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The English Renaissance PDF

The English Renaissance spanned the 16th to mid-17th centuries and saw advances in education, printing, and the widespread availability of literature. Poetry and drama blossomed, with playwrights influenced by Roman styles and translating their works. Notable playwrights included Christopher Marlowe, who wrote Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine, and William Shakespeare, considered the greatest English Renaissance dramatist. Edmund Spenser was an influential poet known for The Shepherd's Calendar and The Faerie Queene. Philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon also published ideas about society during this period of cultural and artistic flowering in England.

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158 views1 page

The English Renaissance PDF

The English Renaissance spanned the 16th to mid-17th centuries and saw advances in education, printing, and the widespread availability of literature. Poetry and drama blossomed, with playwrights influenced by Roman styles and translating their works. Notable playwrights included Christopher Marlowe, who wrote Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine, and William Shakespeare, considered the greatest English Renaissance dramatist. Edmund Spenser was an influential poet known for The Shepherd's Calendar and The Faerie Queene. Philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon also published ideas about society during this period of cultural and artistic flowering in England.

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Alena
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The English Renaissance

The “English Renaissance” is a term often used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in
England from the early 16th century to the mid-17th century.
By the middle of the 16th century, education had spread among the sons of common citizens.
The development of the advances in education was followed by new printing techniques.
Accelerated output of printed books made lyric poetry and prose publicly available.
English poetry and prose burst into sudden glory in the late 1570s. The greatest literature
created during the period falls into two categories: poetry and drama. Influenced by Italian
sonnets, English writers began introducing complicated poetic structures in both verse and
prose.
Elizabethan drama was greatly influenced by Roman authors whose works were translated from
Latin into English. University students translated Roman plays into English and tried to write
plays of their own imitating the Roman patterns.
The most famous pre-Shakespearian writers of drama were George Peele, Robert Greene
(comedies), Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe (tragedies). They belonged to the group
known as the “University Wits”.
The three great poetic geniuses of that time were Christopher Marlowe,
Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare.
Edmund Spenser’s first poem The Shepherd’s Calendar made him the
first poet of the day. He wrote The Faerie Queene, an epic poem describing a
12-day feast honouring the Queen of Fairyland.
Christopher Marlowe was one of the first dramatists of the time. His reputation as a dramatist
rests on four plays: Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta and Edward II. William
Shakespeare, was the greatest of all humanists who marks the highest point of English
Renaissance drama. Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.
Nearing the end of the Tudor dynasty, philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon
published their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society. All of these
developments would lead England to reach a level of understanding like never before.
The end of this period in the history of England is marked by the increase of the power of the
English monarch. The Tudor dynasty (1485–1603) established a system of government
departments, staffed by professionals who depended for their position on the monarch.

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