Textuality » 4A Interacting

G. Boccalon - The Renaissance
by GBoccalon - (2008-09-24)
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  1. What is the period during which the Renaissance developed in England ?
  2. What does the term "Renaissance" mean?
  3. Why did the English Renaissance develop later than in Italy?
  4. What is the idea of the woman and the man in Renaissance literature?
  5. What is the different idea of the woman in the ballad and in the sonnet?
  6. What is the difference between the language used in the ballad and the one used in the sonnet?

 

  1. The English Renaissance usually refers to the 16th and early 17th century. It refers to a period extending from the1485 to the 1688.
  2. The term "Renaissance" means a new birth of the study of the classics. In that period there is the revival of human being too, because the new ideas of humanism inspired by the Roman and Greek culture of the past went out.
  3. The English Renaissance developed later than in Italy, because England is an island and in that period there were a lot of  difficulties for the new mentalities to accede into the islands, for that reason in England too.
  4. The sonneteers wrote their sonnets about their lover. Most of the time the sonnets speaks about the "courtly love", in which the sonneteers' lovers are unreachable, adoring, fairy, supernatural women. But Shakespeare don't dedicated his sonnets to describe an inhuman love: in his sonnets he spoke about an earthly love. As a matter of fact his lovers were a fair youth and the dark lady, both real and existent people.
  5. The ballad is a typical form of Medieval literature. During the Middle Age, women can be untouchable, like the Virgin Maria, mothers and nuns. If they were not like those, they were dangerous temptresses for the men's integrity. So in the ballads these were the models of woman the poets wrote about. During the Renaissance the mentality chanced and the sonneteers wrote about a different kind of woman. The ladies who the sonneteers wrote about were unreachable, supernatural, perfect, fairy women and they looked like angels.
  6. Ballads and sonnets are different form of poetry. The language used in the ballads was a popular language. As a matter of fact ballads came from oral tradition and they were orally handed down from generation to generation. So the language used to wrote their belong to the traditional language. Contrarily sonnets' language was an aristocratic or courtly language, because sonneteers belong to the aristocracy.