Chapter 3 English Literature in the Renaissance I.A Historical Background
II.The Overview of the Literature （1485-1660）
Printing press—readership—growth of middle class—trade-education for laypeople-centralization of power-intellectual life-exploration-new impetus and direction of literature.
Humanism-study of the literature of classical antiquity and reformed education.
Literary style-modeled on the ancients.
The effect of humanism-the dissemination of the cultivated, clear, and sensible attitude of its classically educated adherents.
1. poetry
The first tendency by Sidney and Spenser: ornate, florid, highly figured style.
The second tendency by Donne: metaphysical style—complexity and ingenuity.
The third tendency by Johnson: reaction——Classically pure and restrained style.
The fourth tendency by Milton: central Christian and Biblical tradition.
2. Drama
a. the native tradition and classical examples.
b. the drama stands highest in popular estimation: Marlowe – Shakespeare – Jonson.
3. Prose
a. translation of Bible;
b. More;
c. Bacon.
II.English poetry.
1. Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard （courtly makers）
（1） Wyatt: introducing sonnets.
（2） Howard: introducing sonnets and writing the first blank verse.
2. Sir Philip Sidney—poet, critic, prose writer
（1） Life:
a. English gentleman;
b. brilliant and fascinating personality;
c. courtier.
（2） works
a. Arcadia: pastoral romance;
b. Astrophel and Stella （108）: sonnet sequence to Penelope Dvereux—platonic devotion.
Petrarchan conceits and original feelings-moving to creativeness—building of a narrative story; theme-love originality-act of writing.
c. Defense of Poesy: an apology for imaginative literature—beginning of literary criticism.
3. Edmund Spenser
（1） life: Cambridge - Sidney's friend - “Areopagus” – Ireland - Westminster Abbey.
（2） works
a. The Shepherds Calendar: the budding of English poetry in Renaissance.
b. Amoretti and Epithalamion: sonnet sequence
c. Faerie Queene:
l The general end——A romantic and allegorical epic—steps to virtue.
l 12 books and 12 virtues: Holiness, temperance, justice and courtesy.
l Two-level function: part of the story and part of allegory （symbolic meaning）
l Many allusions to classical writers.
l Themes: puritanism, nationalism, humanism and Renaissance Neoclassicism—a Christian humanist.
（3） Spenserian Stanza.
III.English Prose
1. Thomas More
（1） Life: “Renaissance man”, scholar, statesman, theorist, prose writer, diplomat, patron of arts
a. learned Greek at Canterbury College, Oxford;
b. studies law at Lincoln Inn;
c. Lord Chancellor;
d. beheaded.

（2） Utopia: the first English science fiction.
Written in Latin, two parts, the second—place of nowhere.
A philosophical mariner （Raphael Hythloday） tells his voyages in which he discovers a land-Utopia.
a. The part one is organized as dialogue with mariner depicting his philosophy.
b. The part two is a description of the island kingdom where gold and silver are worn by criminal, religious freedom is total and no one owns anything.
c. the nature of the book: attacking the chief political and social evils of his time.
d. the book and the Republic: an attempt to describe the Republic in a new way, but it possesses an modern character and the resemblance is in externals.
e. it played a key role in the Humanist awakening of the 16th century which moved away from the Medieval otherworldliness towards Renaissance secularism.
f. the Utopia
（3） the significance.
a. it was the first champion of national ideas and national languages; it created a national prose, equally adapted to handling scientific and artistic material.
b. a elegant Latin scholar and the father of English prose: he composed works in English, translated from Latin into English biography, wrote History of Richard III.

2. Francis Bacon: writer, philosopher and statesman
（1） life: Cambridge - humanism in Paris – knighted - Lord Chancellor – bribery - focusing on philosophy and literature.
（2） philosophical ideas: advancement of science—people:servants and interpreters of nature—method: a child before nature—facts and observations: experimental.
（3） “Essays”: 57.
a. he was a master of numerous and varied styles.
b. his method is to weigh and balance maters, indicating the ideal course of action and the practical one, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each, but leaving the reader to make the final decisions. （arguments）#p#分页标题#e#
IV.English Drama
1. A general survey.
（1） Everyman marks the beginning of modern drama.
（2） two influences.
a. the classics: classical in form and English in content;
b. native or popular drama.
（3） the University Wits.
2. Christopher Marlowe: greatest playwright before Shakespeare and most gifted of the Wits.
（1） Life: first interested in classical poetry—then in drama.
（2） Major works
a. Tamburlaine;
b. The Jew of Malta;
c. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.
（3） The significance of his plays.
V. William Shakespeare
1. Life
（1） 1564, Stratford-on-Avon;
（2） Grammar School;
（3） Queen visit to Castle;
（4） marriage to Anne Hathaway;
（5） London, the Globe Theatre: small part and proprietor;
（6） the 1st Folio, Quarto;
（7） Retired, son—Hamnet; H. 1616.
2. Dramatic career
3. Major plays-men-centered.
（1） Romeo and Juliet——tragic love and fate
（2） The Merchant of Venice.
Good over evil.
Anti-Semitism.
（3） Henry IV.
National unity.
Falstaff.
（4） Julius Caesar
Republicanism vs. dictatorship.
（5） Hamlet
Revenge
Good/evil.
（6） Othello
Diabolic character
jealousy
gap between appearance and reality.
（7） King Lear
Filial ingratitude
（8） Macbeth
Ambition vs. fate.
（9） Antony and Cleopatra.
Passion vs. reason
（10） The Tempest
Reconciliation; reality and illusion.
3. Non-dramatic poetry
（1） Venus and Adonis; The Rape of Lucrece.
（2） Sonnets:
a. theme: fair, true, kind.
b. two major parts: a handsome young man of noble birth; a lady in dark complexion.
c. the form: three quatrains and a couplet.
d. the rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
VI.Ben Jonson
1. life: poet, dramatist, a Latin and Greek scholar, the “literary king” （Sons of Ben）
2.contribution:
（1） the idea of “humour”.
（2） an advocate of classical drama and a forerunner of classicism in English literature.
3. Major plays
（1） Everyone in His Humour—“humour”; three unities.
（2） Volpone the Fox