Classic to Modern English Literature

The renaissance movement is used to describe how Europeans moved away from the restrictive ideas of the middle ages. Shakespeare updated the simplistic, two-dimensional writing style of pre-renaissance drama. He focused on creating “human” characters with psychologically complexity. Hamlet is perhaps the most famous example of this. Lyly must also be considered and remembered as a primary influence on the plays of William Shakespeare, and in particular the romantic comedies. The age of Milton (that is, 1625-1660, comprising the Caroline age and the Commonwealth) was an age of singular activity in the field of English prose. The age of Milton has been very aptly called “the Golden Age of English Pulpit.” The names of such powerful writers as Taylor, Robert South, Fuller, Isaac Barrow, and Richard Baxter are associated with this department of writing. The “Gothic” style of most Elizabethans influenced a sizable proportion of the prose writer of the age of Milton.  Sir Thomas Browne was a

George Peele (born in London and baptized 25 July 1556 – buried 9 November 1596), was an English dramatist. His play Edward I was printed in 1593. This theory is in part due to Peele’s predilection for gore, as evidenced in The Battle of Alcazar (acted 1588-1589, printed 1594), published anonymously, which is attributed with much probability to him.  The Old Wives’ Tale (printed 1595) was followed by The Love of King David and fair Bethsabe (written ca. 1588, printed 1599), which is notable as an example of Elizabethan drama drawn entirely from Scriptural sources. In this regard, F. G. Fleay sees in it a political satire, and identifies Elizabeth and Leicester as David and Bathsheba, Mary, Queen of Scots as Absalom.Peele wrote the first act and the first two scenes in Act II of Titus Andronicus, with Shakespeare.  John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit and His England. In 1632, Blount published Six Court Comedies. In an other sequence, th

The most important collection was Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure,’ in 1566. The University Wits were a group of late 16th century English playwrights who were educated at the universities (Oxford or Cambridge) and who became playwrights and popular secular writers. Christopher Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564; died 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Greene calls Shakespeare an “upstart crow” in his pamphlet Greene’s Groats – Worth of Wit.  As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, Marlowe is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death. A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason for it was given, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain “vile heretical conceipts”. Robert Greene (11 July 1558 – 3 September 1592) was an English author best known for a p

One of the most salient characteristics of the morality play is the way that characters are named. A morality play is a type of theater, which was common in medieval Europe . It uses allegorical characters to teach the audience moral lessons, typically of a Christian nature . The one great rival was Spain , with which England clashed both in Europe and the Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604 . John Bunyan ’s 1678 novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress , while not an example of drama, relies heavily on the tropes of the morality play . Spenser , an M. A. of Cambridge University , He modelled his most important work The Faerie Queene upon the epics of the Greek Homer , the Roman Virgil , and the Italian Ariosto and Tasso . The first English writer of the eclogue was Barclay (of the Ship of Fools fame ) who flourished in the fifteenth century ; but he had based his five eclogues on the work of the Italian poet Mantuanus rather than the great