英美文学2

2.1. Background and Main Features of This Stage
We have no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, this dream of literary power was ever realized in the world. We do know that many sixteenth-century artists, such as Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare, brooded on the magical, transforming power of art. This power could be associated with civility and virtue, as Sidney claims, but it could also have the demonic qualities manifested by the "pleasing words" of Spenser's enchanter poems.
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
Dominating thoughts of the poem are NATIONALISM, HUMANISUM and PURITANISM. “The Faerie Queene” is written in a 9-line stanza form, rhymed (ababbcbcc); the first 8 are iambic pentameter lines, and the last an iambic hexameter. This form has since been called the Spenserian Stanza.
Lesson Two
The English Renaissance
16th Century (1485-1603)
2.1. Background and Main Features of This Stage 2.2. Major Figures and Their Representative Works 2.3 William Shakespeare
2.1. Background and Main Features of This Stage
Literary Background
Literary works in sixteenth-century England were rarely if ever created in isolation from other currents in the social and cultural world. a very different vision, one in which the poet's words not only imitate reality but also actively change it.
Francis Bacon: (1561-1626) “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark，” “Reading makes a full man； conference a ready（敏捷的） man， and writing an exact man” “Some books are to be tasted， others to be Some tasted swallowed， and some few to be chewed and digested.” This is a very famous saying from “Of Studies”。 To choose time is to save time . Money is a good servant and a bad master
Christopher Marlowe (1564-95):
the most gifted of the “university wits”
“Tamburlaine” (1587): 铁木真 “The Jew of Malta” (1592): "The Wider World" provides a glimpse of the huge world that lay beyond the boundaries of the kingdom, a world that the English were feverishly attempting to explore and exploit. Ruthless military expeditions and English settlers (including the poet Edmund Spenser) struggled to subdue and colonize nearby Ireland, but with very limited success. Farther afield, merchants from cities such as London and Bristol established profitable trading links to markets in North Africa, Turkey, and Russia.
2.1. Background and Main Features of This Stage The Movement of Reformation Henry VIII (1509-47): started the reformation. Declared the break with Rome Catholic and Protestant voices Queen Mary (1553-58) counter-reformation Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) compatible with the monarchy and acceptable by as many people as possible
Thomas More (1478-1535) Francis Bacon: (1561-1626)
2.2.3 Drama
Christopher Marlowe (1564-95):
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
The “poet’s poet” of the period who held that “It’s not a mind, not a body, that we have to educate, but a man; and we cannot divide him.” Masterpiece: “The Faerie Queen”(1589-1596)
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
A long poem planned in twelve books, of which he finished only six. The work was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. The fairy Queen holds a feast of 12 days, and on each day a stranger in distress appears, claiming help against a dragon or giant or tyrant. A knight is assigned to each guest, and twelve books were to describe the 12 adventures. Each knight represents a virtue, as Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy.
2.1. Background and Main Features of This Stage
The English Renaissance was largely literary and achieved its finest impression in the so called Elizabeth Drama.
Hale Waihona Puke 2.1. Background and Main Features of This Stage The new monarchy Barely at the end of the Hundred Years’ War with France(1336-1453) England was again blown into the whirlwind of civil war. The Wars of the Roses (1455-83) between the House of Lancaster and the House of York struggling for the crown for thirty years. The king of England, being always threatened with the violence and insubordination of the noble Lords, now assumed greater power than before. And Henry VII, taking advantage of this situation, founded the Tudor dynasty, a centralized monarchy of a totally new type.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)
Poet and critic of poetry “Astrophel and Stella” (1591) a collection of sonnets “Apology for Poety”(1595) one of the earliest English literary essays. It was written to answer an attack on poetry and drama as “the school of abuse”. Sidney defended the uses of poetry and thought that poetry has a superiority over philosophy and history.