MODULE EL114- SURVEY OF ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER 2

Objectives:
a. Identify major forms in the literature of the Elizabethan period.
b. Analyze the history and background of Elizabethan period.
c. Understand the major characteristics of the literary movement
during the Elizabethan period.

THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD (1486-1600)

THE GOLDEN AGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
- This period saw a number of new
discoveries and colonization in the new
world.
- Columbus of Genoa made his first
voyage of discovery of Spain in 1492.
- The Cabots of England reached the
North American coast.
- Soon after, Amerigo Vespucci reached
South America .
- Trade with Asian countries –China,
India, and Persia –was established.
- The bow and arrow, the sword and
shield left the scene as gunpowder
occupied center stage.

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- The invention of the printing press by the German Johannes Gutenberg made possible a
more rapid spread of new learning.
- The Elizabethan period began in 1558 and was named after Queen Elizabeth I who
ruled England during this time.
- She was one of the most popular monarchs in English history.
- This period of time is remembered for its richness of poetry and drama.
- It is considered to be the ―Golden Age‖ in English History because some of the most
prominent writers were born or had started writing during this era.
- Aside from that, the Elizabethan period was also known as the ―English Renaissance‖
because this was the time when the renaissances came to England.
- As she was ruling England, the Queen herself was often called ―The Virgin Queen‖
because she chose to never get married.
- However, she was presented as a selfless woman who sacrificed personal happiness for
the good of the nation. Late in her reign, she addressed Parliament in the so-called
'Golden Speech' of 1601 when she told MPs: 'There is no jewel, be it of never so high a
price, which I set before this jewel; I mean your love.' She seems to have been very
popular with the vast majority of her subjects.

What is Elizabethan Literature?

- The Elizabethan Literature is the body of works written during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth I of England. It is probably the most splendid age in the history of English
literature.
- Throughout this era, England experienced peace and prosperity. A lot of socio-
economical changes happened in the country.
- Queen Elizabeth bought a lot of political stability which resulted to flourishing of various
other art form and one of it was literature.
- During the revival year, the printing press came to country of England that resulted to a
lot of books being written and published. These literary works circulated in the society
which help changed how the literature was seen in the country.
- Most of the literary works written during this period are either dramas written by play
wrights or poets and sonnets. Novels were not yet a thing during this time. However, at
some point, writers started writing pamphlets and essays but there are not no important.
- The Elizabethan age saw the flowering of poetry. It was a golden age of drama and have
inspired a wide variety of splendid prose. From about the beginning of the 17th century a
sudden darkening of tone became noticeable in most forms of literary expression,
especially in drama, and the change are more or less coincided with the death of
Elizabeth.
- The Elizabethans‘ ability to address themselves to several audiences simultaneously
and to bring into relation opposed experiences, emphases, and worldviews invested
their writing with complexity and power.

The Spenserian and Shakespearean stage (1580-1615)

- This stage is the stage of highest development. The native English genius, having
absorbed the lessons of foreign writers, adds them to the youth and ardor of its own
style. The result is a fullness, freshness, and grandeur of style unequalled in any other
period of our literature.
- There are the lyrics and allegories of Spenser; the poems, dramas and lyrics of
Shakespeare, and the innumerable miscellanies, poems, and plays of other writers. The
style is as varied as the poems; but the universal note is the romantic one of power and
ease.

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SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET VERSUN SPENSERIAN SONNET

ELEMENTS/CHARACTERISTIC SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET SPENSERIAN SONNET

NUNBER OF LINES FOURTEEN LINES

STRUCTURE THREE QUATRAINS WITH A RHYMING COUPLET

METER IAMBIC PENTAMETER

RHYME SCHEME ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE

- For more information and knowledge about the Elizabethan literature

please visit the following links:
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]

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LITERARY READINGS

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
by Christopher Marlowe by Sir Walter Raleigh
1599 1600

Come live with me and be my love, If all the world and love were young,
And we will all the pleasures prove And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields These pretty pleasures might me move
Woods or steepy mountain yields To live with thee and be thy love.

And we will sit upon the rocks, Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
By shallow rivers to whose falls And Philomel becometh dumb;
Melodious birds sing madrigals. The rest complain of cares to come.

And I will make thee beds of roses The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
And a thousand fragrant posies, To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A cap of flower, and a kirtle A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle; Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

A gown made of the finest wool Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Fair lined slippers for the cold Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
With buckles of the purest gold; In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

A belt of straw and ivy buds, Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs; Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move, All these in me no means can move
Come live with me and be my love. To come to thee and be thy love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing But could youth last and love still breed,
For thy delight each May morning: Had joys no date nor age no need,
If these delights thy mind may move, Then these delights my mind might move
Then live with me and be my love. To live with thee and be thy love.

Reference: [Link]

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SONNET XII

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

This sonnet is so famous that it almost makes comment superfluous. It will always be one of the
finest sonnets in the history of language. The slow and swift passage of time which brings all
things to an end is described, not indeed copiously, but with such significant and devastating
effect that mortality almost stares us in the face as we read it. The way in which the sense of the
lines ends with the line itself is like the ticking of a clock or the inexorable motion of a pendulum
as it beats from side to side. The significance of the placing of this sonnet here (12) (twelve
hours of the day) as well as that of the 'minute' sonnet at 60 is difficult to determine, but at the
very least it points to an ordering hand, which, like the clock itself, metes out the sequence of
relevant events as they occur. (See JK, [Link] Intro. p42.) The overall effect is sombre, and
the concluding couplet, with its brave stand against time, confined to a single line in the poem,
gives the impression that nothing will be saved, and that the reality of what the poet has been
urging all along is as slight as breath and water.

Reference: [Link]

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Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name

BY EDMUND SPENSER

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise."

"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."

References:
Language In Literature- Anglo-American Literature-Arkaina et. al., Vibal Group, Inc.
[Link]

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SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Common questions
What is the theme of the sonnet?

The main theme is the timelessness of love and beauty, death and immortality, and in particular
the immortality of art. Also, the power of poetry over fate, death, and even love. The sonnet is
concerned with the relationship between man and the eventual death he will encounter.

What‘s the sonnet about?

Sonnet 18 praises a friend, traditionally known as the ‗fair youth‘. The sonnet is more than just a
poem – it is a real thing that guarantees that by being described in the poem the young man‘s
beauty will be sustained. Even death will be irrelevant because the lines of verse will be read by
future generations when poet and fair youth are no more. The image will live in the verse.
Is it about a man?
Yes. This is one of a sequence of sonnets written for an unidentified young male friend of
Shakespeare‘s. In the sonnets, Shakespeare is urging his friend to marry and have children
because his qualities and beauty are such that it would be a tragedy not to pass them on to a
new generation.

Why is the sonnet so famous?

The opening line of the sonnet is one of the most quoted Shakespearean lines. It is also one of
the most eloquent statements of the power of the written word. Shakespeare preserves his
friend in the lines of the poem, where he will live forever, even after his natural death.

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