Concetti Chiave
- The English Renaissance saw a significant production of prose, including travel reports, love stories, and philosophical essays.
- Prose works often explored journeys and customs of different countries, enriching the English language with many imported words.
- Themes shifted from medieval characters to everyday life, focusing on merchants, teachers, and explorers.
- Prose was expected to be educational, aligning with Protestantism's rejection of purely entertaining works.
- Key authors included More, Greene, Lyly, and Nashe, with Francis Bacon exemplifying the era's scientific tendencies.
Renaissance prose
The English Renaissance was the age of Shakespeare, sonnet and drama but nonetheless most literary works were produced in prose: for example travel reports, love stories, philosophical essays, handbooks about business, sermons and translations were flourishing among the publications. Many works told about journeys and customs of other countries and the English language transformed thanks to the great number of imported words. This transformation accompanied a change in the themes told and writers started to describe everyday life and ordinary people.
Medieval characters such as knights and kings slowly disappeared in favor of merchants, teachers and explorers. The prose was enriched with realistic details and the pieces of work had to be educational. This was also the new doctrine of Protestantism which was against imagination and works that had the mere purpose of amusing the reader. The most important classical authors of the time were More, Robert Greene, John Lyly, Thomas Nashe. Francis Bacon, an important empirical philosopher with a remarkable interest in the natural world was the first and best example of a new scientific growing tendency. The bestseller of the Early Renaissance was the translation of the Bible written by the theologian Tyndale.
Accedi a tutti gli appunti
Tutor AI: studia meglio e in meno tempo
