2014-02-13
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https://www.online-literature.com/chaucer/canterbury/
Http://englishlit.about.com/arts/englishlit www.spartacus.schoonet.co.uk/drama.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Тема 3. The Renaissance. Elizabethan Poetry, the main sonneteers: Th. Wyatt, H. Surrey. The significance of Ph. Sidney and E. Spenser in English poetry. Development of English theatre and drama in XVI c. The Golden Age of English Drama. Shakespeare and his creative activity.
Проблемные вопросы лекции. Epoch of Renaissance in English Literature, its idea of Humanism and Reformation. The development of poetry in the first half of XVI c. The reformers of English poetry - Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard Surrey. Peculiarities of sonnet as a genre. The development of English sonnet. Shakespearian sonnet: its structure, ideas, dedication. Shakespeare’s contribution to the development of English drama.
Тезисы лекций. Elizabethan Age.Strictly speaking, it was the period of the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603); the term "Elizabethan," however, is often used loosely to refer to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, even after the death of Elizabeth. This was a time of rapid development in English commerce, maritime power, and nationalist feeling—the defeat of the Spanish Armada occurred in 1588. It was a great age of English literature—the age of Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Thomas More, whose famous Utopia (the island named nowhere) influenced many future generations or readers and many other extraordinary writers of prose and of dramatic, lyric, and narrative poetry. The climax of the dramatic Renaissance came during the Elizabethan age, a period in which the drama was the expression of the soul of a nation and the theater became a vital force in the life of people. The main treasure of English literature appeared and developed in the person on William Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist of all times. He wrote 37 plays which gave the full picture of people’s life of that period and at the first time the drama could express feelings and emotions of a living man not artificial. Shakespearean genius reflected the realism and deep feeling of nationalism of English man. A number of scholars have looked back on this era as one of intellectual coherence and social order. Recent historical critics, however, have emphasized its intellectual uncertainties and political and social conflicts.
The Renaissance was in essence an intellectual rebirth. One force of immense importance in the R. was the new knowledge of the world of antiquity, which was obtained through the recovery of the writings and works of art of the classical period. The idea presented in the literatures of Athens and Rome, of life which should be lived for its opportunities of many-sided development and enjoyment, came to have a strong influence on men – an influence denoted by the term Humanism. Humanism assumed the dignity and central position of human beings in the universe, emphasized the importance in education of studying classical imaginative and philosophical literature, although with emphasis on its moral and practical values. They insisted on primacy of reason as opposed the instinctual appetites and the animal passions, stressed the need for a rounded development of an individual’s diverse powers.
The most attractive figure both among the oxford reformers and later at the court of Henry is Thomas More (1478-1535). He threw himself into state affairs, became Lord Chancellor and after fell a victim to the king’s change of policy, was beheaded. He is remembered not only for his spiritual integrity but also for the union of his interests, intellectual and practical, which resulted in Utopia, written in Latin in 1516, and translated into English in 1551. In this famous book a sailor returning to England holds a conversation with the author concerning the state of the realm, in the course of which it appears that many of the evils of government and wrongs of the people, were still in existence. Then, in the second part, the sailor proceeds to give and account of a land beyond the sea, Utopia, where the people live by reason, and all poverty and injustice have been abolished. It is a state that has achieved absolute social and economic harmony by replacing private property by common property. In this happy country all are contented with simple necessities and are employed in useful labor. Since the necessities are few and everyone must labour, no one need work more than 6 hours a day, and the rest of the time may be devoted to education and recreation. Utopia knows no money: there is no need of it there. Everything is paid for by toil for the general welfare. Gold is considered to be something indecent. Neither laziness nor greed is known. No post in Utopia is hereditary, every official is elected. Criminals are punished by slavery, not by death, even for the greatest misdeeds. It is one of the oldest laws of the Utopians, that no man can be punished for his religion. Every man may try to convert others to his views by force of amicable and modest argument, without bitterness against those of other opinions; but whoever adds reproach and violence to persuasion is to be condemned to banishment or slavery. It may seem strange to us that More put slaves in his ideal system. But they are either condemned convicts or prisoners of war who refused to surrender and were captured by force. Slaves belong to the state, slavery is not hereditary, and every slave may become free if he works honestly.
During Elizabethan reign at the second period of Renaissance the two main genres were popular in England: poetry and drama. This was the Golden age of English Drama.
Elizabethan poetry was also taking on its modern form. Sir Thomas Wyatt(1503-1543) and the Henry Howard Surrey or Earl of Surrey(1517-1547) are often mentioned together, but there are many differences in their work. Both wrote sonnets which they learned to do from the Italians but it was Wyatt who first bought the sonnet to England. Petrarch (1304-1374) was established sonnet as a strict form. The sonnet became a literary exercise, devoted to the expression of a love which might be entirely imaginary or directed toward an imaginary person.
Sonne t is a 14-line lyric poem of fixed form and rhyme pattern. It divided into two quatrains – 4 – line groups and two terzets – 3 – line groups. The rhyming of the quatrains is abba abba; as you see, the rhymes in both quatrains are the same. The rhyming of the terzets, according to Petrarch, is either ccd eed, cde cde, or cdc dcd. But the difficulty of composing sonnets is not only in the difficult form; in a classical sonnet a thought is put forth in the first quatrain, and another, contradicting it, in the second, they intersect in the first terzet, and a solution is reached in the second terzet, in the last word of the last line the most significant; this word is called the key of the sonnet. Among the foremost English masters of the sonnet during later centuries, we must mention John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Oscar Wilds.
In the form of sonnet Wyatt mainly followed Italian poet. Wyatt’s sonnets, like those of his Italian masters, need not be regarded as having strict biographical truth, though attempts have been made to find them the history of a personal relation and some have guessed that they were in part inspired by Henry’s second queen, Anne Boleyn. At all events Wyatt’s poetry suggests that even a conventional form was for him the means for a sincere expression of feeling, even his translations seem charged with his own temperament, and his rendering of psalms is touched with personal religious emotion. Here is part of a lover’s prayer to his girl:
And wilt thou leave me thus
That hath loved thee so long
In wealth and woe among;
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay! Say nay! Nay-no
The poet who introduced the Elizabethan age proper was Edmund Spenser. He was known as the Prince of Poets in the Elizabethan age. In 1579 he produced the Shepherd’s Calendar, a poem in 12 books, one for each of the year. Spenser was no doubt making experiments in metre and form, examining his own abilities. Spenser’s greatest work, The Faerie Queene (1589-96) was planned in 12 books, but he wrote little more than the first six. It is the brightest expression of the ideal morality of the time, and in a sense is the epic of the English race at one of the great moment of its history. It was his great national epic to celebrate Queen Elizabeth. Spenser and his contemporaries regarded moral purpose as essential to the greatest art; and with Spenser this purpose took the form of dealing with the old problem of the R. – individual character in relation to the state. Spenser invented a special metre for The Faerie Queen. The verse has nine lines; of these the last has six feet, the others five. The rhyme plan is ababbcbcc. This verse, the ‘ Spenserian Stanza’ is justly famous and has often been used since. /Stanza, a group of verse lines which rhyme in a particular pattern/.
The Elizabethan age produced a surprising flow of lyrics. Lyric poetry gives expression to the poet’s own thoughts and feelings, and for this reason we tend to picture the lyric poet as a rather dreamy unpractical person with his thoughts turned inwards; as a description of the Elizabethan lyric poets, nothing could be further from the truth. We know few details of Spenser’s life, but his friend Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was a true Elizabethan gentleman of many activities – courtier, statesman, post and soldier. Sidney was interested in the plan of using Latin metres to the exclusion of the rhyming verse natural to the English tongue. This attempt was in line with similar undertakings in France and Italy, and serves to show how strong and how dangerous an influence the revival of learning exerted upon the beginnings of modern literature. In his book “ Defence of Poesie ” (1579) he wrote one of the earliest pieces of English criticism, he showed his classicism by his approval of plays built on the Latin model, but he defended English poetry even the folk ballad, exclaiming “I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet”.
The chief glory of the great Elizabethan age was its drama. The classical influence on development of English drama was very strong. The classic dramatist selected for emulation was the Latin playwright, Seneca. Latin drama, is usually careful to preserve unity of time and place, that is to make all the action pass in a given locality and to cover no more than the events of a single day. English playwrights, on the contrary, had no hesitation in shifting the scene to half a dozen different countries in the course of a single play, and they thought nothing of introducing in the first act a child who grew to manhood in the second and in the third died.
The most important of these dramatists were Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and George Peele, with Marlowe the undisputed leader. They were named as ‘ University Wits ” – the young generation of writers who were educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) He was born and educated at Stratford-on-Avon, married Anne Hathaway in the age of 18, and later went to London, where he worked in a theatre. During the 20 years of his working life S. wrote 37 plays and was involved in three separate aspects of the theatre. For one, he was a “Sharer” in a company of actors called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. This meant that he was one of an inner circle of six or eight actors who determined the company’s artistic and business policies and shared the profits. He was also part owner of the Globe Theatre and shared those consequent responsibilities and revenues as well. In addition, he was the company poet. This meant that he supplied his fellow actors with the popular comedies, tragedies, histories and romances which were the cornerstone of their success and led them, finally to gain the patronage of King, James I. S’s three-way participation in the professional theatre enabled the hardworking actor-playwright-businessman to buy a house in London and a handsome piece of property in his native Stratford, where he began his retirement at the age of 48. Most critics divide his wok into 3 periods: the first period of experiment and external influence: poems and sonnets, history plays-chronicles and comedies; (1591-1601) – Richard 3, Titus Andronicus, Henry 4 and Henry5, Julius Caesar, comedies – Love’s Labor’s Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Merchant of Venice; the ‘joyous comedies - Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like it, Twelfth Night. The second period of satire and tragedy (1601-1608) – The dark and bitter tragedies – Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, later Roman plays – Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus. The third period of plays is named as the period of romances (1608-1613) – A Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest.
Список литературы. Михальская Н.П. История английской литературы. М., «Академия», 2007
Alexander M. A History of English Literature, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000
Thornley G.C., Roberts G. An outline of English Literature, Longman, 2002
Drabble M., Stringer J. Oxford Concise Companion to English Literature.
Интернет ресурсы. Сонеты Шекспира https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sonnets
Шекспир «Гамлет» https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hamlet
«Ромео и Джульетта» https://publicliterature.org/?s=Shakespeare
«Сон в летнюю ночь» https://publicliterature.org/?s=Shakespeare
«Буря» https://publicliterature.org/?s=Shakespeare
Тема 4. The Seventeenth Century Literature. The development of drama and poetry. Metaphysical poetry, John Milton and his time.
Проблемные вопросы лекции. Literature of English bourgeois revolution in XVII century. Puritanism and its influence on English literature. John Milton and his epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain. Humanism in characterization of Adam and Eve. The period of Restoration (1660-1688).
Тезисы лекций.. Jacobean Age was named by the king of James I (in Latin, "Jacobus"), 1603-25, which followed that of Queen Elizabeth. There are many striking differences between Age of Elizabeth and Jacobean age. In the first place, the nation unity, of which devotion to Elizabeth was the symbol, was already impaired by the time of her death. Under her successor, the Scottish King, James I, party strife between the supporters of the Throne and those who maintained the rights of the people through Parliament, between those who held to the authority of the established church and its bishops and those who demanded a more democratic form of church government or even entire freedom of the individual in matters of conscience, increased. The contradictions between the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie reached their climax. As the role of the absolute monarchy was no longer progressive and hindered the further development of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, which had once supported the king, turned against absolute monarchy. Those supporting the king were called Cavaliers, or Royalists. The Puritans, or the petty bourgeoisie, took the lead in resisting the king. It was easy to distinguish the Puritans from the Cavaliers: the Puritans cut their hair very close to the head, for which they were nicknamed ‘ Roundheads ”, while the Cavaliers had flowing locks and wore rich clothes.
In 1640 the need of money for the war with Scotland compelled the king to call another Parliament. The Commons at once began to attack him for his bad government during the previous years. The king became angry and dissolved Parliament again. This Parliament is called in history the “Short Parliament”. But the Scots marched into the north of England and the king was forced to summon Parliament again to get its consent to raise new taxes. This Parliament is known as the “Long Parliament’ because it lasted off and on for 19 years, till 1653. Parliament passed an Act saying that the king’s ministers should be responsible to parliament and that Parliament could be dissolved only by its own consent. The king, however, thought he could turn the course of historical events in his favor by force, and in 1642 he gathered an army and declared war on Parliament. Thus the Civil war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians began, which lasted from 1642 till 1649.
King Charles was supported by the old nobility and by the Church. The Parliamentary Army, headed by Oliver Cromwell, consisted of representatives of the bourgeoisie and the gentry – new nobility; they also gained the support of the yeomen, artisans, and other working people, who by that time had realized that the taxes they had paid to the king under the old feudal laws had been used not for national purposes, but in the interests of the crown and the old nobility.
Oliver Cromwell was a member of the Long Parliament and the leader of the Independents, who demanded the overthrow of the monarchy. He had military talents and created an army of a new Model: a “troop of horse’ under iron discipline. The fact that the popular masses took the side of Parliament against the Royalists decided the results of the war. The latter were defeated and the Bourgeois Revolution /sometimes called the Puritan Revolution/ triumphed. Charles Stuart was tried and beheaded in January, 1649, the house of Lords abolished, and a Commonwealth /or Republic/ proclaimed. Later, however, frightened by the rising revolutionary spirit of the masses, Cromwell intensified his oppression and in 1653 imposed a military dictatorship on the country. It lasted till his death in 1658. As neither the common people nor the upper classes were satisfied with the results of the Puritan revolution, the monarchy was restored after Oliver Cromwell’s death.
Charles II, son of the executed king, ascended the throne in 1660. The years between 1660-1688 are called the “Restoration”, but try as he would Charles was unable to restore the old state of things. Neither could his successor James II with the support of reactionary groups in England and Ireland establish a despotic regime.
The political struggles involving the broad masses of the English population led to the publication of news pamphlets and political pamphlets, and laid the foundation of journalism and the periodical press. The English people took a tremendous interest in all the political events of the time. There appeared pamphlets which not only reported events, but also explained them to the people. Satirical ballads on contemporary themes were also published in Pamphlet form. The greatest of all publicists during the Puritan Revolution was the poet John Milton. His pamphlets gave theoretical foundation to the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the monarchy. During the Renaissance poetry had been the most popular form of literature. During the Revolution prose became very popular because it was easier to write on social and political problems in prose.
John Donne (1572-1631) was one of the most famous churchmen of his time and wrote poems from 1590 onwards, but his poems were not published until 1633, shortly after his death at the age of 39. Donne is known as a leader of metaphysical poets. /Metaphysics- the part of the study of philosophy that is concerned with trying to understand and describe the nature of reality, metaphysical used to describe a complicated arrangement of words and ideas/.The name “metaphysical” is now applied to a group of 17-century poets who, whether of directly influenced by Donne, employ similar poetic procedures and imagery, both in secular poetry – Cleveland, Marvell, Cowley and in religious poetry – Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw and Traherne.
John Milton (1608-1674). Paradise Lost was written after the Restoration, but the powerful voice of the poet declared that the spirit of the Revolution was not broken, that it still lived in the hearts of the people. Being a Puritan, Milton wanted to portray God as an almightily embodiment of Justice, and Satan as the villain, but Satan becomes the hero of this great work.
Paradise Lost is the major epic poem in English. It was first printed in 1667 and planned in 10 books, but written in 12. Milton had thought about using the English myth of King Arthur for his great epic poem, but finally decided to use the more general myth of Creation, with the figures of God and Satan, Adam and Eve, and the Fall of Mankind as his subject. His aim, he said was:
To assert Eternal Providence
And Justify the ways of God to Men.
This is a very ambitious aim, and the poem has always caused controversy as many readers and critics see Satan as the hero. The poem can be read as a religious text, supporting Christian ideals, or it can be read as the last great Renaissance text, stressing the freedom of choice of Adam and Eve as they choose the path of human knowledge and leave the Garden of Eden, Paradise. Adam and Eve are allowed by God to live in Paradise, in the Garden of Eden, as long as they do not eat the apple that grows on the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. Satan, who has been driven from the Garden of Eden by the guardian angels, returns at night in the form of a serpent. Next morning, the serpent persuades Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and to take another one for Adam Eve tells Adam what she has done:
Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length
First to himself he inward silence broke;-
‘O, fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled ‘Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, holy, divine, amiable or sweet!
How art thou lost!
….Some cursed fraud
Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die.
How can I live without thee? How forgo
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Adam decides to eat the fruit for love of Eve. As a punishment, God banishes Adam and Eve to the newly created world, where they have to face a life of toil and woe. The angel Michael drives them out of Paradise, waving his fiery sword. Form a hiss Michael shows Adam a vision of the tyranny and lawlessness which are to befall mankind. At the end of the poem, they follow the path towards the unknown future of all humanity:
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide,
they, hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
Neither Adam nor Eve is blamed for the Fall, when Eve eats the Forbidden fruit of the tree of Knowledge and Adam loses the state of innocence. Satan, God and man are equally responsible. Milton’s sympathies lie with Adam and Eve, and this shows his faith in man. His Adam and Eve are full of energy they love each other and are ready to meet whatever the earth has in store for them. When they are driven out of Eden, Eve says to Adam:
…but now lead on;
In me is no delay; with thee to go
Is to stay here; without thee to stay
Is to go hence unwillingly; thou to me
Art all things under heaven, all places thou,
Who for my willful crime art banished hence.
Paradise Regained, a shorter poem deals with Christ’s temptation in the desert, his resistance to Satan’s temptation balancing Eve’s yielding to that same temptation in Paradise Lost and its appeal is essentially Christian. It is a smaller poem in technique and vision as well as length. On 1672, four years after the publication of Paradise Lost, appeared Milton’s third volume of verse. It consisted of Paradise Regained, a supplement to Paradise Lost, and of Samson Agonistes, a drama in the Greek manner, it is a journey in a new field of poetry, shows Milton’s genius at its subtlest and maturest.
It is again has Milton himself as its hero. Like Samson he had fought against the Philistines with the strength of thirty men; he had taken a wife from among his enemies and suffered bitter loss at her hands, he sat now, blind and dishonored, amid the triumph of the Cavaliers, as Samson among the festive Philistines. He laments his fall and his blindness; in speech after speech his greatness is recalled; his humiliation is lamented or gloated over; but at the end he is triumphant. He pulls down the temple of the Philistines on the head of his enemies, himself dies in the ruins, and the chorus is left to make a tranquil conclusion.
