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Renaissance Literature

"Renaissance" literally means "rebirth." It refers especially to the rebirth of learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth century, spread to the north, including England, by the sixteenth century, and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth century (earlier in Italy). During this period, there was an enormous renewal of interest in and study of classical antiquity.

   Yet the Renaissance was more than a "rebirth." It was also an age of new discoveries, both geographical (exploration of the New World) and intellectual. Both kinds of discovery resulted in changes of tremendous import for Western civilization. In science, for example, Copernicus (1473-1543) attempted to prove that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the planetary system, thus radically altering the cosmic world view that had dominated antiquity and the Middle Ages.

. In religion, Martin Luther (1483-1546) challenged and ultimately caused the division of one of the major institutions that had united Europe throughout the Middle Ages--the Church. In fact, Renaissance thinkers often thought of themselves as ushering in the modern age, as distinct from the ancient and medieval eras.

Renaissance thinkers strongly associated themselves with the values of classical antiquity, particularly as expressed in the newly rediscovered classics of literature, history, and moral philosophy. Conversely, they tended to dissociate themselves from works written in the Middle Ages, a historical period they looked upon rather negatively. According to them, the Middle Ages were set in the "middle" of two much more valuable historical periods, antiquity and their own. Nevertheless, as modern scholars have noted, extremely important continuities with the previous age still existed.

Literature experienced a massive boon from technology. In 1454, Johann Gutenberg published the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed by a machine using moveable type. The moveable-type printing press vastly changed the nature of book publishing, simultaneously increasing printing volume and decreasing prices. The process of printing spread throughout Europe and into England.

During the Renaissance, writers produced a greater volume of work than ever before, and with the lower prices and increased numbers of texts, these works reached an audience of unprecedented size.

Literature became a part of the lives of the larger public, not just the few elite able to afford books, as had been the case before the advent of the printing press.

William Caxton (1415~22–92) laid the foundations of publishing in England—he not only introduced the printing press to England, but was also the first English book retailer. In 1473 he printed Britain’s first book—Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye—and thus established the printing and book industry in the country. His best known publications are Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Golden Legend, and Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. He also translated historical works and romances and wrote prefaces to his books. As publisher of more than one hundred publications, Caxton established a new readership for major works in English.

The early modern/Renaissance period in England had a daily life based on social order: the monarch as the highest, the nobility as second rank, the gentry as third, merchants as fourth, yeomanry as fifth and laborers as sixth. The king or queen was believed to be God’s representation here on Earth. It was also believed that God had formed these social ranks and showered blessings on each rank. The Parliament regulated the clothes that could only be worn by each rank and it was considered a defiance of the order if a laborer wore clothes of the rich.

Renaissance society

Sumptuary laws were imposed by rulers to curb the expenditure of the people. These laws applied to food, beverages, furniture, jewelry and clothing. They were used to control behavior and ensure that a specific class structure was maintained. For example, Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws dictated what color and type of clothing individuals were allowed to own and wear. This allowed an easy and immediate way to identify rank and privilege.

Much more of this with Shakespeare: The first theater in London opened in 1567 (The Red Lion) and the theaters were closed by royal orders in 1642. During this period an intense output of plays on a variety of topics were performed from a wonderful variety of playwrights, including Shakespeare.

Just as Chaucer was trying to represent the entirety of society in The Canterbury Tales, the Renaissance playhouse both attracted and represented all levels of society, from the queen to the lower classes who could only pay a pence to see the show.

Renaissance Drama

Queen Elizabeth Thomas More Edmund Spenser Thomas Hobbes Philip Sidney Niccolo Machiavelli John Milton Christopher Marlowe James I John Donne Ben Jonson

Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374) is considered "the first writer of the Renaissance." Although his Italian sonnets rely on courtly love conventions, the Renaissance sees a sort of codification of the material and certainly of the form.

This is our jumping-off point: think of the sonnet as an evolution of the chivalric courtly love tradition in written form.

The Renaissance Sonnet

Petrarchan love conventions:

the poet (male) addresses a lady (corresponding to Petrarch's Laura).

she often has a classical name like Stella or Delia.

the poet-lover praises his mistress, the object and image of Love, with praise for her superlative qualities using descriptions of beauty supplied by Petrarch: "golden hair," "ruby lips.”

the poet employs contradictory and oxymoronic phrases and images: freezing and burning, binding freedom (see Petrarch's #134).

the poet-lover dwells only on the subjective experience, hence on the misery of being in love: thus the occasional appearance of the conventional invocation to sleep to allay the pain (insomnia poems).

the poet disclaims credit for poetic merits: the inspiration of his mistress is what makes the poetry good, he claims.

the poet promises to protect the youth of his lady and his own love against time (through the immortalizing poetry itself).

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) traced an unrequited love relationship through its stages in the sonnet cycle Astrophel and Stella. Although written in 1582 and circulating privately, it was not published until 1591 at which point it helped inaugurate the sonnet vogue with its standard themes: insistence on originality and disclaimers of conventionality, the lady's coldness, the poet's despair, the lady's beauties, invocations to sleep, the immortality of the verse. Sidney often addresses the issue of composition -- how not to be self-conscious and phony -- so we get from him lots of love poetry about love poetry. He has a gift for zinger last lines, but it's also possible to see why the Earl of Oxford called him a "puppy.”

Edmund Spenser later in the century offered some technical innovations in the form. His sonnet cycle, Amoretti ("Little Love-Poems") seems to be devoted to his courtship of the woman who became his second wife in 1594. The Spenserian archaism (fake "olde tyme" spelling) is a strange feature of these.

Roughly 1200 sonnets survive in print from the Elizabethan 1590s. Among the deservedly big names in sonnet cycles are Thomas Watson Hekatompathia -- Samuel Daniel -- Delia -- and Michael Drayton -- Idea. The fad declined rapidly and sonnets were no longer the hip thing after the 1590s.

Shake-speares Sonnets is a completely different phenomenon.

Thomas Middleton John Marston George Chapman Thomas Dekker Francis Beaumont John Fletcher Thomas Heywood