English Renaissance Hadfield authors biography

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

Spenser dealing with metrical principle and prosody in general. His major poem is The Shepheardes Calender mixing serious commentary with deliberately misleading humor.

He is probably the strongest claim to be regarded as the foremost poet of English Renaissance. He is best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I.

Spenser studied at the University of Cambridge and ten years later he published his first publicly-released poetic work, The Sheapheards' Calendar, which consist on 12 poems corresponding to the months of the year and recounting events and episodes in the lives of a group of shepherds. It's a pastoral work written in a tradition that looks back to Virgil. He then began work on his magnum opus, The Faerie Queene, publishing the first three of the projected twelve books in 1590.

Spenser was an English subject during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to whose court he aspired.

He offered Elizabeth The Faerie Queene in an attempt to gain her favor. Unfortunately, Spenser held to political views and associated with individuals that did not meet the approval of Elizabeth's principal secretary, Lord Burghley. Through Burghley's influence, Spenser was given only a small pension in recognition for his grand poetic work. Sent to Ireland to hold English property on the oft-rebellious island, Spenser there met and wooed Elizabeth Boyle, a young woman from an important English family, who was probably half his age. His year-long suit to win her hand in marriage is recorded (with a deal of poetic license) in Spenser's Amoretti, a marriage hymn. Spenser also dedicated a marriage song, Epithalamion, to his young bride. As was the custom, both seemingly personal works of poetry were published for mass consumption in 1594 and helped Spenser's literary career to improve. In the meantime, Spenser completed the fourth through sixth books of The Faerie Queene and

Spenser is best known for his immense epic poem The Faerie Queene. Dedicated to Queen Elizabeth (herself represented by the title character), the work was envisioned by Spenser as encompassing twelve books, each one detailing a quest by some knight of King Arthur's court on behalf of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene. This earlier form of the poem was more indebted to the Italian romances of Ariosto and Tasso.

The Faerie Queene is a long poem consisting of 6 composed books. It has the reputation of being one of the great unread classics and is often insulted by other readers who are keen to convince that such a difficult work is not worth reading. However, it is a very innovative and experimental work that resists any attempt to pin down the poem as a simple apology for the virgin queen.

The Faerie Queene tells the stories of several knights, each representing a particular virtue, on their quests for the Faerie Queene, Gloriana. Redcrosse is the knight of Holiness and must defeat...

both theological error and the dragon of deception to free the parents of Una ("truth"). Guyon is the knight of Temperance, who must destroy the fleshly temptations of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss. Britomart, a woman in disguise as a male knight, represents Chastity; she must find her beloved and win his heart. Artegall, the knight of Justice, must rescue the lady Eirene from an unjust bondage. Cambell and Triamond, the knights of Friendship, must aid one another in defense of various ladies' honor. Finally, Calidore, the knight of Courtesy, must stop the Blatant Beast from spreading its slanderous venom throughout the realm. Each quest is an allegory, and the knight given the quest represents a person's internal growth in that particular virtue. Such growth happens through various trials, some of which the knights fail, showing how personal development is a struggle requiring the aid of other forces and virtues to make it complete. 15. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) He is a

Philip Sidney was a pivotal figure in English literary for a variety of reasons: He was the author of the first sonnet sequence in English, Astrophil and Stella, a work that inaugurated a notable literary vogue; he produced one of the first and most systematic treatises on English poetry, An Apology for Poetry; and he wrote a lengthy and hugely influential romance, The Arcadia. Equally important was his reputation and influence on English literature as a vital cultural medium, and he is responsible for shaping the aristocratic and courtly style of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean literature.

He was the son of a noble and well-connected family, and Philip Sidney had an education at Oxford. Leaving Oxford without a degree, as was not uncommon for noblemen, Sidney completed his education with a 3-year tour of the Continent, visiting France, Germany, Austria, Poland, and Italy.

On his return to England, Sidney quickly entered into the life of the aristocracy. He addressed a Discourse on Irish Affairs to the Queen, defending

His father's administration from the many criticisms leveled against it. In 1577 Sidney was sent on a diplomatic mission to Germany, during which he enthusiastically but unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile the quarreling Protestant factions and to organize a unified resistance against the Catholic nations. In his attempt to share in their efforts to create a new English poetry, Sidney wrote a number of experimental poems in nonrhyming quantitative meters. Other works probably written during this period include his Lady of May, an elaborate entertainment performed in honor of Queen Elizabeth I (1578), a large part of his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, and the first draft of his prose romance, the Arcadia. His Apology for Poetry was probably composed shortly after the publication of Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse (1579), an attack on the theater that had been dedicated to Sidney without his knowledge or approval. Meanwhile, Sidney's situation at court was not entirely satisfactory.

He had for some years been regarded as a young man of promise and importance; but he was still without any steady and remunerative position. Other disappointments may have added to his discouragement: he had for some time known and admired Penelope Devereux, the daughter of the Earl of Essex, who clearly inspired the "Stella" of his sonnet sequence. But she married Lord Rich in 1581. Two years later Sidney married the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. He was knighted the same year.

During his lifetime Sidney's works circulated only in manuscript. His Arcadia was the first to be printed, in 1590. Combining elements drawn from the pastoral tradition, the heroic epic, and the romances of chivalry, this long mixture of prose and verse summed up the heroic ideals that inspired Sidney's life. The Arcadia is noted for its complex plot, for its earnest digressions on such topics as justice, atheism, virtue, honor, and friendship, and for its involved and elaborate style. It was

read by woman.

Apology for Poetry vs The Art of English Poetry (Puttenham):

The Apology is a formal rhetorical treatise on poetry, written to challenge the claims of the Protestant polemicist Stephen Gosson. The poem is carefully and elaborately constructed in line with rhetorical theories of orations. It opens with an exordium, telling an anecdote about poetry and horsemanship in order to win the audience's good grace: continuing with a proposition, commending poetry as a means of imitating nature.

Sidney's central argument for poetry is ingenious and combines several different ideas and theories. Poetry, for him, is not synonymous with verse but means literary writing in general, and his central achievement is the combination of Aristotelian and Platonic conceptions of poetry:

• Aristotle, in The Poetics, argued that poetry taught humankind real knowledge and provided insights into human nature. Tragedy portrayed men as better than they really were, instead Comedy

represented men and women as worse than they really were and so exposed human folly.

• Plato, in The Republic, argues the opposite casa, claiming that imitation is a useless process because all that exists on earth is in fact an imitation of the divine forms.

Sidney manages to negotiate between these two positions, he argues that poetry goes beyond history, philosophy and nature itself and provides a direct link to God through the use of divine imitation. He has managed to bridge the gap between pagan philosophy and Christian faith, suggesting that poetry enables humankind to reverse the effects of the Fall which separated humanity from God. Poetry expresses a ‘truth’ that goes beyond the contingencies of historical fact and philosophical reason.

The Art of English Poetry written by Puttenham, is a highly important work of literary theory and criticism, containing a range of critical observations for the students of Renaissance. The treatise combines a justification for the

The existence of poetry, a history of poetry and poetic forms, and a long guide to poetic figures, forms, and versification. Like Sidney, Puttenham uses the example of Orpheus and other ancient figures to claim that poets were essential for the establishment of civilization, being the first priests and lawgivers as well as the first philosopher and historians. He considers the definition of the poet and concludes that he is a 'maker' who helps transform humankind from barbarism to a civilized state of life. He puts forward similar claims to justify the continued importance of poetry in the late 16th century and the need to establish an English poetic tradition.

In Astrophel and Stella, first printed in 1591, Sidney expressed varying moods and intensities of passionate love, in imitation of Italian and French sonneteers of the Petrarchan tradition. Sidney's simple yet delicate verse is markedly superior to that of his contemporaries. His Apology for Poetry (first published in 1595)

was the first major critical essay in Renaissance England. Drawing on such foreign critics as Julius Caesar Scaliger and Lodovico Castelvetro, Sidney condensed the classical defense of "poetry" (by which he meant all forms of creative writing), and he insisted on the ethical value of art, which aims to lure men to "see the form of goodness, which seen they cannot but love ere themselves be aware, as if they took a medicine of cherries." This critical essay, perhaps more than any other work, has assured Sidney's position in the history of literature. All three of his major works, however, hold an important place in one of the most brilliant eras of English literary creativity.

16. Robert Green (1558-1592)

He was a prolific pamphleteer, playwright and author of prose fiction, he got married but left his wife in order to exist only as a writer. His prose works include The art of Cony-Catching, an examination of confidence trickery in London which simultaneously exposed the

evils of such practices.
If Greene is remembered at all, it is for his pamphlet Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance, an obviously autobiographical lament which contains the famous attack to Shakespeare.