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THE GOLDEN AGE (1485-1625), In Early Modern Age it was commonly believed…

- - - - transition from the Renaissance to Modern Age
        
        intellectual and spiritual crisis
    - - concerned with the fundamental problems of nature and man's place in the universe
        
        reference to religious debate, astrology, alchemy, geography and philosophy
    - - WIT
        
        sensitivity
        
        knowledge
        
        cleverness
        
        the poet as a man of WIT
        
        ability to create unusual METAPHORS and IMAGES
        
        JOHN DONNE
        
        uses words and rhythms of common people
        
        dramatic monologues
      - CONCEIT
        
        exploring all the field of knowledge for comparisons
        
        extended metaphor characterising a whole stanza or poem
        
        intellectual complexity
      - PARADOX
      - EPIGRAMMATIC CONCISENESS
      - element of DRAMA
        
        most poems begins in media res
      - rich and varied diction
        
        Latinism and words from Angli-Saxon origin
  - - - born in Italy in the first half of the 13th century (Iacopo da Lentini)
        
        introduced in England by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), who translated the sonnets changing the rhyme scheme
        
        TOTTEL'S MISCELLANY (1557)
        
        a collection of Petrarch's sonnet translated into English
        
        It reached its greatest expression with Petrarch and his "Il Canzoniere"
    - - 14-line poem in iambic pentameter with a fixed rhyme scheme
    - - love and desire for a lady :<3::woman::skin-tone-3:
        
        phyisical and moral perfection
        
        expressed through the frequent use of oxymoron
        e.g. beautiful v. cruel
        happiness v. despair
        
        Most of the collection were named after a lady
        
        the tradition became popular in England because of the veneration of Queen Elizabeth :crown:
        
        SONNETS (1609) by William Shakespeare
        
        154 sonnets dealing with universal themes
        
        rich in metaphors and conceits
        
        THE FAERIE QUEEN (1590-96) by Edmund Spenser
        
        allegorical poem
        
        AMORETTI (1595) by Edmumd Spenser
        
        ASTROPHEL AND STELLA (1581) by Philip Sidney
        
        most popular sonnet cycle of the 15th century
        
        Petrarch's idea of woman as unattainable
- - - - allegorical types
      - realistic comedy
      - idea of man's place inside an ordered universe
      - mutability of fortune
    - - display of horrors, unnatural crimes, vice and corruption
      - tyrants in revenge tragedies had some Machiavellian traits
    - - his style is mirrored in the style of REVENGE TRAGEDIES
        
        THE SPANISH TRAGEDY (1587) by Thomas Kid
        
        the ghost of a recent murdered Antonio is sent back to earth to revenge his unjust death. It ends with a final massacre.
        
        "play within the play"
        
        staging of a play inside the main play
        
        the device served to verify the truth of a message concerning the character of the play
        
        Machiavellian ingredients such as lies, intrigues, villains
        
        insistence on horrors, bloody executions, deaths, suicides and mutilations :crossed_swords:
        
        theme of REVENGE
        
        the hero wants to revenge himself by killing those who wronged him
        
        usually set in Catholic countries such as Italy or Spain
        
        the hero is confronted with the unjust deeds of a tyrant
        
        supernatural apparitions and ghosts :ghost:
        
        density and difficulty of the language
        
        use of monologues and soliloques :thought_balloon:
        
        division of plays in 5 acts
    - - companies which travelled throughout England in the middle of 16th century
  - - - all the strata of Elizabethan society (microcosm)
      - social event
      - they wanted to be entarteined
      - talked during the show
    - - mix of tradition and innovation
      - freedom of composition
      - mix of tragedy and comedy derived from miracle and morality plays
        
        creation of TRAGICOMEDY
      - avoidance of Aristotle's unities of ACTION, TIME and SPACE
        
        the main plot is linked to subplots
        
        time is fluid
        
        many different spaces
        
        In his Poetics Aristotle described the three unities a play should have to be considered realistic
        
        UNITY OF ACTION: one main plot, without any subplots :clapper:
        
        UNITY OF TIME: the duration of the action should occur over 24 hours :alarm_clock:
        
        UNITY OF SPACE: the stage can represent only one place :city_sunrise::
    - - they took into account the taste of the audience
      - they had a modest background (except for Marlowe and Kyd)
      - most of them were also actors
      - they did not own the play they wrote. The play belonged to the company
      - PLAYWRIGHTS
        
        William Shakespeare
        
        Chistopher Marlowe
        
        DOCTOR FAUSTUS (1592)
        
        a story of a man who sells his soul for 24 years of knowledge
        
        it stands between Middle Ages and Early Modern Age
        
        Middle Ages
        
        vice vs. virtue
        
        eternal damnation
        
        Modern Age
        
        mixes tragic and comic
        
        doesn't respect Aristotle's unities
        
        FAUSTUS is the prototype of the Renaissance man
        
        a modern man who tries to gain infinite knowledge and realises his dream is impossible
        
        Ben Jonson
        
        rival of Shakespeare
        
        he respected Aristotle's unities
        
        he wrote tragedies inspired by Roman history. They were classical in theme.
        
        "comedies of humours" centred on a character representing a particular temperament
        
        THE ALCHEMIST (1610)
        
        VOLPONE (1606)
    - - women were not allowed to act. It was considered immoral for them.
        
        female roles were acted by male young actors with tender and high voices
      - they were considered vagabonds
        
        they were forced to organise themselves in companies or groups under the protection of a rich person to escape prison.
        
        creation of professional acting company
      - actors were shareholders of their company: they owned plays and playhouses too.
    - - plays were staged in the afternoon (2 pm)
      - playwright could exploit only the power of daylight
        
        nightscene relied on the use of basic props (i.e. candles)
      - bare stage
      - basic costumes
      - language played a very important role since it filled the gaps left by the bareness of the stage giving details about setting and atmosphere.
      - soliloquy to express characters' thoughts
      - only 12 actors could appear on stage due to space restrictions.
- - - - travel book about an imagery society on an imagery island in the New World
      - originally written in Latin, but soon translated into English
      - it inaugurates the genre of utopian literature
  - - - first example of literary criticism in English
      - defence of poetry in response to the critique by some religious authorities
  - - - fervent advocate of colonial expansionism :ship: :earth_americas:
  - - - TYNDALE BIBLE (1534)
        
        first text to be printed by William Caxton