Renaissance: A Rebirth

During the Middle Ages, books were expensive and few people were even able to read. Those who were educated and literate, generally clergy men, ignored 'pagan' works by the romans and greeks and focused primarily on biblical texts.

The renaissance represented a break from the medieval pattern of thought. Economic prosperity and relative peace inspired a growth in literature and a rediscovering of ancient 'classical' texts. The idea that the church should only be conerned with people's spirituality and not their civic lives rose in popularity, and art flourished. Literature appearing this age of science and creation is considered to be part of the 'Renaissance Literary Movement'.

Major Influences:
* classic Greek and Roman literature * art and ideology of Italy * quattrocento architecture and symmetry * protestantism *

Reoccuring themes:
* the value of Chivalry * humanism vs. church * struggle for moral purity * freewill of men * search for 'truth' *

Common Literary Devices:
* symmetrical verse and metre * harmonic alliteration and rhyming * 'poems within poems', short, concise sections * Imagery and depictions of art *

Other Stylistic Devices:
* philosophy and ideology that reflected developing science of the period * love stories, or romantic dramas * tragic stories of struggling heroes *

Representative Poets and Authors:
* Shakespear * Christopher Marlowe * Edmund Spencer * Aemilia Lanyer * Mary Herbert * Sir Walter Ralegh *

Sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Some fowls there be that have so perfect sight

Again the sun their eyes for to defend;

And some because the light doth them offend

Do never 'pear but in the dark or night.

Other rejoice that see the fire bright

And ween to play in it, as they do pretend,

And find the contrary of it that they intend.

Alas, of that sort I may be by right,

For to withstand her look I am not able

And yet can I not hide me in no dark place,

Remembrance so followeth me of that face.

So that with teary eyen, swollen and unstable,

My destiny to behold her doth me lead,

Yet do I know I run into the gleed.