English

Literature

The Renaissance

Period

The Renaissance Period

Time

From 14th to mid 17th century

Definition

The term renaissance means “rebirth” or “revival” originally. It is a historical period, in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars tried to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church form the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.

1. Historically

  Centralization of power necessary for the development of the bourgeoisie

2. Economically

•The Enclosure Movement

Modern English proletarian came into being

•The Commercial Expansion

    Great fortunes were obtained

The first English colonies were established

I. Historical, social and cultural background

3. Politically

• The War with Spain

The English bourgeoisie came to the forum of history

4.Ideologically

• Religious Reformation

Scientific thought replaced the religious mysticism

I. Historical, social and cultural background

5. Renaissance in England

• Henry VIII’s reign and encouragement

• The Tudors’ great encouragement to the cultural development

I. Historical, social and cultural background

II. Literary history of the period

 1.Literary trends

(1) Court literature

•It mainly represents the interests of the monarch and the old and new

aristocracy

(2) Bourgeois literature

• It reflects chiefly the thoughts and feelings of the rising bourgeoisie and to a lesser extent also of people of the lower social classes.

II. Literary history of the period

(3) Humanism

• Against medieval asceticism

• Man is in control of the present life

• Man is the measure of every thing

II. Literary history of the period

2. Artistic features

(1) The common features of the Renaissance

• A thirsting curiosity for the classical literature

• The keen interest in the activities of humanity

(2) Literary forms

• Poetry

The early stage

• Elizabethan drama

The real exponent of the English Renaissance.

II. Literary history of the period

3. Major figures of this period

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) The Faerie Queen

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) Dr Faustus, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, The Tempest

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Essays

John Donne (1572-1631) The Songs and Sonnets

John Milton (1608-1674) Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain, Samson Agonistes

III. Representatives of this period

William Shakespeare‘No one has ever excelled Shakespeare in the writing of dramatic poetry, no one has challenged his mastery of dramatic form, his depth of characterization, his versatility in plot, theme and expression.’

--- G.L. Evans

• One of the most remarkable playwrights and poets in the world.• His greatness depends on his penetrating exposition of human nature, lively paintings of human life and truthful reflections of human reality.• He is famous for his character portrayal and plot construction.• He is a master of English language.• He exerts a great influences on the writers after him.

Literary periods

Period Works CharacteristicsThe first period Historical plays

and comediesOptimistic atmosphere,

apprenticeship

The second period

Great tragedies and mature

historical plays

Highly individualized style and approach

The third period Great tragedies Heavy tragic note and reflection of social unrest

The fourth period Romantic tragicomedies

Optimistic faith in the future of humanity

His works

Hamlet

• The first of his great tragedies, which is a revenge story.

• The hypocrisy and treachery and general corruption at the royal court has

been presented.

• Contrast is an important structural principle used in the play.

• The revenge theme is interrelated with the themes of faithlessness, love and

ambition.

His works

King Lear --- The summit of Shakespeare’s tragic creation

An embodiment of his artistic talents and deep insight

• Great exploration allegory on the meaning of Nature.

• Extremes of human suffering and cruelty have been presented.

• A tragedy of both an individual and a society.

• Social evils have been attacked and the newly rising conflicts between

progressive humanistic ideas and extreme egoism have been revealed, for

which he could do nothing but show his perplexity.

• Social evils have been criticized, which unconsciously show his

perplexity in aspects such as social, moral and ideal.

His works

The Tempest

• His last play, which is the most beautiful as well as the most sophisticated of his late plays.

• The most symbolic of Shakespeare’s plays, which is mainly concerned with the opposition of Nature and Art.

• Fall and Redemption are the themes of the play, through which Shakespeare expresses the theme of deliverance from tragic existence into a new dispensation of mercy.

• The essential myth of the play is the finding of what is lost and the myth of placing the lost royalty in situations of great danger and the recovery of it by a royal personage, because it has significance in terms of man, of nature, and of human life.

His works

Sonnet 18

• The most famous and well-loved one of all sonnets .

• The stability of love and its power to immortalize the poetry are its theme.

• Shakespeare expresses a point that as long as there are breaths in mankind,

his poetry will also live on, and ensure the immortality of his thought.

Themes of his works

The Great Comedies

• He sang of their youth, love ideal of happiness. The victory of their humanist ideal is inevitable, though it is to be got only after severe struggle against all obstacles.

• The heroes and heroines fight against destiny itself and control and guide their own fate according to their own free will, who trust in themselves and their efforts are put a happy finishing with success.

• The great spirit is optimism. Shakespeare takes an optimistic attitudes towards love and youth, and the romantic elements are brought into full play.

Themes of his works

The Mature Histories

• Shakespeare’s histories show the horrors of civil war, the responsibility of an effective ruler, and the importance legitimate succession to the throne.

• The principle idea of these plays is the necessity for national unity under one king. In other words, national unity is very important and necessary under a mighty and just leadership.

• He believed in a wise and human king whop would live to serve his country.

Themes of his works

The Great Tragedies

• In Shakespeare’s tragedies, he exposes social contradictions of the time.

• Each portrays some noble hero, who faces the injustice of human life and is caught in a difficult situation and whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation.

• Each has his weakness of nature.

• With the concentration on the tragic hero, alone with the description of weakness of the hero, we see the evil force in the society.

Characterization

• The type who not only represents certain group or class of people, but are individuals with strong and distinct personalities via frequently use of comparisons and contrasts.

• He also individualizes his characters by emphasizing each one’s dominant and unique qualities.

• Shakespeare has made profound psycho-analytical studies of his character by revealing the intricate inner workings of their minds through the full use of soliloquies.

Artistic features

Structure

• Adroit plot construction in which Shakespeare borrows plot from some old plays or storybooks, or from ancient Greek and Romans sources.

• Several threads running trough the play and the major and the minor plots are woven into an organic whole through contrast and parallel.

• Irony is a good means of dramatic presentation.

• Disguise is also an important device to create dramatic irony, usually with woman disguised as man.

• A play within the play has also played an important part in the structure of some of his

Artistic features

Artistic features

Language and Style

• Shakespeare’s achievements of language style are the crystallization of his dramatic art.

• He is not only a genius for language that expresses human experience but also one for form that organizes words and experience into an imaginative whole.

• He can use the English language with the greatest freedom and ease, and form very new and striking expressions out of rather common words, so that almost all the speeches fit all the characters who speak them.

• Shakespeare can write skillfully in different poetic forms, like the sonnet, the blank verse, and the rhymed couplet in poetry writing.

• The plays of Shakespeare tend to have their typical speech-modes which not only set the mood for the play but express in epitome its spiritual core.

Analysis of

The Merchant of Venice

Brief introduction

Plot one:

Bassanio -- Antonie -- Portia

Plot two:

Antonio -- Bassanio – Skylock

The trial scene:

Shylock – Portia -- Antonio

Analysis of

The Merchant of Venice

Theme

The traditional theme

To praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, and to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew.

The modern interpretation

To regard the play as a satire of the Christians’ hypocrisy and their false standards of friendship and love, their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against Jews, here represented by Shylock.

The analysis of the major characters

Portia

• Representative of Shakespeare’s ideal women-----beautiful, cultured, courteous, serious-minded and capable of rising to an emergency.

• Embodiment of the best qualities of Shakespeare’s ideal of the new women

• Happy and make the others happy. They carry their destinies with them and in speaking and thinking as well as in feeling. Though there are moments of weariness and frailty, their courage never fails them in times of danger. And with every pang of affection and anxiety they only grow stronger and more capable of coping with the situations.

• She not only frees herself from the usual feudal fetters for women but even shines more brightly than many men in many ways.The device of women disguised as men in the famous court scene is not only full of fun and dramatic excitement but also contributive to the portrayal of character.

The analysis of the major characters

Shylock

• He is a greedy moneylender. He is a Jew of pride and deep religious instincts. He has suffered much in the hands of the Chritians.

• His revolting bond is counterbalanced by Antonio’s arrogant treatment of him. So his loud protest against racial discrimination cannot be altogether ignored by the audience. This made the play to some extent a “grave comedy.”

• As a greedy, merciless usurer is to be hated and condemned,

• As a Jew, a victim of racial discrimination and religious persecution, also deserves sympathy.

III. Representatives of this period

John Milton

He that would hope to write well hereafter in audible things ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and most honorable things.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me.

--- John Milton

• The poet of steadfast will and purpose

• Representative writer of the English

revolutionary camp

• A real Christian humanist

Literary periods

Early poems

Lycidas A Christian poem as well as a humanistic one

The prose

Areopagitica In the form of pamphlets

Later poetry

Paradise Lost

Paradise Regain

Samson Agonistes

The greatest epic since Beowulf

Christ’s temptation in the wilderness

A pure tragedy

His works

Lycidas • A collection of elegies dedicated to Edward King, a fellow undergraduate of

Milton’s

• The inheritor of the old age, but also the prophet of a new

• A Christian poem as well as a humanistic one

Areopagitica

• The most memorable prose work

• A speech for the freedom of the press

• A declaration of people’s freedom of the press

His works

Paradise Regain

• The story about human salvation through Christ

• One of great richness and strength though shorter and lesser work

Samson Agonistes

• A tragedy on the Greek model

• Composed partly in Blank verse and partly in unrhymed choice verse of varied line length

• Triumph through sacrifice.

Analysis of

Paradise Lost

Brief introduction

12 volumes

Old Testament

Satan – God – Adam -- Eve

Adame and Eve are driven out of Eden because of their sin of disobedience.

Theme

The Fall of Man: man’s disobedience and the loss of Paradise, with its prime cause Satan.

The analysis of the major characters

God• A ruler with unlimited power • Representative of power and love• The rule of reason in the universe, in society, and in the soul of man.

Satan • As a real hero, a rebel with the unconquerable will. • A proud rebel who will not submit even though he has been defeated• A liar who knowingly chose evil and against his nature

Adam and Eve • Embodiment of the powers of man and their craving for knowledge • Adam fell out of love for Eve or through weakness of will• Pride -- The root of men’s sin

Artistic features of

Paradise Lost

• The first modern epic in ancient classical style

• An astonishing compression of textures, a simultaneous lucidity and rich

variety

• The blank verse is used with the long and involved and sometimes

seemingly interminable sentence construction

• The extreme variety of pauses