more easily achieve financial success.

There were also a couple of intellectual and spiritual changes after the Revolt.

Before the Revolt, the Elizabethan monarchy and the church were thought to be

hereditary and all agreed that because the common people are imperfect, there should

a supreme ruler who knows everything, whose reason can not be challenged by

anyone and who can suppress his or her emotions. But gradually people showed that

they are less imperfect and they need less strict discipline from the side of the

monarch. Another change was that people could more freely express their views ab

different pol

something bad would happen to them and a strict belief in these matters were not

necessary.

to

Literary Cross-Currents None of the high literature of the 17th century (except for the works of Milton)

written by the Puritans. Many of the Puritans rejected the secular and worldly issue

They rejected literature because of the same reason that they rejected music and

statues. They believed that all these were temptations from the physical world and

they would contaminate the pure spiritual en

was

s.

ergies of a faithful man. As a result, the

han,

ers

aller, Davenant) tried to compress their poems and to give them

as

ical arguments. Dryden was for the most part a poet of statement; Milton was

rs

ks of tragic

riters such as Webster, Ford and Middleton. But beside these dark plays, some

agicomic, romantic comedy and pastoral fantasies were produced.

sense of deep disgust, of ancient traditions being challenged by the Puritans can be

seen in the works of the early 17th century.

Two of the contrasting literary schools of the 17th century were "metaphysical

poetry" and "Cavalier poetry". Metaphysical poets (Herbert, Crashaw, Vaug

Cowley, Cleveland) with the leadership of John Donne tried to extend and improve

the traditional love lyrics. In the poems of these poets, there is often a sense of

pressure and violent. On the other hand, the Cavalier poets (Jonson and his follow

Carew, Suckling, W

a high and elevated ending and a sense of domination by using explicit and clear

intellectual content.

Also one of the most prominent poets of the period was John Milton who gained

fame with the help of John Dryden. The difference between Milton and Dryden was

that the heroic couplets of Dryden had less instructional value than the blank verse of

Milton; their sentence-units were shorter and one of the main parts of the couplets w

their log

more a poet of suggestion. But their common point is that both built new forms of

verse.

During the twenty years that the Puritans ruled the kingdom, most of the theate

were closed and nearly nothing was written for the stage. During this period, the

revival of the English plays came from the works of Sir William Davenant. The

prominent mood of the plays was sad and dark as can be seen in the wor

w

tr

Birth and Death of Literary Forms

ften

ll a story. Donne

stly used by Spenser esp. in his Faerie Queene but later on

y

ved

h were kinds of

making them guilty and for this reason they were rejected

• ed couplets and other rhymed forms

de on Cary and Morison and Abraham Cowley in his

taly when he set his

this form became popular by the end of the 17th century. The duty of

e

• Burlesque: this form was introduced with the help of France. After the

problems caused by the Puritans, ridicule and mockery became fashionable

Literary forms which were abandoned include:

• Sonnets: they always dealt with erotic and sexual issues and they were o

connected together in the form of a sonnet cycle to te

introduced religious themes to the sonnets (by his Songs and Sonnets);

Milton's sonnets are often deal with political issues

• Allegory: mo

turned to the grotesque and comic themes by the works of Dryden and finall

disappeared

• Masque and Madrigal: the first one was a courtly form and the other one a

popular genre, but both of them were rejected because the Puritans belie

that they are aimless, physical and worldly. Madrigals whic

folk songs were believed by the Puritans to make men happy instead of

Blank verse: it was replaced by the rhym

Literary forms which were born include:

• Ode: they were irregular forms imitated from the works of the Greek poet

Pindar. Jonson in the O

Pindarique Odes and also Dryden, and later on Gray and Wordsworth

helped this form grow

• Oratorio and Opera: Dryden introduced Oratorio from I

odes to music. Opera was also imported from Italy via France. These two

forms replaced the abandoned masques and madrigals.

• Satire:

the satirist was to divert the reader and to insult the antagonist at the sam

time.

John Donne (1572-1631)

1615: Taking holy orders in the church

1633: First publication of Songs and Sonnets

lawfulness of suicide called Biathanatos

is Conclave

m to Sir

f

is

o it shows how deeply

order to twist

eaning could

explain

Late 1601 or early 1602: Secret marriage to Ann More

• He wrote an essay about the

• He helped Thomas Morton in writing anti-Catholic arguments, Pseudo-Martyr

and Ignatius h

• He wrote a pair of long poems, The Anniversaries, and dedicated the

Robert Drury

• He became a great preacher in the church of England because of his

metaphorical style, his rude knowledge and his dramatic cleverness

• The poetry of Donne differs greatly with his contemporaries. The majority o

the Elizabethan poems are decorative and they have a sweet and pleasant

meter. Donne's poetry, on the other hand, is full of conceits and intellectual

difficulties. He abandons most of the traditional images in his poetry. For

example, in his love poems there is no bleeding heart or something like th

• A poet who uses conceit shows how genius he is and als

he can see into the world. Donne's conceits continually change from the

personal conceits to the cosmic and philosophical ones

• The rhythm of his poems is colloquial and he uses many different rhythms. He

likes to twist metrical patterns and the grammar of his poem in

his ideas. In the satires, he twists the rhythm too much that the m

be distorted but in his lyrics, he always maintains the rhythm

• Donne and his followers are known as the metaphysical poets

• Donne was known outside the court as a preacher. There are two kinds of

preachers: those who stand in front of us as representatives of God and

His Word to us and those who stand in front of God and explain our problems

to Him. Donne belonged to the second group. He was not interested in

persuading people to have fixed and strict religious beliefs and to list the rules

of morality. He presented religious ideas through using elements of drama in

ama

• His private prayers were published in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions in

1624

Christianity- sin, guilt, repentance, faith, etc.- and he was the leading actor of

this dr

Ben Jonson his Humor

8

618: Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue

role. It was also the first "comedy of humor" in

thout excitement and had an old language

l on the stage

Jonson published a collection of his works entitled "The Works of Benjamin

categories:

)

ct and impersonal poems

e

d Masques often accompanied with music

(1572-1637) 1598: He published his first play Every Man in

1610: The Alchemist

1616: Jonson was appointed as poet laureate

1

• The first great play of Jonson was Every Man in his Humor in which

Shakespeare had the leading

which the great passions of human being (his humors) are reduced in

importance by using satire

• Jonson's classical tragedy Sejanus was not popular because it had a dark

mood, was static and wi

• His two satiric comedies, Volpone and The Alchemist had become very

successfu

•

Jonson"

The majority of Jonson's poetry can be classified into five

1. Poems of festive ceremonies or festivals which praise the qualities of a good

life (e.g. To Penshurst, On Inviting a Friend to Supper

2. Elegies and Epitaphs 9which are brief, simple, dire

such as those poems that can be found on a graveston

3. Compliments and Tributes that praise friendship

4. Plays an

8 official poet of the royal household who was formerly expected to write poems and songs for royal events 9 inscriptions on a gravestone in the memory of a dead person

5. Epigrams in al, funny and evil

themes

Andrew Marvell

ch

m

m becomes deep and hollow and Marvell through complimenting a

elings in the poem so in the first paragraph he talks about eternity and in the next

bout death.

orry if the sentences are vague and meaningless; I tried my best to make it clearer☺)

imitation of the Roman poet Martial with sexu

(1621-1678)

Marvell's poems have a playful, casual and witty tone. They are always light

regarding their metrical feet and exact regarding their diction and vocabulary. They

display depth and intellectual hardness in unexpected places; their texture is very ri

and you can find the best of these qualities if you read To His Coy Mistress. The

poem at first looks like an usual carpe diem poem with slight, monotonous rhyth

and semi-serious mood and it recommends the lady to enjoy the present. But soon

after the rhyth

pretty lady expresses matters like eternity and death. Marvell also balances his

fe

a

(s

John Milton (1608-1674)

p which reaches its climax

ith social and political issues

. Period of his return to literature as a mature and experienced person when

Lost, Paradise Regained and

Samson Agonistes

also be divided into three parts:

says

3. After the execution of Charles I, he published a series of disputations and

liament in executing Charles

1637: Lycidas

1640-60: The pamphlet wars

1651: He becomes blind

1667: Paradise Lost

The life of John Milton can be divided into three periods:

1. Period of youthful education and apprenticeshi

by writing Lycidas and by traveling abroad

2. Period of prose and controversy when he rarely wrote any poem and was

mainly concerned w

3

he publishes his three great poems Paradise

• In 1634 he wrote the masque named Comus

His literary career can

1. He began his work by publishing anti-prelatical (against bishop or other high

members of the church) essays, against the bishops who were controlling the

church.

2. Then after his first wife left him, from 1643-45, he published a series of es

advocating that right for getting divorce be given if there is incompatibility

between wife and husband

arguments in Latin against the European critics of the regime. In this essays, he

defends the actions of Par

In the writings of Milton, the influence of two prominent intellectual and so

movements

cial

can be seen:

e, its

sical works and its many uses of decorative

images

. The Reformation: the Christian figures and themes in his works comes

directly from this movement

1. The Renaissance: it created the rich and complex texture of Milton's styl

multiple references to the clas

2

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

ne book about physical bodies, one

secular tone and it

etween a legal king and an illegal dictator

• He was fond of materialism and this was a cause of his scandal all over the

court

best use of this summary and get a fair score

• He is considered as the second great philosopher of the 17th century after

Francis Bacon

• He as a philosopher had planned to write o

about human nature and one on the state

• He is most famous for writing Leviathan

• Leviathan insults the Puritans by its frank language and

also insults Royalists (supporters of the monarch) because it makes no

distinction b

Hope you make theSincerely Yours Shahrouz Malaki May 29, 2010