Background

• European Renaissance
  1. Renaissance = from Latin word ‘rinascere’ meaning Rebirth (of the classical antiquity or culture),  European artists turned back to the ancient Greek and roman culture. A movement.
  2. marked the end of the middle ages. Middle age practiced were abandoned by the artists.
  3. Ideas changed from the middle ages:
     1. Medieval thinkers believed that the most important responsibility of the people was to pray to God and to aim at saving their souls. Society was believed to be full of evil temptation. When renaissance thinkers did not take society as evil and believed people to have the responsibility over the society.
     2. Theology was studied heavily in the middle ages, when humanity was popular in the renaissance.
     3. Renaissance writer were interested in the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek cultures.
     4. Middle age art were fabricated and not realistic. When minute observation on reallife detailing and lifelike art was a characteristic of renaissance.
  4. Italian renaissance
     1. Renaissance began in Italy
     2. Petrarch and Boccaccio were the first Renaissance humanists.
        1. They recovered the ancient manuscripts of the 1300s and imitated classical writings.
        2. Human feelings are dealt with in Petrarcho’s poetry and Boccaccio’s stories.
     3. Italian Renaissance art was on realism.
     4. Florentine painter Gitto was the first artist to portray nature realistically.
     5. During 1400s and 1500s art was dominated by:
        1. Michelangelo: Statue of Moses, painting on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel
        2. Raphael: Portrait of the Madonna
        3. Leonardo de Vinci: The Last Supper and Mona Lisa
  5. During 1400s Renaissance spread from Italy to Europe.
  6. England
     1. By 1400s England was united as a nation during the reign of Tudors.
     2. Tudors ruled from 1485 to 1603, who were the patrons of the Renaissance.
     3. For the first time Henry VII invited many Italian humanists to his court. And they influenced English scholars.
     4. In this period Greek and Roman literature became fashionable.
     5. Translation began, education spread.
     6. During Henry VII’s rule, Grocyn and Linacre taught Greek at Oxford and Colet lectured on the greek Testament.
     7. Colet founded St Paul’s Grammar School, the first school in England, devoted to study classical literature. William Lyly was its first head master and his Latin grammar book was a standard used for 200 years.
     8. Erasmus was a great scholar who taught in Cambridge and inspired Latimer and Fisher.
     9. Thomas More in his book Utopia, described the ideal land
     10. Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt had travelled to Italy and introduced sonnet in england.
     11. The sonnet became fashionable with the hands of Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare.
     12. The first printing press introduced in england by Wlliam Caxton at Westminister in 1476
     13.  
  7. Society was divided into two classes: rich and poor.
  8. “To drink the life to the lees” was the motto of the renaissance.
  9. Scientific inventions: Printing press by John Gutenberg, Mariner’s compass and telescope.
  10. Copernicus proved the sun is still.
  11. Christopher Columbus discovered America.
  12. Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India via Cape of Good Hope
  13. ferdinand Magallen was the first to sail around the worls
  14. People started questioning the Church.
  15. Scholars like Colet and erasmus tried to apply humanistic methods to study Christianity.
  16. Luther rejected the authority of the Church of Rome.

• Settlement: in politics
• Expension: Colonial, notable book- Hakluyt(1552-1616)
• Literary features: New Classicism, New Romanticism, Domination of Drama, Poetry and prose, Scottish Literature
• Renaissance Humanism, Protestant Zeal, geographical and scientific discovery
• Drama dominated Elizabethan literature
• Poetry was the second most popular composition.