Attitudes and feelings which had been characteristic of the
14th and 15th centuries persisted well down into the era of
Humanism and Reformation.
• Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It sprang from
England was violently destroying itself. The frightful reign of
Richard III marked the end of civil wars, making possible a
new growth of English national feelings under the popular
• The Renaissance, therefore, in essence, is a historical period
in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those old feudalism ideas in medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.
English Renaissance
Zheng Boren
• The Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the
modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the
• The Renaissance, which means rebirth or revival, is actually
a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion.
Tudors.
• But it was not until the reign of Henry VIII (from 1509-1547)
that the Renaissance really began to show its effect in England. With Henry VIII’s encouragement, the Oxford reformers, scholars and humanists introduced classical literature to England. Education, based upon the classics and the Bible, was revitalized, and literature, already much read during the 15th century, became even more popular. Thus began the English Renaissance, which was perhaps England’s Golden Age, especially in literature.
14th and mid-17th centuries.
• It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting,
sculpture and literature. From Italy the movement went to
embrace the rest of Europe.
• The Renaissance was slow in reaching England nnd’s separation from the Continent but also
because of its domestic unrest.
• The century and a half following the death of Chaucer is the
the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the antique
authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the
most volcanic period of English history. The war-like nobles
seized the power of England and turned it into self-
destruction.
• The Wars of Roses are examples to show how the energy of
• Among the literary giants were Shakespeare, Spenser,
Johnson, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Donne.
• The English Renaissance had no sharp break with the past.