Major literary figures of Renaissance Literature

Name:- Kubavat Kishan

Roll no:- 13

M.A semester no :-1

Paper no :- 1

Year:- 2014-15

Paper name :-The Renaissance literture

Assignment Topic:- Major literary figures of renaissance literature

Submitted to :- Department of English

 M.K.Bhavnagar University

Major literary figures of Renaissance Literature

Introduction

The Age of Elizabeth is considered as a very remarkable age of English literature. In this age literature proceeds in many forms like prose, poetry, drama, novel and many others. And in creating this wonderful form of literature there is immense contribution of many great writers. Some very important of them are describe as under.

Poetry writers

we are discuss about the poetry writers of renaissance literature. In this we will discuss about the writer’s biography, his works and his style of working.

Ø     Edmund Spenser (1552-99)

Biography

Spenser was born in 1552. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors’ school and at Cambridge. He left Cambridge in 1576, and for a few years his movements are unknown , though he probably spent the time in the North of England . He comes into view in London during the year 1579 as a member of the famous literary circle surrounding Sir Philip Sidney and his uncle the Earl of Leicester. In 1580 Sidney’s patronage bore fruit, for Spenser was appointed secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, who had just been appointed Lord-Deputy of Ireland.

In Ireland Spenser remained for eighteen years, serving the English government in more than one capacity, and misery that afflicted the unhappy land. in 1589 he visited London to publish the first three books of The Faerie Queene. After remaining in London for nearly two years he return to Ireland; married an Irishwoman (1594); revisited London in 1595, bringing a second instalment of his great work. A rulned and disappointed man, he  repaired to London, where in the next year he died, “For lack of bread” according to the statement of Ben Jonson.

His poetry

Ø  The First of the poems that have descended to us is “ The Shepheards calendar”  (1579). The title adopted from a popular compilation of the day, suggests the contents ; a series of twelve eclogues, one for each one month of the year. Their style is deliberately archic, in keeping with the rustic characters, Spenser adopting the dialect and alliteration of the Midlands and North.

Ø  A volume of miscellaneous poems, including  “The Ruins of Time”, “ The Tears of the Muses” ,“Tale Mother Hubberd’s”, and  “The Ruins of Rome”, appeared in 1591.

Ø  In 1595 he published his “Amoretti”, eighty-eight petrarchan sonnets celebrating the progress of his love.

Ø  “Epithalamion”, a magnificent ode, rapturously jubilant, written in honour of his marriage, and clout’s come home Again, some what wordy, but containing some interesting personal details.

“open the temple gates unto my love,

Open them wide that she may enter in,

And all the posts adorn as doth behove,

And all the pillars deck with girlands trim

For to receive this saint with honour due,

That cometh into you.”

Ø  In 1596 appeared his “Four Hymns” and “Porthalamion” the latter not so fine as the great, ode of the previous year.

Ø  “The faerie Queene” in spite of the varotey and beauty of his shorter poems, “The faerie Queene is by far the most important of Spenser’s works.

Ø    His prose

In addition to this letters , which are often interesting and informative Spenser left one longish prose work, a kind of state paper in the form of a dialogue.

Ø   A view of the present state of Ireland (1594), it gives Spenser’s views on the settlement of the Irish question. His opinions are exceedingly hostile to the Irish, and his methods , if put in force, put in force, would amount to pure terrorism. The style of the pamphlet is quite undistinguished.

Ø   John Donne ( 1573-1631)

Ø   Biography

One of the most remarkable poet of the Age is John Donne. Donne , the son of a wealthy, merchant, was born in London 1573. His parents were Roman catholics, and he was educated in their faith before going on to oxford and Cambridge. He entered the Inns of court in 1592, Where he mingled wide reading with the life of a dissolute man-about-town.

In this years he wrote his Satires, the songs and sonnets , and the Elegies, but though widely circulatd in manuscript they were not published until 1633, after his death.

In 1615 he entered the Anglican church, after a severe personal struggle and in 1621 became Dean of St Paul’s, which position he held until his death in 1631. He was the first great Anglican preacher.

His poetry

Donne was the most independent of the Elizabethan poets and revolted against the easy, Fluent style, stock imagery and pastoral conventions of the followers of Spenser. He aimed at reality of thought and vividness of expression. His poetry is forceful, vigorous and in spite of faults of rhythm often strangely harmonious.

Ø  His cynical nature and keenly critical mind led him to write satires such as of “The progres of the soule”(1601).

Ø  His love poet the “Songs and sonnets” were written in the same period. He is essentially a psychological  poet whose primary concern is feeling. His poems are all intensely personal and revel a powerful and complex being.

Ø  Among the best known and most typical of the poems of this group are “Air and Angels”, “A Nocturnall Upon s. Lucies day”, “A valediction : forbidding mourning”, and “The Extasie”.

Ø  The following stanzas form “A valediction”; of weeping give some idea of Donne’s use of striking imagery and of the excitement of his rhythms:

“Let me power forth

My tears before thy face , and whil’st I stay here,

For thy face coines them , and thy stampe they beare,

And by this Mintage they are something Worth,

For thus they bee”.

Ø    His prose

Donne’s prose work is considerable both in bulk and achievement.

Ø  “The pseudo-Martyr” (1610) was a defence of the oath of allegiance.

Ø  “Igenatius His conclave” (1611) was a satire upon Igenatius Loyola and jesutis.

Ø  The best introduction to Donne’s prose is, however through his “Devotions”(1614), which give an account of his spiritual struggles during a serious illness.

Ø    The dramatist writers

we are discuss about the dramatist writers of renaissance literature. In this we will discuss about the writer’s biography, his works and his style of working.

Ø      William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Ø     Biography

Shakespeare is the most famous dramatist writer of not only renaissance literature but all English literature. One of the most remarkable dramatist of Age of Elizabeth.

 The future dramatist , as we learn from church records, was baptized in the parish church at Stratford-on-Avon on April 26, 1564.He may have been born on April 23 , St George’s Day, which happens also to be the date of his death in 1616.Though more is known about Shakespeare’s life than most other Elizabeth and Jacobean writers because of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held and the general  disinterest of the time in the personal lives of writers, few personal biographical facts about Shakespeare survive.

His will a hurriedly executed document, is dated 25,1616.His death occurred a month later, April 23.

His poetry

Shakespeare’s long narrative poems were among the earliest of his writings.

Ø  “Venus and Adonis”(1593), composed in six line stanza , showed decided signs of immaturity. Its subject was in accordance with popular taste; its descriptions were heavily ornamented and conventional; but it containcd individual lines and expressions of great beauty.

Ø  “The Rape of Lucrece”(1594), in the rhyme royal stanzas, is of less merit.

Ø  In 1599 a collection of verse called “ The passionate pilgrim ” appeared with Shakespeare’s name on the title – page.

Ø  In 1609 a collection of Shakespeare’s was printed by Thomas Thorpe, who dedicated the volume to a certain “ Mr W.H.’’ as being “the onlie begetter” of sonnets.

If Shakespeare had not been our greatest dramatist, he would still be numbered among our greatest lyrical poets.

His plays

Shakespeare’s plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in western literature. Traditionally the plays are divided into the genres of tragedy, history and comedy they have been translated into every major living language, in addition to being continually performed all around the world.

It was not till 1623, seven years after his death , that the first Folio edition was printed . in contained thirty-six dramas , and these are now. Universally accepted as Shakespeare’s . In the Folio edition was plays are not arranged chronologically, nor are the dates of composition given.

Classification of the plays

It is customary to group the plays into that to some extent traverse the order given above.

Ø  The Early comedies      :- 

In these immature plays the plots are less original, the characters less finished , and the style lacks the power of the mature Shakespeare. Of this type are The comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost , and The two Gentlemen of Verona.

ØThe English Histories

These plays show a rapid maturing of Shakespeare’s technique. He now being to busy himself with the developing character, such as Richard 2 or prince Hall. The plays in this group to which belong Richard 2,1 Henry 5 and Henry 6, contain much more blank verse than those of the earlier group.

ØThe Mature comedies

Here is the fine flower of Shakespeare’s comic genius. The comic spirit manifests itself at many levels the sophisticated wit of Beatrice and Bendick or the clowning of Dogberry and verges Much Ado about Nothing, the jovial good humor of sir toby Belch in Twelfth night ; the lighter clowning of Launcelot gobbo in The Merchant of venice ; The urbane worldly wise humour of touchstone in As you like It. The plays are full of vitality, contain many truly comic situations, and revel great warmth and humanity. In this group there is much prose. 

ØThe somber plays

In this group are All’s well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida . In them Shakespeare displays a savage desire to expose the falsity of romance and to show the sordid reality of life.

ØThe Great Tragedies

Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Leare are the climax of Shakespeare’s  art. In intensity of emotion, depth of psychological insight and power of style they stand supereme.

ØThe Roman plays

These are based on North’s translation of plutarch’s Lives , and though written at fairly wide intervels, are usually considered as a group. Julius Caesal and Antony and Cleopatera and Coriolanus. Follow the great tragic period , and while the former, in sorring imagination and tragic power. Is truly great , both of them show some relaxation of tragic intensity.

ØThe last plays

A mellowed maturity is the chief feature of this group which Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.

His prose

Shakespeare’s prose appears all through the plays , sometimes in passages of considerable length. In the aggregate the amount is quite large. With regard to the prose the following points should be observed;

( A )  it is the common vehicle for comic scenes , though used too in serious passages.

(B) It represents the common speech of the seen in Hamlet, is Pithy and bracing. Even the rather stupied clowning that often takes place cannot altogether conceal its beauty.

His style

For lack of a better name we call Shakespeare’s style Shakespearian. One can instantly recognize it , even in other authors, where it is rarely visible.  It is a difficult, almost an impossible, matter to define it. There is aptness and qoutability in it ; expressions  have  passed into common speech.

The following specimen shows the average Shakespearian style, if such a thing exists all. It is not extremely elevated or poetical , but it is strong, precise and individual.

 thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

Hamlet

With such a style as this Shakespeare can compass the world of human emotion and he does so.

Thus, “he was the man” said, “who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul”.

Ø   Ben Jonson ( 1573 – 1637 )

Biography

Ben Jonson was born at westminster, and educated at westminster school. Jonson’s birth and  the boy adopted the trade of his stepfather, who was a master bricklayer. Ben Jonson said that his family originally came from the folk of the Anglo – Scottish border counter , which genealogy is verified by the three spindles in the Jonson Family coat of arms.

His works

Ben Jonson was an English playwright, a poet and literary critic of the seventeenth century whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy.

He popularized  for the Comedy of Humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour ( 1598 ) , Volpone or the Foxe (1605), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fayre : A comedy ( 1614 ).

He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist after William Shakespeare plays during the region of James 1 . His plays divide conveniently into comedies and tragedies, for Jonson true to his classical models did not combine the two.

His early comedies , Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), Cynthia’s Revels (1600) , and The poetaster (1601) , the middle group of comedies, Volpone on the Fox (1605) , Epicoene, or the silent woman (1609) , The  Alchemist ( 1610), and Bartholomew Fayre (1614), represent as a group his best work.

The two historical tragedies Sejanus his fall (1603), and Catiline his conspiracy (1611), are composd on classical models.

His poetry

Jonson’s poetry like his drama, is informed by his classical learning. Some of his better known poems are close translations of Greek or Roman models. Jonson largely avoided the debates about rhyme and meter that had consumed Elizabethan classicists such as Thomas campion and Gabriel Harvey.

Although it is included among the epigrams, “on my first sonne” is neither satirical nor very short the poem intensely personal and deeplyfelt , typifies a genre that would come to be called to the ´lyric poetry’.

Underwood published in the expanded Folio of 1640, is a larger and more heterogeneous group of poems. It contains A celebration of charis , Jonson’s most extended effort at love poetry ;encomiastic poems including the poem to Shakespeare and a sonnet on Mary worth; the 1640 volume also contains three elegies which have often been ascribedto Donne.

Ø     Prose Writers

Roger Ascham ( 1515- 68)

Biography

He is representative of the earliest school of Elizabethan prose. Ha was born in Yorkshire, and educated privately and at st john’s college, Cambridge . He took part in the literary and religious disputes of the time , but managed to keep his feet on the shifting grounds of politics.

His works

His two chief works were Toxophilus (1545) a treatise in the from of dialogue on archery and The scholemasterm(1570), an educational work containing some ideas that were than fairly fresh and enlightening.

In Toxophilus he declares his intention of ‘writing this English matter in the English speech for English men’ in style he is plain and strong , using only the more obulous graces of alliteration and antithesis.

John Lyly ( 1554 ? -1606 )

Biography

He marks another stage in the march of English prose . He was born in kent, educated at Oxford and failing to obtain court part ronage became a literary man in London . and he died povertrystricken in London .

His works

We have already mentioned his comedies, which at the time brought him fame and money. But his first prose work Euphues, the Anatomy of wit (1579), made him one of the formost figures of the day. He repeated the success with a second part, Euphues and his England (1580)

Conclusion

                                                Thus Spenser, John Donne, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson , Roger Ascham, John Lyly and many other writer gave their immense contribution to English literature.