The Renaissance (~16th to mid 17th C)

context

Elizabethan Age

1558 - 1603

Jacobean Era

1603 - 1625

Humanism; emphasis on reason and science; theocentric

from More to Milton

sonnets + drama

Thomas More - Utopia (1516)

framtale; book 1+2;

early Humanist work;

Sir Thomas Wyatt - "Whoso List to Hunt" (~1550)

Wyatt introduces the sonnet to England with Surrey

iambic pentameter; abba abba cddc dd;

Edmund Spenser

early sonnet

"Like as a Huntsman" (late 16th C)

early sonnet; part of Amoretti;

3x4+2; iambic pentameter

gives up on Anne Boelyn

deer returns; many contrast;

The Faerie Queene (late 16th C)

epic poem

allegorical parable (knight --> virtue)

Spenserian stanza

Knight Sir Calidore --> Courtesy

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

sonnets 18,116,130,138;

5 plays

Hamlet

Romeo & Juliet

Macbeth

A Midsummer Night's Dream

As You Like It

Revenge/Great/Mature Tragedy

early tragedy

romantic/merry comedy

great/mature tragedy

Merry comedy

Methaphysical Poetry (beginning - mid 17th C)

George Herbert - "The Pulley"

the pulley = God's operation

John Donne

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"

lovers = compass

"The Sun Rising"

bed = universe

Cavalier Poetry (Jacobean Era/Late R)

Robert Herrick - "Delight in Disorder"

sonnet but doesn't follow the conventions

Andrew Marvell - "To His Coy Mistress"

dramatic monologue; many metaphors; hedonistic;

John Milton - Paradise Lost

last Renaissance poet; influence of Restoration

religious epic poem in blank verse

felix culpa; "to justify the ways of God to men"

Christopher Marlowe - Dr. Faustus

Elizabethean drama (~1600)

similiar to morality plays- allegories; didactic function

pastoral poetry

iconicity: sonnet is imperfect itself

carpe diem poem