文艺复兴英文版

The Renaissance

The Renaissance (16th and early 17th centuries): towards the end of the Middle Ages, after the loss of the English territories in France, England suffered thirty years of civil war fought by rival aristocratic families for the throne: the Wars of the Roses. The Welsh Tudor family was victorious and proceeded to secure its position. The dynasty ruled from 1485 to 1603, and was succeeded by Scottish relatives – and former opponents – the Stuarts. The military power of the aristocracy was removed: private armies were forbidden; only the crown was entitled to raise an army. The nobility’s great economic power based on land ownership remained intact. The Tudors no longer shared power with the aristocracy, as monarchs did in the Middle Ages, but ruled alone, or absolutely. Parliament existed, was involved in the legislative process but did not determine it.

The Church of Rome was another factor limiting the king’s power which the Tudors soon dealt with. In 1531 Henry VIII set up the Church of England, with himself as head, thus nationalising religion, because Vatican politics had become a threat to him. In 1538 the English were given direct access to the bible in their own language; a year later the monasteries were suppressed. Under Henry’s daughte r Mary, Catholicism was restored and Protestants persecuted: 400 were burnt as heretics. I Elizabeth’s reign, when England was under threat of invasion by Spain, Catholics were regarded as foreign agents and punished accordingly. But those protestants unwilling to accept the authority of the new state church also found themselves in trouble with the law. These became known under the general name of Puritans because they demanded that Protestantism be purified of all traces of Catholicism. They felt the reformation had not gone far enough: they wanted the hierarchy within the new church abolished, they disapproved of bishoprics, wanted ministers of religion elected by their congregations, and insisted on their right to speak out. Such freedom of speech they did not regard as a general right, but one they were entitled to as God’s personal spokespeople. Elizabeth regarded the Puritans as dangerous and took measures to minimise the threat. In general, she tried to steer a middle course between the religious extremes of Catholicism and Puritanism.

Parallel with the development of England s a modern nation came its growth as a colonial power. Ireland had been under England’s overlordship since the Middle Ages, but now it became a colony, that is occupied territory ruled in the interests of the so-called mother country. Revenue also came to the crown from trading expeditions to newly conquered overseas territories. The increase in overseas trade led to a great boom in manufacturing in England. A flourishing export trade in woollen cloth developed. The lucrative cloth trade made sheep farming more profitable than tillage: the result was the beginning of enclosures by landlords of areas traditionally used by the villagers as common lands. The crafts flourished due to the extra demand for ships, weapons, export goods of all kinds, and the condition of the common people improved compared to that of the Middle Ages. Towns and cities grew, but most of the people continued to live in rural areas.

During the 16th and early 17th centuries, therefore, the people of England transformed the basis of their national and spiritual life. They also broadened their intellectual horizons and fashioned from a newly augmented language one of the great literatures of the western world. The period is known as the Renaissance; the term Renaissance (‘rebirth’) originally indicated a revival of classical (Greek and Roman) arts and sciences after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism. Renaissance writers returned to the classical sources of ‘humane letter’ in an attempt to find new ways of generating ideas and promoting a written and spoken eloquence greater in purity than the crabbed Latin of Medieval schoolmen.

In line with the period’s enthusiasm for classical literature and art is a renewed b elief in humanism (a belief in human-based morality rather than in any supernatural authority). They believed, as Alexander Pope was to phrase it much later, that ‘the proper study of mankind is man’, rather than scholastic theology. For humanists the divi ne principle of reason was the guideline and that they found better realised in the classical world of antiquity than in the Middle Ages. They hoped to create a new civilisation in Europe at least equalling that of the old world. Thomas More wrote Utopia (1516) in which he puts forward his ideal of a future happy society. More’s book owes a considerable debt to Plato’s Republic and the Greek satirist Lucian. More’s topics include the corruption of the rich, the sufferings of the poor and the injustice of the death penalty for starving thieves. For More, only Utopia, where private property has been abolished, offers hope of an ideal state. The irony lies in the fact that utopia means ‘nowhere’. Utopia, however, provided a blueprint for a high-minded, money-free collective where a rational code is valued.

Humanist ideals led to a widespread concern with education and many schools were formed, especially for boys who were educated in the faith of Christ and in classical literature (girls were for centuries deprived of a formal education). The study of Christian and pagan authors was seen as the best way to prepare men for the vicissitudes of life. Thus classical authors were studied as guides to life. An important aspect of the rhetorical training of the humanist schools in the Renaissance was the absorption of large numbers of received conventions or commonplaces of description (such as traditional similes) called topoi. All Renaissance students were taught, as part of their basic training, to amplify, vary, and enrich these topoi or received ideas in novel or copious ways. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 (1609) can be seen as a virtuoso example of this Renaissance rhetorical training in which the poem’s speaker attempts to persuade the addressee to regard him in a certain way. Each of the quatrains contains a different, extended metaphor for the speaker’s age or condition: (i) as late autumn, (ii) as twilight, (iii) as a dying fire. All three metaphors are commonplace ways, or received topoi, of representing old age, yet the interesting thing about the poem is that it revitalises these ‘old’ or ‘tired’ metaphors by extending them, and making them precise and specific rather than vaguely general.

A further shaping influence on the literature of the period were the religious movements of the Reformation. The authority of the Catholic Church was no longer seen as infallible; indeed, ordinary individuals believed that they did not need the help of a priest to interpret scripture.

Luther did not believe that the Catholic Church could save souls but that a man’s salvation depended on God’s grace and justification by faith alone. Private experience became the means of the deepest spiritual discovery. Reading scripture became more important than listening to a priest. There was a move here towards individualism.

Both Protestantism and humanism had a formative influence on the genius of William Shakespeare. In common with other Elizabethan dramatists, his dramas broke away from the religious domination evident in the crypto-Catholic mystery and morality plays of the medieval era, and show an interest in the classics that is matched by a vivid social realism. Of all his dramas, the tragedies are generally regarded as Shakespeare’s supreme achievement. As in Greek tragedy, many of the main figures are kings and queens (e. g. Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet); ordinary individuals are not yet considered appropriate vehicles for edification. However, we do not remember Hamlet because he is the king’s son but, rather, because of his personality. During the Tudor age the fate of a nation depended to a greater extent than in medieval times on the character of the rulers; it is therefore not surprising that drama produced the greatest literary individuals the stage had ever seen. The tragic fate of these individuals is not caused by external forces outside their control but is of their own making: their downfall is caused by specific features of character or weaknesses exposed under exceptional circumstances. Consider Hamlet’s inability to make up his mind, for example; a tragic flaw that led to his own death and the death of many innocent people. The tumultuous nature of his time had made Shakespeare acutely aware of the precariousness of fortune and character, and how quickly the veneer of civilisation could disintegrate under adverse conditions.

Sonnet no. 73 (William Shakespeare)

That time of year thou mayest in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

(i)Identify the conceit and ‘Volta’ in Sonnet 73.