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1.THE ROMAN AND CELTIC WORLDS
1.1.Before England: Celtics and Romans
the Bronze Age
Celtic invasions and settlement (600 bc)
The Britons. Religion.
- The Roman Conquest (from 55/54 bc onwards) and Britannia –Hibernia- Caledonia (43 ad; Emperor Claudius). Queen Boudicca (circa 60 ad; today’s Norfolk) - Romano-British culture flourishes in hybridity (up to 4th c. ad). - Roman Christianity introduced. Emperor Constantine the Great (4th-c) and St. Patrick (5th. c.)
1.2.Hadrian’s Wall (123 ad. Emperor Hadrian)
-Roman departure from Britannia ( circa 407 ad)
-Traditional historical accounts of such chaotic era claim that the Britons or Romano- Celts call the Saxon, Angle and Jute tribes of Germans as mercenaries against Scot and Pict raidings and piracies. These mercenaries would eventually turn upon their employers and have instead Britannia for themselves ( circa 450 ad).
1.3.The Christian and Germanic Contributions
-Germanic origins of the Anglo-Saxons (see map on p. 19), yet they had incorportated Latin words (through trading exchange).
-Meanwhile the Celts were forced into the corners of the island and Ireland)(see map on p. 14)
-The history or legend of Arthur. Gildas (mid-6th c.), the earliest Celtic (Welsh) historian.
-By 615 Anglo-Saxon control of England
-Anglo-Saxon settlements (Jutes, Anglos and Saxons; see map) and the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, whose kingdoms fought among themselves for political hegemony until the mid-9th c.
1.4.The Christianizing of Anglo-Saxon England
-Two processes at work, occasionally developing in parallel: Celtic evangelization and Roman Christianizing.
-The Celtic Irish Church :
·origins ·Missionary structure, unlike Roman Church · St. Columa and Iona ; St. Aidan and Lindisfarne monastery (Northumbria), St Brendan ·When they extend their conversing missions, they meet Roman Christianity Northumbria ( circa 6th)
-Roman Christianity
-Introduced in Britannia by Emperor Constantine the Great (4th-c.)
-By the end of the 7th-c. Pope Gregory the Great institutes missionary efforts for the conversion of the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. St. Agustine (first Archbishop of Canterbury) at Kent; Paulinus, one of his men, wins the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria.
-In the kingdom of Northumbria Celtic Christianity and the Roman Church meet.
-The differences between the Celtic Church (in ritual and symbolism; calendar differences about Easter; disclaim of papal authority; and allowing marriage of its clergy) and the Roman Church are decided in favour of the Roman Church, after the Anglo-Saxon conquest, in the Synod of Whitby (in 664). CONSEQUENCES:
*it provides all England with the first unified form of worship and national religious structure, tying England to Europe.
- Northumbrian Renaissance, by the 8th c.
The Northumbrian Renaissance brings about a true wealth of knowledge and learning from the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England.
-Social relationships structured upon warrior band model (COMITATUS), presided by the best proven warrior and leader (CYNING), who shared booty and festive gatherings with his THEGNS (thanes, or retainers)at the MEAD-HALL.
-Instead of the over-elaborated, codified Roman lex, cases were dealt individually according to ruling precedents. Common law, o case law, based on jurisprudence rather than on legislative/executive statutes. If no agreement, the judge is entitled to make decisions which bind future cases.
-A system of WERGELD (compensation money) to prevent unending feuds/conflicts.
2.2. COMMON LAW
Common law, also known as case law, is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than throughlegislative statutes or executive branch action. A "common law system" is a legal system that gives great precedential weight to common law,[1]^ on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions.[2]^ The body of precedent is called "common law" and it binds future decisions. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, an idealized common law court looks to pastprecedential decisions of relevant courts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision (this principle is known as stare decisis). If, however, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases (called a " matter of first impression"), judges have the authority and duty to make law by creating precedent.]^ Thereafter, the new decision becomes precedent, and will bind future courts.
-Moral vision and Anglo-Saxon character
·Sober and straightforward, unswerving in purpose ·Respect of personal value/ability over ancestry ·Women are rated high, usually seeking their advise ·Appraisal of war attitudes and heroic qualities: strength, courage, resilience , dedication.
2.3.OLD ENGLISH
-It belongs to the western branch of Low German, in turn part of the Teutonic family of Indo-European languages. The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, still in use in the 12th^ c.
-Four dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and Wessex (whence Anglo-Saxon literature mostly derives; today’s ‘standard English’ is rooted in the Mercian dialect)
-Differences:
·Not standardized until Anglo-Saxon Christianization. Variations on vowel length, pronunciation, spelling.
-Retaining of some runic characters (see p. 17)
·Absence of words from Latin and French, since it was a purely Germanic language. ·Grammar: A synthetic language (declentions over word order, prepositions or modals): four cases for nouns; weak and strong declentions for adjectives; singular, plural and dual number for pesonal pronouns; three verbal moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative.
2.4.OLD ENGLISH VERSE: CHARACTERISTICS
-Extant pagan literature in Old English (oral transmision) has been passed on via Christian scribes from the later Christian period, so occasionally incongruous mixture of pagan and Christian elements.
-MAJOR TECHNIQUES OF OLD ENGLISH VERSE
- Four-stress line: four accented syllables and an indefinite number of unstressed syllables
- A pause or caesura, which divided each line into two halves or hemistiches, each of them containing two stressed syllables.
- Alliteration over end rhyming managed to bind lines together and reinforce stress effect. The key syllable is the third one. Consonant and vowel alliteration. Rigid composition, eventually turning out wrenched and distorted.
- Variation. Heiti (one-word synonym or metonymy)
- Use of kenning, a compound word of metaphoric quality. Similes are not often used, but kennings provide Old English poetry with allusive and literary flavour.
- Specialized poetic vocabulary.
- Lofty, aristocratic tone, meant for poetic recitation. Instead of plain humour, litotes and understatement/irony among fighting men; or flyting, a mocking word-contest between two warriors.
- Rapid, sober narrative style, narrative stereotypes. Free word order.
- Oral rather than written composition. Scop (poet) and gleeman (minstrel, juggler, singer, bard).
2.5. ANGLO-SAXON POETRY (450-597)
-The surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry evinces its Germanic poetic ancestry, heroic and pre-Christian traces plus distinctively Christian features:
2.6. PROSE IN LATIN
-Unlike poetry, prose is written literature, and demands literacy. Christianity introduced literacy and preserved culture, and the language of knowledge and learning was LATIN, not vernacular. Prose in English will start massively during the reign of King Alfred the Great (late 9th c.).
-Among the very remarkable names (Aldhelm, an erudite late 7th c. bishop, writer and poet; Benedict Biscop, a mid 7th c. Anglo-Saxon abbot, founder of Jarrow Library at Jarrow Priory), there outstands BEDE, or Venerable Bede, “Father of English History”: a Benedictine humanist scholar, his learning is encyclopaedic—Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Old English—and his writings astoundingly diverse and wide ranging—epistles, rhetoric, linguistics, poetics, astronomy, hymns, history, homilectics, history, theology, patristic writings (writings by the early fathers of Christianity). Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (completed in 731).
2.7.KING ALFRED AND THE ORIGINS OF ENGLAND
2.7.1. THE VIKING AGE
-The Viking invasions have plundered and pillaged Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries.
-England was hardest of it all. Raidings started in 856 and in few decades managed to destroy patiently built up Anglo-Saxon England: first Northumbria, then Mercia… all English kingdoms were overwhelmed but Wessex. Invasions took the form of permanent settlement as the Vikings occupied Northern England (Danelaw: see map, p. 22)
-Young Alfred of Wessex was the first king determined to stop invasions. First of all, he sought to make alliance with unoccupied Mercian leaders. He eventually managed to defeat the Viking forces and secure half of England under English government and to Christianize the Danes. He then starts the embryo of England’s unity, which his descent —Edward, his son, and Athelstan, his grandson—will eventually fulfill. Monarchs will be now KINGS OF ENGLAND.
-Alfred’s capabilities as military man are owing to his efforts at strengthening English soil by means of fortresses and an organized naval defense and war fleet.
-Afred’s capabilities as stateman:
·Strengthening of kingly power, both physically and as ruler. ·Wergeld on the king’s figure. High treason and execution of transgressors. ·King’s decisions in unclear areas of Germanic law: the dooms or written royal laws. ·A system of royal delegates, or justices of peace. Training and schooling of royal representatives.
·The WITAN, a council of advisors who appointed successors (not necessarily royal heirs) ·Non-military administrators: Chamberlain and the literate clergy who would either write royal orders (writs) or the king’s royal grants (charters) ·Development of a system of shires (sheriff, or shire reeve). A system of buroughs for rural development. ·Creation of diocesis (York and Canterbury) and monasteries (centres of learning).
2.8. ANGLO-SAXON PROSE
-Old English prose is the result of Christianization, and develops (later than poetry) as utilitarian means to cater for political and cultural needs. It consists of translations from Latin, so it takes the form of traditional prose genres: history, philosophy and oratory.
-English prose begins in the reign of King Alfred the Great (871-899). Political unity and national identity require educational reconstruction and the promoting of learning. By this time, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles start being collected, a collection of annals in OE (not necessarily carried out or comissioned by Alfred) which chronicle the history of the Anglo-Saxons.
-Alfred’s educational project: restoration of monasteries and literacy from Latin into vernacular.
-Trained subordinates: court school and literacy for those in power. JUSTICE AND EDUCATION (see p. 23)
2.9. ALFRED’S TRANSLATIONS
-Alfred’s educational programme was based on USING VERNACULAR AS BASIC MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION.
-Schooling in English required English schoolbooks, once destroyed during Viking plundering. SEE P. 24
-Translation into vernacula from Christian culture in Latin, since there was an absolute lack of scholars in England (gone with the Danes’s invasion).
-His translations do not so much reproduce originals faithfully as they make good, understandable, readable books. They usually avoid propaganda, or unneccessary rendering of Latin, and instead are provided with illustrations and experiential passages on Alfred’s own.
-Among all of them, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum contributes to Alfred’s planning of political unification of England. He thus refers to the Anglo-Saxons as a single nation under the same church.
·Canute dies without capable heirs (who actually squandered his legacy). So Ethereld’s son—of Norman mother, Emma, who had married Canute after Ethereld’s death— returns from Normandy as a Norman, with no knowledge nor appreciation of English men and values: EDWARD THE CONFESSOR , who dies childless.
·Intestine struggle for power and two candidates, each of them representing two different destinies for England’s history and legacy:
-HAROLD, Edward’s cousin, of Anglo-Saxon origins, who represented a resentful native origin. He had been appointed by the English WITAN (royal counsellors, Alfred’s heritage) and seemingly promised the managing of English affairs while awaiting for the successor
-WILLIAM , Duke of Normandy, whom Edward had promised the crown of England.
·Harold managed to defeat Hardrada, King of Norway (who claimed to be the successor of Canute’s Scandinavian empire) yet he was himself defeated by William the Conqueror—William I of England—at the battle of Hastings (1066). THE BEGGINNING OF THE NORMAN ERA IN ENGLAND.
3.2. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST
·A new period in English History starts: Norman England (which extended over England and Normandy) , in which William I’ s resolute leadership gradually fused the Viking, French and English elements by working on feudal principles to 1.- subordinate and harness the abilities of the Norman nobles and 2.- reform the church according to the principles of 11th^ c. religious revival. So the Church and the nobility served the king.
·English aristocracy Normanized, and feudalized. The lord grants part of his demesne (state or land) or “fiefs” to vassals (tenant-holders) in return for loyalty and service (military and counselling in “curia regis”). Yet he avoided granting massive land to just one lord. Feudal regranting (subinfeudation) whereby the king’s vassals might regrant part of their fiefs to other landholders, who became in turn their vassals. England became feudal under a strong monarch, who would mitigate the diffusion of loyalties by requiring all powerful men of the kingdom to take an oath of loyalty directly to him.
·England’s medieval monarchy closely linked to the Continent. From the House of Wessex (Anglo-Saxon) to the House of Plantagenet (Anglo-Norman State which comprises England and the Angevin Empire—Anjou, Normandy, Acquitaine and Brittany). English kings were kings of England and France too, until the 13th c (loss of continental territories).
·Normanized church. Abbots were appointed, and the church develops after territorial and administrative structure (dioceses and parishes) to deal with moral and legal matters. New religious orders came to England (i.e. the Cistercians). Building up of cathedrals and stone churches.
·Three languages: the ruling classes spoke French; the upper clergy, French and Latin; official documents were written in Latin; lower classes spoke and were taught by the Church in English (didactic prose: saints’ lives, devotional pieces and sermons).
·Middle English: levelling of inflections for English is simplified in popular—not learned —use; simplification of grammar as it becomes less synthetical and more analytical (relying on prepositions and word order); introduction of borrowings from French lexicon from the 13th c. onwards, with the loss of the Duchy of Normandy.
·The High Medieval Ages (1050-1300) were characterized by
·Urbanization. Move from agricultural society and production models (barter exchange or transaction) to commerce, the cities and urban middle-classes (guilds). From monasteries to universities.
·A new profit spirit. From military values to mercenary armies and war as sport: chivalry and the transition form epic to romance. Aristocratic values and lifestyle (etiquette, and court conventions)
·The position of women. Female audience. Eve and Virgin Mary types. Women and land inheritance. Concerted marriages and (literature’s) tolerance for adultery.
3.3. HIGH MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND GENRES (XI to XIV centuries)
-After the conquest, French and Latin were the languages for literary creation and official documents, whereas English was only reserved for popular classes and tastes. From the 13th c. onwards, English is acknowledged as the national language.
-Yet Medieval English literature would imitate patterns and models borrowed from the continent. So
·Virtual disappearance (at least apparently, or from the aristocratic classes) of epic and alliterative genres in favour of new genres that are aesthetically associated to feudal values: chivalric romance, which was (re)introduced in England as a French literary fashion (Chrétien de Troy and Arthurian romances).
·An urban, polite, courtly lyrical model, easy and confident in performance: rhyme, syllabic verse. The troubadour/minstrel (refined, chivalric, occasionally humorous)
-Enrichment of the English language, as it borrows from French language and literary currents.
-Impersonality and collective authorship (until the xv c.). The question of originality.
-Female audience, who definitely contribute to the shaping of literary tastes (romance lyricism), production and authorship (women narrators or authors—Margery Kemp: (15th c.) The Book of Margery Kemp , the first (female) autobiography where she tells of her spiritual pilgrimages after a mundane life).
-The church’s influence on any writing, even lyrical poetry, dulce et utile.
-Unlike epic heroes, romance characters fight ritualistically, as sport, rather than as a necessity.
ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
·Celtic origin, yet reintroduced by French models. Earliest accounts in Nennius’s Historia Brittonum (circa 800) ·Geoffrey de Monmouth’s The Historia Regum Brinanniae (1137). Legendary matter, yet Arthur still a warrior. ·Robert Wace’s Roman de Brut (1155). In French. More literary and dynamic. Norman castles, knight-errantry, … ·Layamon’s Brut (1202), first into English. ·Chrétien de Troy of Provence supplies medieval English literature with one of its most influential, recurrent models. Cycle out of loose episodes; love sequence.
-Unlike ‘polite’ courtly romances, a short narrative poem, realistic, humorous, often coarse. Product of middle classes to oppose romance idealism. -Octosyllabic verse. -Enterntaining: humour of situation (wives tricking their husbands, satirical railing at the clergy, …) -Caustic attitude towards women.
-From Greek tradition (Aesop) and Indian sources. Short stories with humanized animals which illustrate simple moral.
- LYRIC (see examples in Texts for discussions)
-Largely imitations from an established European tradition, they were written in English during the 13th and 14th centuries. -Intended to be sung , so their composition subordinated to musical patterns.
- Origin : pre-Christian seasonal celebrations, comunal work songs (spinning, rowing) or danced folk songs for recreation
- Folk love poe try, which tends to give woman’s perspective (courtly love, languishing tone); chanson d’aventure ; the aube (song of lovers parting at dawn); chanson de mal mariée (woman’s complaint about married life); chanson de carole (dance song with a refrain)…
- Dominant themes : springtime, love, political lyric and religious (some form of appeal to Christ or Virgin Mary for salvation or intercession)
-Symbolic representation of reality, typically medieval (World as a Symbol). Or moral anecdotes illustrating a point, usually slid into sermons. -The Roman de la Rose. First part by Guillaume de Lorris (1227); second by Jean de Meun (1268-77).
-A popular composition, consisting of short stanzas (four lines) and a refrain in form of a dialogue. Dramatic structure. -Orally transmitted, they flourished in the late Middle Ages. I. e: Robin Hood ballads. No narrative person(ality). Episodic and ‘incremental repetition’ towards a climax. -Folk themes (revenge, jealousy,) violence or horror, betrayed lovers, love tests, supernatural or fairies and witches
4. MEDIEVAL ENGLAND II
THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1350-1400) & THE 15TH^ -CENTURY (1400-1500)
4.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
-The Age of Chaucer opens with one of the most dramatic events in the human history: THE BLACK DEATH, or the bubonic plague, which raided Europe from 1348 onwards and did away with one half of the island population. The effects of such tragic episode are manifold, and they all point at a growing sese of INDIVIDUALISM.
-The sense of common experience and shared responsibility fostered some ENGLISH NATIONALISM or patriotic pride, which was reinforced by increasing hatred for France during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453—it started with Edward II’s claims to the French throne. Conflict between the French House of Valois and the English House of Plantagenet).
-Moreover, the English Parliament split into the separate House of Lords and House of Commons, both of them denying foreign jurisdiction in English matters, including papal authority (England no longer a papal fief in 1371).
-The Black Death did lessen considerably the labouring population (greater losses among them). And labour shortage turned them into a scarce and highly desirable commodity in a rising job market (more demand than supply). So, formerly scorned, labourers realized for the first time their worth and began to claim economic freedoms
·His life might be summarized as that of a bourgeois with courtly connections: his life was employed in public service (for which he was rewarded) and was frequently sent abroad (Italy and France) whence he incorporated his cultural and social knowledge to his work.
·Continental literary affiliations (French chivalry and Italian Dante or Boccaccio) and Middle Age culture (classic mythology, history and literature; medicine; astronomy; astrology; theology; philosophy). He incarnates the richest picture of Medieval knowledge and milieu.
-His works fall under three periods:
1.- FRENCH PERIOD (to 1372). Indebtedness to French poets and classical material derived from French intermediaries: courtly love tradition (main features) and dream allegory. His translation of the Roman de la Rose; “The Book of the Duchess”.
2.- ITALIAN PERIOD (1372-1385). Enters into contact with the height of Italian Renaissance and the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. “Troilus and Criseyde” (interest in character protrayal; courtly love conventions and love outside marriage; rhyme royal, Chaucer’s, seven decasyllabic lines, rhyming ababbcc).
ENGLISH PERIOD (1385-1400). The Canterbury Tales. Plot. Pilgrimages and Saint Thomas Becket. Characters and social types. The tales’s narrative embeddedment. Anthological gathering of the best from medieval literature : courtly romance, the fabliau, the Breton lai or chivalric romances of love and supernatural elements; the saints’ legends; preachers’s exemplum; sermons; ancient legend, folk-tales, tragedy…
4.2. THE 15TH-CENTURY, A TRANSITION PERIOD (1400-1500)
-Historical Background:
·Political instability, wars. Rebellions in North Wales. The Hundred Years’ War ends detrimentally for England. The War of the Roses ( a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England, fought during the second half of the 15th-century between two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (red rose banner) and the House of York (white rose). Richard III (House of York) deposed Henry VI’s son, still in his minority, as he feared the young heir’s maternal relatives. A distant relative of Lancastrian kings (Henry Tudor, descendant of Edward III too) defeated Richard III of Gloucester—the last Yorkist monarch—thus becoming Henry VII, who managed to reconcile both Houses by marrying Edward V of York’s sister Elizabeth of York (daughter to Edward IV). A new dynasty, the Tudors ).
·As noble classes fight in pretty anachronic intestine wars, the merchant classes enrich themselves. Education of the laity increased considerably, thus displacing chivalric idealism and feudal loyalties in a new economic order.
·A strong realistic representation (picaresque stories of rogues and city life) discarded stylized forms of chivalry and religious medievalism.
·William Caxton and the printed word. Consequences. From verse and orality to prose and realism.
·Renaissance now stirring in England. Growing literacy of the lay classes.
·English verse: the Chaucerian tradition.
·English drama (pageants or mysteries, by guilds: popular entertainment and festive/ humorous tone; morality plays or allegorical representations of abstractions).
·English religious prose: sermons or didactic prose, translations.
·English romance prose: Thomas Malory’s Morthe Darthur, which abridges French originals, eliminates the supernatural and turns it into simpler prose. Patriotic love for England, nostalgia for chivalric values and knighthood, lament for the downfall of virtue and morality.
5. TUDOR ENGLAND (I)
RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION ENGLAND
5.1.THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Renaissance and Reformation.
·Henry VIII inherited from his father (Henry VII) a strong rule, which allowed him to play a part in Europe’s power politics.
·Reformation in England was not driven by religious forces but under the guidance of Henry VIII.
·Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon
·Anne Boleyn and break with Rome: The Act of Supremacy (1534), backed by the Parliament, which resented the Pope’s jurisdiction in England and English matters. Thomas Cromwell , the architect of such political reformation: separate church from Rome, but a department of the English state with the King as head; end of the church’s legislative independence and of the flow of funds to the Papacy from England; kingly (and parliamentary) control of the church’s canons (own laws), to be licensed by the king; penalty of treason for non-conformism; dissolution of monasteries and friaries and confiscation of their land (1/3 English land) to be acquired by high and minor nobles and yeoman peasants at reduced prices= growing status; severe penalties for resisters: Thomas More.
YEARS OF CRISIS: EDWARD VI AND (BLOODY)MARY
-An intellectual/artistic upsurge in Western Europe from the 12th- and 13th-centuries on.
-Causes: money economy and materialism replacing medieval ascetics and otherworldliness; growth of population, especially in cities; influence of Byzantine and Moslem cultures; classical revival; literacy and rise of intellectualism in universities; critical and skeptical attitude; development of scientific inquiry.
-Although working in parallel in England, Renaissance and Reformation were quite often at odds one another. Renaissance tenets are:
-Renaissance humanism is halfway between theology and rationalism, secular-minded, whereas Reformation is eminently religion-oriented.
-Scholarship instituted by Renaissance modern models , Greek and Latin prior to medieval elaborations.
-Writing style based on classical rhetoric and literary criticism.
-Subjects of art become more realistic, and human worldly values replace allegory and religion. Idealization of the sensual over the spiritual.
-Greece and Rome provide Renaissance models of ethics, which breach the gap morality-materialism.
-Philosophy. Plato over Aristotle.
-Scientifical approaches to reality, more pragmatic.
-The humanist ideal : Man who knows about everything. Man-centeredness.
-Strong individualism. Hedonism, optimism and dynamism.
5.2.RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
THE NEW LEARNING
- Massive translations of classical Greek studies into English. William Grocyn (first teacher at Oxford, introduced New Learning); Thomas Linacre (Royal College of Physicians at Oxford, teacher of Erasmus and More and translator of grammars…).
- Eramus of Rotterdam. Resided in England where he taught at Cambridge. Moriae Encomium ( Praise of Folly ) satirizes corruption of religion and learning and praises humanist ideals. Recovery of classical texts, unadulterated by medieval scholastics. Reconciliation God and reason. While religious, he criticizes ecclesiastic obscurity and corruption.
- Sir Thomas More. Ideal Renaissance man, who would not suscribe to the Act of Supremacy, and was acused of treason and beheaded. Utopia (‘no place’). An imaginary visit to the ideal state of Utopia (truly
representative government, communist system and exchange equality among Utopians, gold and silver for ship building, six-hour day work for everybody, celebration of scholarship and erudition, women’s equality, pacifism, and welfare of the body politic placed above the individual; divorce and euthanasia ). Yet seemingly paradoxes: (the seaman’s name, Raphael Hythloday, ‘non-sense giver’; river’s name, Anydrus (‘no water’), which respond to the two poles of humanism, visionary fantasy and realism. A critique of malfunctioning rule and institutions? Too much perfect to be true? Or intrinsically denouncing Utopia’s totalitarian regulation of existence by reason?
REFORMATION
-It shares with Renaissance a sense of increasing individualism , which originates in a growing economic system. Origins placed in original sources—the Scriptures and early Church Fathers for Reformation, classic Greek and Roman culture for Renaissance.
-Yet they oppose in various senses: Reformation piety and otherworldliness vs Renaissance enjoyment of life and senses; man’s inherently depraved nature whereas humanist perception of man’s natural goodness; Renaissance reason and tolerance vs Reformation dogma; Reformation revival of a past previous to medieval church whereas Renaissance praised pagan antiquity; Reformation nationalism vs Renaissance internationalism.
-Reformation in England was born as a nationalistic project, which limited papal authority in politics, law and property; yet England had already become secularized from the 14th-c. on. So Reformation had its way paved quite before the 16th-century: strong anti-clericalism, quite sensitive to ecclesiastic corruption, negligence and ignorance; Christian humanism strongly critical and enlightened rejection of any dogmatic interpretation handed down from on high; the legacy of John Wycliffe and the Lollards (personal, scriptural, non-sacramental, non-hierarchic and lay-dominated religion). So Luther’s visit to England, Lollard activity and the development of London trade with Germany and the Low Countries would definitely promote Lutheran ideas in England
5.3. ELIZABETHAN POETRY (1558-1603)
GENERAL FEATURES
-New courtier life, where literature becomes more than a didactic passtime.
-New, modern English poets: abandonment of allegory and morale to embrace brief, intense and subjective verse. Poetry as vehicle of emotional expression.
-Dominant influences from the classics and Italy: Petrach, Bocaccio, Dante ,the pastoral and Virgilian, courlty love, and ideal chevalier (both active and contemplative life): idealizing the lady, desperately given to her, whose disdain he suffers profoundly.
-Poet: a man of action (writer-man-of-affairs) plus literary courtisan.
