Prose writer in Renaissance time (Assaignment)

Name: Malek Hinaben Ibrahimbhai

Roll No: 12

Batch: 2019-21

Email ID: hinamalek21@gmail.com

Unique ID: 2069 1084 2020 0026

Paper No: 1 The Renaissance literature

Topic: prose writer in Renaissance time

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English

Question:1 Prose writers in Renaissance time:

Introduction: 

     The prose of Renaissance age, though inferior to the contemporary poetry and drama, bears all the hallmarks of literary peak. The great writers of the era have all the highlights of Italian Renaissance like the novelty of thought, height of imagination, search for new truths, and the revival of Greek ideals.

     With the introduction of movable printing machine brought to England by William Caxton, the volume of prose print increased manifold. This genre always considered inferior from literary perspective was in fact the same when viewed as a whole, because the bulk of prose in the sixteenth century was in the form of pamphlets, propaganda by Protestants and Catholics for their support during the Reformation. However, there are a few literary geniuses who left their marks qualitatively on the contemporary literature.

(1)John Donne:

     John Donne loved language, women, and being an Anglican. Oh, and using very big words to talk about them. His opus focused on themes of love and devotion—both the physical and the spiritual kinds.

    Donne also made serious bank writing poems in honor of wealthy dead people. His artistic patrons often commissioned long poems to commemorate the deaths of their loved ones. Perhaps this is why two of his most famous works deal with sex and death, respectively.

His poems:

"The Flea"

      The flea provides a delightful extended metaphor or conceit for, um. Getting into someone's pants. The speaker of this poem tries various tactics to get his love interest to reciprocate his feelings, all while using a little flea as his vehicle for wooing her. Hey, it couldn't hurt, right? Well, it kind of stinks for the flea, actually. Womp womp.

"Death Be Not Proud"

    Here, the speaker gives death one serious talking-to. Who, exactly, does death think he is, rolling into town like he owns the place and taking people's lives? The certainty that the speaker adopts in challenging death arises from Donne's deep religious roots. He was a preacher, after all. And, to the very religious, death is not really a threat. Why? Death can only attack the human body, the speaker of this poem argues. The soul will always lie beyond death's reach.

(2) William Shakespeare:

       William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. He was born on or around 23 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a prosperous glover and local dignitary, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer. There are no records of William’s education, but he probably went to King’s New School – a reputable Stratford grammar school where he would have learned Latin, Greek, theology and rhetoric – and may have had a Catholic upbringing. He may also have seen plays by the travelling theatre groups touring Stratford in the 1560s and 70s. At 18, William married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had three children over the next few years.

His works:

       Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote many at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more. His 17 comedies include. 'The Merchant of Venice' and much ado about nothing. Among his history play are Henry 5 and Richard 3. The most famous Tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, King Learand Macbeth. Shakespeare also wrote Four poems and a famous collection of sonnets which was first Putin 1609.

 (3) Edmund Spenser:

        Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language.

His life style:

        Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552, though there is still some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. His parenthood is obscure, but he was probably the son of John Spenser, a journeyman clothmaker. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. In 1578, he became for a short time secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender and around the same time married his first wife, Machabyas Child. They had two children, Sylvanus Katherine.

Shorter poem:

        Spenser published numerous relatively short poems in the last decade of the sixteenth century, almost all of which consider love or sorrow. In 1591, he published Complaints, a collection of poems that express complaints in mournful or mocking tones. Four years later, in 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion. This volume contains eighty-nine sonnets commemorating his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. In Amoretti, Spenser uses subtle humour and parody while praising his beloved, reworking Petrarchism in his treatment of longing for a woman. Epithalamion, similar to Amoretti, deals in part with the unease in the development of a romantic and sexual relationship. It was written for his wedding to his young bride, Elizabeth Boyle. Some have speculated that the attention to disquiet in general reflects Spenser's personal anxieties at the time, as he was unable to complete his most significant work, The Faerie Queene. In the following year Spenser released Prothalamion, a wedding song written for the daughters of a duke, allegedly in hopes to gain favour in the court.

(4) Philip Sidney:

   Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar, and soldier, who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesy (also known as The Defence of Poetry or An Apology for Poetry), and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.

Life style: 

      Born at Penshurst Place, Kent,of an aristocratic family, he was educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford, and then travelled widely. He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. His younger brother, Robert Sidney was a statesman and patron of the arts, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1618. His younger sister, Mary, married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and was a writer, translator and literary patron. Sidney dedicated his longest work, the Arcadia, to her. After her brother's death, Mary reworked the Arcadia, which became known as The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.

His works:

The Lady of May: This is one of Sidney's lesser-known works, a masque written and performed for Queen Elizabeth in 1578 or 1579.

Astrophel and Stella: The first of the famous English sonnet sequences, Astrophel and Stella was probably composed in the early 1580s.

The countess of Pembroke's Arcadia: Arcadia, by far Sidney's most ambitious work, was as significant in its own way as his sonnets. The work is a romance that combines pastoral elements with a mood derived from the Hellenistic model of Heliodorus. 

The Sidney psalms: These English translations of the Psalms were completed in 1599 by Philip Sidney's sister Mary.

An Apology for poetry: Sidney wrote the The Defence of Poetry before 1583. It has taken its place among the great critical essays in English.

(5) Ben Jonson:

      Ben Jonson was an English playwright and poet, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays: Every Man in His Humour(1598), Volpone, or The Fox(1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyrics and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."

Life style: 

     In midlife, Jonson claimed that his paternal grandfather, who served King Henry 8 and was a gentleman', was a member of the extended Johnston family of Annandale in Dumfries and Galloway, a genealogy that is attested by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family coat of arms: one spindle is a diamond-shaped heraldic device used by the Johnston family.

His works: 

★Drama: 

     Apart from two tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, that largely failed to impress Renaissance audiences, Jonson's work for the public theatres was in comedy. These plays vary in some respects. The minor early plays, particularly those written for boy players, present somewhat looser plots and less-developed characters than those written later, for adult companies. Already in the plays which were his salvos in the Poet's War, he displays a keen eye for absurdity and hypocrisy that marks his best-known plays; in these early efforts, however, plot mostly takes second place to variety of incident and comic set-pieces. They are, also, notably ill-tempered.

★Poetry: 

      Jonson's poetry, like his drama, is informed by his classical learning. Some of his better-known poems are close translations of Greek or Roman models; all display the careful attention to form and style that often came naturally to those trained in classics in the humanist manner. Jonson largely avoided the debates about rhyme and meter that had consumed Elizabethan classicists such as Thomas Campion and Gabriel Harvey. Accepting both rhyme and stress, Jonson used them to mimic the classical qualities of simplicity, restraint and precision.

Conclusion: 

     So all are famous writer and his work in this age, like I mentioned above John Donne, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson etc.