Paper no.1 Renaissance Literature

Assignment of Paper no. 1: The Non-Dramatic Poets of Elizabethan Age

Respected Sir,
                       To Evaluate my Assignment click here

Name: Rudrika Gohel

Course: M.A. English

Sem: 1

Batch: 2017-2019

Roll No: 38

Enrollment No: 2069108420180015

Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU

Email Id: rudrikagohel97@gmail.com

Paper No: 1

Topic: The Non-Dramatic Poets of Elizabethan age

Background of Elizabethan age:

               The Elizabethan age considered as

'Golden age' in English literature. Many of the great works of English literature were produced during these years: art, poetry and drama etc. Elizabeth's reign saw playwright like Christopher Marlowe, Poets like Edmund Spenser and men of science and letters like Francis Bacon. 

Characteristics of Elizabethan age:

1. Religious Tolerance

2. Social Contentment

3. Enthusiasm

4. The Drama

The Non-Dramatic Poets of the Elizabethan age

➧ Edmund Spenser

➧ Minor Poets

1. Thomas Sackville

2. Philip Sidney

3. George Chapman

4. Michael Drayton

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

      Edmund Spenser was an English poet. He was known for his great work Faerie Queene, it was an epic poem and celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I.

   

       He was born in East Smithfield,  near the Tower of London. His education began at the Merchant Tailor's school and was continued in Cambridge. He makes himself as a scholar to read the classics and made acquaintance with the Italian Poets and wrote numberless little poems of his own. Chaucer was his master, he doesn't wants to rival the Canterbury tales. After leaving Cambridge (1576) he went to the north of England on some unknown work or quest.

        Spencer published his first poetic work 

'Shepherd's Calendar'. After ten years he began to work on The Faerie Queene, published in 1590, Spencer married to Elizabeth Boyle in 1594. In 1597 his home burned during an Irish Rebellion, and it supposed that some unfinished parts of the Faerie Queene were burned in the castle. In 1599 he died in an inn at Westminster.

According, to Ben Johnson he died "for wants of bread".

According to Camden, " casting their elegies and the pens that had written them in to his tomb."

Spencer's work's:-

His notable works:

" Mutabilite Cantos"

" The Faerie Queene"

" The Shepherds Calender"

"Amoretti"

"Colin Clouts Come Home Again"

"Complaints"

" A View of the Present State of Ireland"

"Prosopopia; or Mother Hubbard's Tale"

"Muiopotomos"

Faerie Queene:

                           The Faerie Queene is a long epic poem, published in 1590. Faerie Queene consider as a great work of Edmund Spenser. It has twenty four books, and each parts of poem recount the adventure and triumph of knight, who represents the moral virtues. Spenser completed only six books, it celebrating Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy. The first three parts and the best as compared to all parts. The poem begins with a representation of holiness in book one, and the mutabilitie cantos conclude with a prayer. The Poem is about nature and human virtues. Some of the characters are the Red cross Knight, Sir Guyon, Arthur, Artegall, Britomart, and the Faerie Queene.

                   The first part of the Poem focuses on two virtuous Christian warriors: The Red Cross Knight and Guyon. Red Cross Knight represents the holiness and lady Una represents the religion. The Red Cross Knight famous for slaying dragon, which represents the sin.

                    In the The second part Spenser continues the story of Britomart a female knight who introduced in the first part of the Poem. Britomart falls in love with Artegall, the knight of justice. Artegall is later attacked by the Blatant Beast, a giant dogs with many tongues. It also tells the story of Sir Guyon who represents the virtue of temperance.


                     The third part concerns Chastity and concludes the first part of the Faery Queene. Britomart represents the virtue of Chastity and a number of other characters whose story are interlaced. Book number four celebrates friendship and Concord as a social love. In the book number five Artegall is presented as the knight of justice. In the book number six  Sir Calidor represents courtesy.

                        Spenser's narration was very elastic one. He filled up his narration with historical events and personages under allegorical marks, beautiful ladies, chivalrous Knights, giants, monsters, dragons, sirens, enchanters and adventures enough to stock a library of fiction. As we see the meaning of the allegorical figures, Spenser presented some characters as like the Red Cross Knight is Sidney, Britomart is Elizabeth,  Duessa represents as Merry Queen of Scots;  the war in the Netherlands as the story of lady Belge.

Poetical form:

              Spenser invented a new Verse form for the Faerie Queene, which is called spenserian stanza, here the instance of Spenser's style and melody of the verse.


A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
    Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
    Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine
    The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde;
    Yet armes till that time did he never wield:
    His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
    As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
    Full iolly] knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.
    And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore,
    The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
    For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
    And dead, as living ever, him ador'd:
    Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,
    For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had,
    Right faithfull true he was in deede and word;
    But of his cheeredid seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

The description of Una shows the poet's sense of ideal beauty:

    One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,
    From her unhastie beast she did alight;
    And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay
    In secrete shadow, far from all mens sight;
    From her fayre head her fillet she undight,
    And layd her stole aside; Her angels face,
    As the great eye of heaven, shynéd bright,
    And made a sunshine in the shady place;
Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace.
  

   It fortunéd, out of the thickest wood
    A ramping lyon rushéd suddeinly,
    Hunting full greedy after salvage blood:
    Soone as the royall Virgin he did spy,
    With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
    To have at once devourd her tender corse:
    But to the pray whenas he drew more ny,
    His bloody rage aswaged with remorse,
And, with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.
   

  Instead thereof he kist her wearie feet,
    And lickt her lilly hands with fawning tong;
    As he her wrongéd innocence did weet.
    O how can beautie maister the most strong,
    And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!

          
Minor Poems:

               Spenser's next masterpiece was The Shepherd's Calendar. He wrote many other poems, it consists of twelve pastoral Poems, or one for each month of the year. The themes are generally like rular life, nature, love in the fields and speakers are Shepherd's and shepherdess. Spenser uses different and strange forms of speech and obsolete words to such an extent.


Other noteworthy poems are
"Mother's Hubbard's Tale" a satire on society;
"Astrophel" an elegy on the death of Sidney;
"Amoretti" Sonnet, to his Elizabeth;
"Epithalamion,"  and four "Hymns" on love, Beauty.  These works are show the scope of his work and are best worth reading.

Characteristics of Spenser's Poetry:

The five main characteristics of Spenser's Poetry are,

1. A perfect melody

2. A rare sense of beauty

3. A splendid imagination, which could gather into one poem

4. A lofty moral purity and seriousness

5. A delicate idealism


Comparison between Chaucer and Spenser:

                   Spenser regarded Chaucer as his master. There are two centuries intervened between them. Their writings are different from each other, we shall appreciate both of them by a brief comparison between our first two modern Poets.

                    Chaucer was a combined poet and man of affairs with latter predominating. He dealing largely with ancients or madiaeval material. His melodious Verse was marvelous, but in English it was changing, very few years of men were anable to appreciate his art. He invented art of storytelling in Verse. We expect from the quality of his work and his position as one of greatest of English poets.

                    Like Chaucer, Spenser was a busy man of affairs, but in the poet and the scholar always predominates. He has no humour, his mission was to reform not to amuse. Like his master Chaucer he studied the classics and contemporary French and Italian writers; Spenser always look backwards for his inspirations. The spenserian stanza and the rich melody of Spenser's verse made him the model of all our modern poets.

Minor Poets:

1. Thomas Sackville:
         
                                     Sir Thomas Sackville was earl of Dorset and lord of high treasures of England. He is classed with Wyatt and Surrey among the predecessors of the Elizabethan age. Sackville designed his great form called "The Mirror for Magistrate". Under the guidance of an allegorical personage called sorrow, through he meets the spirits of all the important actors in English history.

His poems:
1. "Mirror for Magistrate"
2. "Induction"
3. "Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham"

The third poem was written in 'Rime Royal'.( 7 lines iambic Penta meters) (ab ab bc c )

                  Sackville and Thomas Norton both are together had written the first English tragedy "ferrex & ported" called also"Gorboduc".

2. Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

                    Sidney was ideal gental man and he was Sir Calidor in Spenser's' Legend of Courtesy'. He has two ideals for life 1. Personal Honour and 2. National Greatness.
Spenser was encouraged by him.

 His three principal works:

1. "Arcadia" , it is a pastoral romance in which Shepherds and shepherdess sing of the delights of rural life.

2. "The Apologie for Poesie"

3. "Astrophel and Stella"

3. George Chapman (1559-1639)

                      Chapman was a dramatist, he combined drama and poetry. His dream's dialogues appears in poetry. His most famous work is translation of 'Iliad' and' Odyssey'. He was also known as finishers of Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander', which is apart from the drama.

4. Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

                       Drayton known as most Voluminous and to Antiquarians poet, and most interesting among the minor poets. He was very famous and scholar than his predecessors. He was the 'Layamon' of the Elizabethan age.

                       His most famous work was "Polyolbin" (1600 couplets or describing of rivers, mountains etc.)

Two other long Poems are,
"Baranos' war" and
"Heroic Epistle of England"
"Ballad of Agincourt", was his famous ballad.


               
Conclusion:

                     
                          Elizabethan age was one of the most splendid age in English literature. Elizabethan literature refers to body of work, produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Edmund Spenser was one of the premier craftsman of modern English. He was best known for his poem Faerie Queene. Spenser's poem Faerie Queene selected in standard English classics. The minor poets was also given their best work in this age. Thomas Sackville designed his great poem "Mirror for Magistrate". Though Spenser was one of the great Non Dramatic poet of Elizabethan age.
                     
Reference:-
                     W. J. Long History of English Literature
                     https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Spenser
  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edmund-Spenser
                      https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edmund-spenser