MB UNIUD

Questions and answers. 

What is the period during which the Renaissance developed in England?

The period during which the Renaissance developed in England started with the accession of the house of Tudor to the throne in 1485. The date (1485) is relevant for the English literature because It signed the end of the War of Roses, and the beginning of a peace period. Quiet years assure the development of the culture in a country.

What does the term Renaissance mean?

The term "Renaissance" means new birth. An intelligent reader ask his/herself: why is the period called new birth? What does revive again? I will answer. During the XVI, XVII century, scholars studied the classical literature, after many years.

During the Middle Ages , the church didn't allowed people to read Greek and Latin writers.

The classic culture talks about man, considering his spirit not also his body (thus it write about passions, desire, attraction), while the Christian religion, denied the body and also the man like human, as proved by Dante and Cavalcanti's Sonnets.

In the Renaissance's historical period, the man discovered again the human being: the Humanism spread in all Europe.

Why did the English Renaissance develop later than in Italy?

Because the classic code took time to arrive in the England's island by the continent.

What is the idea of the woman and the man in Renaissance literature?

The man and the woman are real characters of a concrete world.

The code of value of the renaissance is a lay code. The man and also the woman focus their attention on the money, and how grow their capital.

During the Middle ages, Europe is influenced by the Christian code of value, and by the idea of sin.

All is considerate in base of after death, thus the important thing isn't this life, but the eternal life.

You have to do your best in this life to go to heaven.

During the renaissance, isn't important the eternal life, but the present.

People considerate their body and the economical aspect of the life. As a matter of fact they are concrete because they are worried about the pragmatic (not unearthly) aspect of life.

What is the different idea of the woman in the ballad and the sonnet?

The woman in Italian sonnets is idealized. She is like an angel, she's got fair hair and blue eyes and she hadn't got a body. The perfection and the purity are hers main features.

She has the function to elevate the man to God, because if we considerate the woman as the way to get to God, you are allowed to love her, she  is heavently.

The woman in the ballad is the denial of sonnet's woman.

She was considerate the tempted of men integrity. She is the sinful par excellence, she is dangerous.

During the middle ages the man didn't surrender at body's desire, he wasn't allowed to attend women unless his wife to procreate, but however men were attracted by women, so the woman is a tempted.

What is the difference between the ballad and the sonnet?

Both the them, came from the music form.

While ballad presents the typical form of a song, with refrains, using  long stanzas and repeating frequently the same words, the sonnet It's a properly a lyric poem.

Moreover ballads had a popular origin: they were handed down orally from generation to generation.

The ballad's addressee is the population.

Sonnet was only originated by a song, but it has the structure of the lyric poetry, it has precise rules and specific metre.

The addressee were people belonging from the aristocracy and other cultured people.

Also the topic were different, because of the addresses. Ballads sang about supernatural, tragic love stories and the borders' conflict between Scottish and English population, while the sonnets told us about the love experience.

What is the difference between the language used in the ballad and the one used in the sonnet?

How I say in the next question's answer, the ballad is destined to the population, so it use the common language and also some particular idiomatic form, with specific meaning, a sort of code (example: true love- used to underline that the youth is falling in love with a woman, and she deceived him. She's not exactly a real love, but she is however called so).

The sonnet used poetry form of language. It's properly a lyrical poem, and the writer had to select the words to create the atmosphere (lovely, sad, nostalgic, desperated, depressed). Moreover the sonneteers are aristocratic writers, so they use figures of speech and they were able to write correctly using a poetic register.