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English Renaissance
"English
Renaissance" is a term often used to describe a cultural and
artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to
the mid-17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that
many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in
the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is
sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan
era," taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous
author and most important monarch, respectively; however it is
worth remembering that these names are rather misleading: Shakespeare
was not an especially famous writer in his own time, and the English
Renaissance covers a period both before and after Elizabeth's
reign.
Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produced
works that demonstrated an increased interest in understanding
English Christian beliefs, such as the allegorical representation
of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling
of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights,
such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed
theatrical representations of the English take on life, death,
and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty, philosophers
like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published
their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society,
pushing the limits of metacognition at that time. As England abolished
its astrologers and alchemists, it came closer to reaching modern
science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific
Method. All of these developments would lead England to reach
a level of understanding like never before.
William Shakespeare, chief figure of the
English Renaissance, as portrayed in the Chandos portrait,
artist and authenticity not confirmed |
Comparison of the English and Italian Renaissances
The English Renaissance is distinct from the Italian
Renaissance in several ways. First, the dominant art form of
the English Renaissance was literature, while the Italian Renaissance
was driven much more by the visual arts, such as painting and
sculpture. Second, the English movement is separated from the Italian
by time: many trace the Italian Renaissance to Dante or Petrarch in
the early 1300s, and certainly most of the famous Italian Renaissance
figures ceased their creative output by the 1520s. In contrast,
the English Renaissance seems to begin in the 1520s, reaching its
apex around the year 1600, and not concluding until roughly the
restoration of Charles II in the 1660s. Finally, the English
seem to have been less directly influenced by classical antiquity,
which was a hallmark of the Italian Renaissance (the word "renaissance"
means "rebirth," an allusion to the Italian belief that they were
merely rediscovering or reviving lost ancient knowledge and technique);
instead, the English were primarily influenced by the Italians themselves,
and rediscovered the classical authors through them.
On the other hand, the Italian and English Renaissances were similar
in sharing a specific musical aesthetic. In the late 16th century Italy
was the musical center of Europe, and one of the principal forms
which emerged from that singular explosion of musical creativity
was the madrigal. In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published in England
the Musica transalpina--a collection of Italian madrigals
"Englished"--an event which touched off a vogue of madrigal in England
which was almost unmatched in the Renaissance in being an instantaneous
adoption of an idea, from another country, adapted to local aesthetics.
(In a delicious irony of history, a military invasion from a Catholic
country--Spain--failed in that year, but a cultural invasion, from
Italy, succeeded). English poetry was exactly at the right stage
of development for this transplantation to occur, since forms such
as the sonnet were uniquely adapted to setting as madrigals
(indeed, the sonnet was already well-developed in Italy). Composers
such as Thomas Morley, the only contemporary composer to set Shakespeare,
and whose work survives, published collections of their own, roughly
in the Italian manner but yet with a unique Englishness; many of
the compositions of the English Madrigal School remain in the
standard repertory in the 21st century.
Not all aspects of Italian music translated to English practice.
The colossal polychoral productions of the Venetian School aroused
little interest there, although the Palestrina style from the Roman
School had already been absorbed prior to the publication of
Musical transalpina, in the music of masters such as William
Byrd.
While the Classical revival led to a flourishing of Italian
Renaissance architecture, architecture in Britain took a more eclectic
approach. Elizabethan architecture retained many features of the
Gothic, even while the occasional purer building such as the tomb
in the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, or the French-influenced
architecture of Scotland showed interest in the new style.
Criticisms of the idea of the English Renaissance
The notion of calling this period "the Renaissance"
is a modern invention, having been popularized by the historian
Jacob Burckhardt in the nineteenth century. The idea of the
Renaissance has come under increased criticism by many cultural
historians, and some have contended that the "English Renaissance"
has no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the northern
Italian artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello) who are closely
identified with the Renaissance. Indeed, England had already experienced
a flourishing of literature over 200 years before the time of Shakespeare
when Geoffrey Chaucer, possibly the second most important writer
in the English language, was working. Chaucer's popularising of
English as a medium of literary composition rather than Latin was
only 50 years after Dante had started using Italian for
serious poetry. At the same time William Langland author of
Piers Plowman and John Gower were also writing in
English. The Hundred Years War and the subsequent civil war
in England known as the Wars of the Roses probably hampered
artistic endeavour until the relatively peaceful and stable reign
of Elizabeth I allowed drama in particular to develop. Even
during these war years, though, Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte
D'Arthur, was a notable figure. For this reason, scholars find the
singularity of the period called the English Renaissance questionable;
C.S. Lewis, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature
at Oxford and Cambridge, famously remarked to a colleague that
he had "discovered" that there was no English Renaissance, and that
if there had been one, it had "no effect whatsoever."
Historians have also begun to consider the word "Renaissance" as
an unnecessarily loaded word that implies an unambiguously positive
"rebirth" from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Some historians
have asked the question "a renaissance for whom?," pointing out,
for example, that the status of women in society arguably declined
during the Renaissance. Many historians and cultural historians
now prefer to use the term "early modern" for this period, a neutral
term that highlights the period as a transitional one that led to
the modern world, but does not have any positive or negative connotations.
Other cultural historians have countered that, regardless of whether
the name "renaissance" is apt, there was undeniably an artistic
flowering in England under the Tudor monarchs, culminating in Shakespeare
and his contemporaries.
Major English Renaissance figures
The
key literary figures in the English Renaissance are now generally
considered to be the poet Edmund Spenser; the philosopher Francis
Bacon; the poets and playwrights Christopher Marlowe, William
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; and the poet John Milton. Sir
Thomas More is often considered one of the earliest writers
of the English Renaissance. Thomas Tallis and William Byrd were
the most notable English musicians of the time, and are often
seen as being a part of the same artistic movement that inspired
the above authors.
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