Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Squeo Alessandra, libro consigliato A History of English Literature , Michael Alexander

“F.D.”

Þ Henry had had some help with the book from Thomas More

• Then, Henry asked Rome for a divorce because Catherine of Aragon didn’t give him a male

heir:

- He wanted to marry Anne Boleyn instead

• However, Rome hesitated:

- Anna got pregnant

- Henry went ahead with the marriage

- Rome excommunicated him

- Henry made Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury

• à

In 1533 Henry declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church (= now known as “the

Church of England”): à

- But More refused to take the Oath of Supremacy which would have made Henry’s

coup legal

Þ More was killed in 1535

• à

In 1540 the Crown took over three thousand religious houses of England and sold off

their abbeys, plates, and lands:

- Shrines were ransacked for gold and jewels including that of the Archbishop of

Canterbury who had stood up for the church against the Crown in 1170

• Henry believed in the Catholic doctrine and wanted a different kind of Catholicism from Rome

and the monasteries: à

- However, his son Edward VI made big changes during his six years in power in

fact, now there were only two sacraments

Þ For the next six years, under Mary (= Henry’s legitimate daughter by Catherine of Aragon),

Catholicism returned with great support:

- Mary began to recall the Benedictines to Westminster Abbey, but she didn’t claim the

monastic lands that had been sold off

- However, her marriage to Philip II of Spain wasn’t popularà after a rebellion led by

the son of the poet Wyatt, orthodoxy was in danger

Þ Cranmer and others were burnt to death for heresy

• Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne Boleyn:

- She gradually imposed a compromise between Protestant doctrine and catholic

practice

Þ There was a major Catholic Northern Rising, but Catholics lost ground when the

Queen was declared by Rome as illegitimate

• The division of the Reformation can still be seen in the UK, in Europe and beyond:

- The consequences were disastrous for:

§ Popular worship

§ Social provision

§ General culture

• The most prominent Northern Humanist, Desiderius Erasmus wanted to reform the Church,

à

education and society but he resisted the chaos that Luther unleashed

• Whereas, in Spain, Cardinal Ximenes shifted from promoting liberal humanism to the defence

of orthodoxy (=like More in England)

Sir Thomas More

• A lawyer’s son

• He wrote a new kind of book about the life of a new kind of writer, Pico della Mirandola:

- A Platonist aristocrat who retreated from the court and cloister to study and write “Of

the Dignity of Man”

• Humanists believed in a classical education:

- It taught bright lads, as well as the princess and princes they would serve, the art of

writing

Þ In theory, a boy who knows about the examples and warnings of classical

history should make a good prince, states man or adviser:

- Rethoric (= the art of persuasive public speaking and of literary

à

composition) was the tool of these new ideals it challenged the medieval

sciences of Logic and theology

• à

Greek was taught in the elite schools and colleges founded by early English humanists

(=John Colet “the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral”, “Bishop Fox’s Corpus Christi College” ,

Oxfrod)

• The humanists were serious Christians:

- Cole wanted the boys at St. Paul’s School to be taught always in good literature (=

both Latin and Greek) and good authors (=especially Christian authors) who wrote

their wisdom in clear and chaste Latin in verse/prose.

Þ Cole’s intention for the school is to increase knowledge and worship of God

and Lord Jesus and good Christian life and manners.

• For five years, Erasmus taught Greek at Cambridge:

- He dedicated his Latin work “Encomium Moriae” to his friend.

Þ The title means both Praise of Folly and Praise of More (=the Greek word for

“fool” is “moros”)

• More’s Latin Utopia was published by Erasmus in Louvain in 1517 and wasn’t Englished until

1551:

- Utopia describes an ideal country, like Plato’s Republic, but also like the witty True

History of Lucian (=an economical writer of witty fantasies which satirized)

- The book tells of Raphael Hythloday visit to a far-oof geometrical island run like a

commune with an elected, reasonable ruler.

- There is no private property, gold is used for pots in the chambers, there is no crime,

àSome

and priests are few and good-hearted of them are women.

- The clothes are the same for both parties in a marriage, and they have to look at each

other naked in front of an older person they trust.

• Utopia is different from the Christian, feudal, passionate England of Book I where starving

men who have stolen food are punished without reason

• Hythloday and a character called Thomas More talk about whether a scholar should provide

advice to the prince directly (=More) /indirectly (=Hythloday) through their pen:

Þ However, to the European elite, the learned traveller’s name would seem like an

angelic dispenser of nonsense

• à

More tells Hythloday that Utopian communism sounds interesting but it wouldn’t work in

England

• These jokes and the ironical way in which Utopia is written, make it proof against a

government censor who wants to know what the author is teaching on a particular point:

- This learned joke led to absurd ides as basing society on reason alone

Þ However, it is undeniable that Utopia is a Lucian-like spoof of the tall tales of

travellers, and such an idea could be dismissed as a joke

• But, at the heart of More’s intellectual in-joke was a serious issue fur humanists:

- The choice of life

• The Reformation made it clear that a humanist education wouldn’t stop men’s passions

The Courtier

• The Tudors allowed their subjects to use their with on the scaffold

• à

The complete gentleman was expected to make light of difficulty a Renaissance ideal

known I 1535:

- The Renaissance gentleman was more Christian, educated and more skilled at

speaking

• A courtier is:

- A layman who knows classical literature, history and the arts

- He’s a good fencer and rider

- A good composer and singer

- He can talk well

- He’s trained to rule and he does it with great authority

- Accomplishments must come naturally, worn with sprezzatura (=an effortless grace)

Þ Sir Philip Sidney was an example of this ideal

Sir Thomas Wyatt

• Two generations before Sidney, the first English literary Renaissance is summarized in

Surrey’s ‘Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt’ (1542), praising the contributions of the first

English gentleman-poet.

• Sir Thomas Wyatt was a courtier, a diplomat in France and Spain. He translated sonnets

from Petrarch and Alamanni

• Wyatt’s lines have a grave grace that is different from the rapid social verse of his

predecessor at court John Skelton:

- Wyatt’s metrical control makes Skeleton sound a casual entertainer

• The Renaissance established high standards for conscious art

• Wyatt demonstrates Skelton’s wit even in his satire

Þ The Reformation and Renaissance have had a significant impact on England:

- Christendom is now a state of mind

- In a poem that seems to be assured but also defensively local, an Englishmen is said

to be superior to beastly Flemings and corrupted Latins.

à

- Wyatt’s voice is personal and independent his poems translate a gloomy chorus

from Seneca, and he wasn’t the last to resent the ingratitude of princes

Þ Humanism was becoming more pessimistic.

The Earl of Surrey

• He was the eldest son of the Duke of Norflok, head of the nobility of Englandn printed his

epitaph on Wyatt.

• Surrey’s songs and sonnets were more popular than Wyatt’s

• However, Surrey’s major achievement is his translation from Virgil: à

- In the Renaissance, translation wasn’t completely separate from composition but

Renaissance philology produced better texts and stricter ruler of fidelity

à

- As Latin faded educated reader wanted writings in the new national languages

Þ It became necessary and prestigious to translate as well as to modernize the

kind of adaption known ad imitation

Religious prose

• In order to develop a native vernacular English, prose was required first:

- Prose has a lot of different tasks, so its history is not easy to understand, and its

qualities aren’t well described in a short quote

• à

The prose of Chaucer is less developed than his verse but the prose Shakespeare gave to

Falstaff shows a vast improvement in the writing of prose

• The literary prizes have been awarded to Tudor verse, except in one area central to the life of

th

16 century

Bible translation

• Religious thinkers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin:

- claimed that the Roman Catholic Church had become corrupt and was no longer

following the Word of God

• The Reformation created an urgent need for a religious prose:

- Luther’s German Bible helped to form the German Protestants and the German

language

- The English Bible (=often called the King James Bible) played a similar role in the

culture of the English-speaking countries

Þ It was adopted in Presbyterian Scotland and later in the Empire

Þ But more generally, the Reformation gave the book and the world a

privileged role in Protestant lands

• However as important to Anglicans as the Bible was the Book of Common Prayer

Instructive Prose

• Renaissance prose had more abstract and perspective tasks

• Latin had honeycombed English and became:

- the source of new words

- provided the stylistic models:

• Although some patriotic humanists wanted English to replace Latin as the literary medium

Þ The first significant prose writers were:

Sir Thomas Elyot

o

- Who served cardinal Wolsey

- He dedicated his Governor to Henry VIII

The humanist John Checke

o

- Became tutor of Edward VI

Roger Ascham

o

- He taught Greek at Cambridge

- Dedicated his Toxophilus to Henry

- Later he became tutor to Princess Elizabeth and servede Queen Mary as a Latin

secretary

Drama

• The Reformation had a significant impact on the literature of England:

- the period of 1540-79 saw a significant shift in the focus and popularity of literature

in England, particularly in relation to religious texts and the emergence of commercial

drama.

• The emergence of the Elizabethan theatre marked the beginning of a paying profession for