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