The Flowering of English Literature

The Elizabethan age was one in which Renaissance transformed Chaucer’s Medieval England into Shakespeare’s modern one. Genius was unrestrained, and imagination ran wild. All the three major departments of literature—poetry, drama, and prose—bloomed, and countless authors vied in offering their very best in a tremendous outburst of creative power.

Queen ElizabethanⅠ

You may have had queens and kings, good or bad, but you’ll never have one who loves you better. She was able to secure a 30-year period of peace for the country so that England slowly but steadily crawled to the zenith of wealth and power during her reign. When Francis Drake defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, England became the first sea power in the world. In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. She made friends with the opposing sides of the religious conflict—Catholic Spain and Protestant France. In addition, she encouraged learning and adventures, and was a great patron of literature.
The Elizabethan Age (1558-1625)
Queen
ElizabethanⅠ The Flowering of English Literature
Queen ElizabethanⅠ

Henry Ⅷ (1509-1547) began as a promising youth of learning and love for learned men, but the long reign turned him into a bloodthirsty tyrant. He is best remembered now for having had six wives, one after another, two of whom he beheaded, and two he divorced. His divorce with Queen Catherine led to his break with the Roman Catholic Church and inadvertently paved the way for the inroads of Protestantism. The country was thus split between the Catholic and the Protestant faith. After Henry Ⅷ his son, a sickly boy, was king for a few years and then died so that his sister, “Bloody” Marry, a devout Catholic, became queen, and had the opportunity to persecute the Protestants as she pleased. Her five-year reign threw the nation into complete discord and chaos. She left no offspring behind.

Queen Elizabethan Ⅰ You may have had queens and kings,
good or bad, but you’ll never have one who loves you better. She was able to secure a 30-year period of peace for the country so that England slowly but steadily crawled to the zenith of wealth and power during her reign. When Francis Drake defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, England became the first sea power in the world. In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. She made friends with the opposing sides of the religious conflict—Catholic Spain and Protestant France. In addition, she encouraged learning and adventures, and was a great patron of literature.

Writing feature of the poem

The Faerie Queene” was written in a special verse form called : Spenserian
Stanza(斯宾塞诗节)。

Each stanza has 9 lines, each of the first eight lines is in iambic pentameterform抑 扬格五音步, and the ninth line is an iambic hexameter line长短格六步格诗 . The rhythm scheme is abab bcbc c.
Edmund Spenser 埃德罗· 斯宾塞

3) The publication of The Shepherd’s Calendar (《牧羊人日历》) marked the budding of the Renaissance flower in the northern island of England. In the meantime, the language had undergone sufficient changes as to be called Modern English, to distinguish it from the Middle English of Chaucer’s day. Spenser has held his position as a model of poetical art among the Renaissance English poets, and his influence can be traced in the works of Milton, Shelley and Keats.
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene
Largely symbolic, the poem follows several knights in their adventures to test their virtues: Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, Courtesy. Dominating thoughts: nationalism, humanism, and puritanism.
1590～1612 an English poet
courtier , soldier
Philip Sidney 菲利普· 锡德尼
2) His Apology for Poetry (《为诗辩护》) 1) Sir Philip Sidney is well-known (published 1595) is one of the earliest as a poet in and critic of poetry. His English literary essays. It was written to collection of love sonnets (十四行 answer an attack on poetry and drama as 诗), Astrophel and Stella ).” (《爱星者 “the school of abuse (陋习派 Sidney 和星星》 was published in 1591, defended the), uses of poetry. According to after his death. him, poetry has superiority over philosophy and history (诗歌比哲学和历史更具有优 越性), as the philosopher is concerned with the abstract and general, and the historian is concerned with what it is and not with what should be, while the poet can better the functions of both. The poet, Sidney claimed, can create through images (可以通过意象 来创作)what is only a matter for speculation to the philosopher and, through his gift of vision bring us to contemplate the ideal (诗人的想象天赋可以带我们去 沉思理想的世界), not only the actual. These views on poetry represent the spirit of literary criticism of the Renaissance.