The Renaissance or Early Modern England

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The Renaissance or Early Modern England

• Prof. Hamrick

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Terms

• 1530s 1660s
• Renaissance Rebirth Flowering more accurate
• Early Modern
• Dramatic Poetry
• Scripts

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Period of Conflict
A conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of
managing the public only pursue their private
ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can
find out first that they may, without danger,
preserve all that they have so ill acquired, and
then that they may engage the poor to toil and
labor for them at so low rates as possible, and
oppress them as they please. Mores Utopia 1516
Armada Portrait c. 1588
A separating bill of divorce might free his
fateFrom such a yoke that did so much
displease.Why should such privilege to man be
given?Or given to them, why barrd from women
then?Are men than we in greater grace with
Heaven?Or cannot women hate as well as men?Ill
be the custom-breaker and beginTo Show my sex
the way to freedoms door. Tragedy of Mariam by
Elizabeth Cary 1613

• Class
• Gender
• Religious
• Economic

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Literature as Text

• Historicism
• Multi-purpose
• Self-fashioning
• Moral Instruction
• Political Order
• Entertainment

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do
contain a potency of life in them they do
preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and
extraction of that living intellect that bred
them. John Milton
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The Bible

• Model
• -morality
• -art
• -government
• Multiple versions
• -Geneva
• -King James (1611)
• In these sweet woods how often did you walk,
• With Christ and his Apostles there to talk
• Placing his holy Writ in some fair tree,
• To meditate what you therein did see
• With Moses you did mount His holy hill,
• To know His pleasure, and perform His will.
• With lovely David you did often sing,
• His holy hymns to Heav'n's eternal King.
• And in sweet music did your soul delight,
• To sound his praises, morning, noon, and night.
• With blessed Joseph you did often feed

Woman Reading Bible by Gerrit Dou 1630
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Geneva BiblePropaganda and Problem

• 1560 - 1644
• at least 144 editions
• Staunchly Calvinist
• Threatens Rome
• Threatens King James

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Geneva Bible as Problem and Battleground
Revelation 11 and the Pope
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Geneva Bible as Propaganda
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Geneva Bible as Problem

• Bible as Political ThreatExodus and an English
  King

King James, I
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Renaissance Humanism

• Printing press
• Reason social change
• Classics Stressed
• -education
• -morality
• -rhetorical patterns
• -social control
• -government

They think it an evidence of true wisdom for a
man to pursue his own advantages, as far as the
law allows it. They account it piety to prefer
the public good to one's private concerns but
they think it unjust for a man to seek for
pleasure, by snatching another man's pleasures
from him. And on the contrary, they think it a
sign of gentle and good soul, for a man to
dispense with his own advantage for the good of
others... They are also persuaded that God will
make up the loss of these small pleasures, with a
vast and endless joy, of which religion easily
convinces a good soul.
Thomas More, Utopia
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Revolution in Religion - Reformations

• The Allegory of Tudor Succession (?1572) by
  Lucas de Heere
• King Henry VIII - 1509-1547
• King Edward VI - 1547-1553
• Queen Mary- 1553-1558
• Queen Elizabeth - 1558-1603

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• Seeks Compromise
• Moderate Protestantism
• Removes Images
• Elizabethan Settlement
• Persecutes Recusants
• Excommunicated

Queen Elizabeth, I (Frontispiece to Christian
Prayers) 1569
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James VI I

• Learned writer
• Peacemaker
• Party boy
• Sexuality
• Absolutist
• Spendthrift

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Exploration of the New World
John Donne, The Good Morrow And now good-morrow
to our waking souls, Which watch not one another
out of fear For love all love of other sights
controls,And makes one little room an
everywhere.Let sea-discoverers to new worlds
have gone Let maps to other, worlds on worlds
have shown Let us possess one world each hath
one, and is one. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko 1688 Tis
a continent whose vast extent was never yet
known, and may contain more noble earth than all
the universe besides for, they say, it reaches
from east to west one way as far as China, and
another to Peru. It affords all things for
beauty and use tis there eternal spring, always
the very months of April, May, and June

• New Commodities
• Travel Narrative
• Broader Concept of World
• Ptolemaic -gt Copernican Worldview
• British Empire

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Growth in Cities
Middle Class Literacy Agriculture Capitalism

• Middle Class
• Literacy
• Agriculture
• Capitalism

Approximate Population Figures England and
Ireland 5.5 millFrance 16 mill Germany
14.5 mill Poland 11 mill Spain Hapsburg
dominions 5.5 mill Holland 3 mill
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Quality of Life

• Mortality rates
• Life expectancy
• Crop failures
• Epidemics
• Medical science

Whitney's Choice of Emblemes
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Womens Lives

• Education
• Literacy
• Femme Covert
• Some Powerful
• Chaste, Silent, Obedient

Birth of St. John the Baptist By GHIRLANDAIO
1486-1490
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Reading Shakespeare

• Take sufficient time
• Use online study aids
• Use OED online to look up words
• Take notes and reread them
• Reread assignment