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ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

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English Renaissance

London experienced a cultural and artistic movement in between early 16th and early 17th century which is known as the English Renaissance Period. The English Renaissance was much influenced by the pan-European Renaissance which is said to have originated in the 14th century in northern Italy. Often known as the "age of the Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era," the English Renaissance created stimulation in art, architecture, literature and music of whole of England..

No field in England was untouched by the revolution caused by Renaissance. The English literature was marked by the works of poets like Edmund Spenser and John Milton, playwrights like William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon. Some produced works which explained the English Christian beliefs; some represented English thought on life and death and also covered the glorious history of London; and some printed their works on their ideas on humanity and on Utopian society.

Renaissance also had great impact on music, architecture and furniture making.

However, many historians argue that English Renaissance was nothing but just a transition towards a modern world. They contend that English Renaissance does not level with the artistic achievements and aims similar to their Italian counterparts. The English literature had been seeing its growth since the time of Geoffrey Chaucer. Nevertheless, most of the historians still are of the opinion that there was an artistic flowering in London and other regions of England in the period between early 16th and early17th century.(OWN WORDS???)

 Renaissance humanism was a European intellectual movement beginning in Florence in the last decades of the 14th century during the Renaissance.The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of many Latin and Greek texts. Initially, a humanist was simply a teacher of Latin literature. By the mid-15th century humanism described a curriculum — the studia humanitatis — comprising grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry and history as studied via classical authors. The early beliefs of humanism were that, although God created the universe, it was humans that developed and industrialized it.

Beauty, a popular topic, was held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential element in the path towards God.
Humanists placed a heavy emphasis on the study of primary sources rather than the study of the interpretations of others. This is reflected in their motto of ad fontes, or "to the sources" which informed the search for texts in the monastery libraries of Europe. Humanist education, called the studia humanista or studia humanitatis (study of humanity), concentrated on the study of the liberal arts: Latin and Greek grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy or ethics, and history.

ELIZABETH I

 

 

                                                                                 

 

 

 

Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. She was born on 7 September 1533 at Greenwich Palace. Her birth was possibly the greatest disappointment of her father's life. He had wanted a son and heir to succeed him as he already had a daughter, Mary, by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. He had not divorced Katherine, and changed the religion of the country in the process, to have only another daughter. Elizabeth's early life was consequently troubled. Her mother failed to provide the King with a son and was executed on false charges of incest and adultery on 19 May 1536. Anne's marriage to the King was declared null and void, and Elizabeth, like her half-sister, Mary, was declared illegitimate and deprived of her place in the line of succession
 

Elizabethan Era

The Elizabethan era is the period associated with Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603) and is often considered to be the golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of English poetry and literature. This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished and William Shakespeare and many others, composed plays that broke free of England's past style of plays and theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became the national mindset of all the people.
The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrasts with the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the battles between Protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that engulfed the seventeenth century. The Protestant/Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and parliament was not yet strong enough to challenge royal absolutism. England was also well-off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in its own religious battles that would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. In part because of this, but also because the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent, the centuries long conflict between France and England was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth's reign.
England during this period had a centralised, well-organised, and effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically, the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.

 

 

                                                               

                             It was here that Elizabeth was told of her sister's death in November 1558.

 

references:http//www.elizabethi.org/uk/biography.html

                         httpwww.luminarium.org/renlit/eliza/bio.html

 
 
 
 
 

 

Comments (4)

Anonymous said

at 5:51 pm on Nov 20, 2008

English people should thank to Elizabeth who gave importance to literature.If she hadn't given money,maybe nobody would have been busy with these kinds of things except riches.Aso we thank that we read them today...

Anonymous said

at 6:42 pm on Dec 21, 2008

ın English Renaissance,Shakespeare is an important person.He made changes in language.His most important and tragic work is ROMEO AND JULİET,ended with a tragic final.

Anonymous said

at 1:36 pm on Dec 30, 2008

I think Queen Elizabeth is one the most important people of English Renaıssance because she is the one who discovered Shakespeare.Shakespeare's sonnets , tragedies, comedies, historical plays and the other ones are masterpieces of English Renaissance.

Anonymous said

at 7:28 pm on Jan 12, 2009

English renaıssance is a cultural and artistic movement in England.I think renaissance owes much to William Shakespare and Elizabeth I,because it achieved its finest expression in the Elizabethan drama and in the plays of William Shakespare.

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