What was literature like in the renaissance

This courtliness, or courtly love, could be found in many poems and other pieces of literature during this time period. Courtly love is when a woman is treated with utmost respect, care, and love from a knight.

He will do anything to make her happy, and her happiness and love in turn makes the knight stronger and more respected. The theme of company is also present throughout the entire poem. Other themes common in Medieval secular poetry are spring, love, and politics.

Many other satirized the community. As the Renaissance began to rise throughout Europe, secularism and humanism became increasingly popular. Instead of focusing on the afterlife, people began focus on their current place in life. They looked towards themselves and who they were as individual people instead of solely people of God. This time in history can be seen as the beginning of the turn to reason and the loss of faith.

Similar to secular literature of the Medieval period, secular literature of the Renaissance focused on worldly things, such as spring and love. The reason part of this literary period inspired essays on human characteristics and politics, with Francis Bacon being one of the most writers of these types of essays. Throughout the Medieval period, women were viewed as second class citizens, and their needs always were an afterthought.

They were either held to be completely deceitful, sexual, innocent or incompetent. Therefore, women were mostly withheld from positions of power or speaking their voice; males made decisions for them and their lives were dictated by the men that ran the society. Despite their lack of validation and suppression, however, women in Medieval literature were certainly present in many works and in various forms.

Some tropes feed into the idea that women are subservient and inferior to men such as the Virgin, which portrays females as passive and weak, or the mother whose very life circles around making a better life for her family and especially for her husband, or even the whore who has no power in her sexuality and must give it away for the well being of her family or the men in society.

However, there are some archetypes that break this cycle like the Trickster or Witch who break the social norms and stand out, displaying qualities of cunning intelligence, intimidation, and power.

The sections below will dive deeper into the disparity between how women were viewed in Medieval society and how they were portrayed in the literature of the time. Click to see More. As a whole, the Renaissance encompasses an incredibly large rebirth of knowledge and learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth century.

The advances in knowledge which identify the shift from Medieval Literature to Renaissance Literature were dependent upon a return to classical thought within the literature and philosophies of antiquity. This return to classical ideas and worldview gave rise to Humanism, which asserted the value of man, his dignity, and his lack of limitations. As a result, there was a shift in emphasis from the contemplative life of the Medieval man to the involved life of the Renaissance man: well-rounded, active, and involved with the world around him.

Most notably, Humanists provided society with a pervasive and overarching sense of humanity. Renaissance Literature also mimicked changes in culture; turning away from primarily religious thinking and placing importance on classical thought, Renaissance thinkers conjured new philosophies from the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Sexual love was seen as the presence of spiritual bonds in literature, arising from new found knowledge of Platonic love.

Some Neoplatonists believed there to be a link between attaining knowledge as knowledge of science was seen as factual representations or understanding of the world and relationship with God or the Divine. This shift in governing thought process led to a new world view which negated the cosmic worldview present in Medieval Literature. In the Sixteenth Century, as a result of systemic corruption within the Church e.

Through the rejection of the Church, the Reformation placed importance on the role of the individual, in that authority of religious teaching was reliant upon the text rather than the institution. The Renaissance saw the end of feudal rule, and made efforts to establish a central government. For the most part, women remained still remained somewhat suppressed in this time period. The fact that the new ruler was in fact, Queen Elizabeth, was upsetting to many.

While gentlemen mastered the arts of rhetoric and warfare, gentlewomen were expected to display the virtues of silence and good housekeeping. Among upper-class males, the will to dominate others was acceptable and indeed admired; the same will in women was condemned as a grotesque and dangerous aberration.

Women also lacked the ability to attend schools and universities too. Therefore, any works produced by women at this time are very scarce. Portrait of Queen Elizabeth Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Catholicism still reigned as the primary religion in England. During the Middle Ages, troops of vagabond actors would perform morality plays, essentially live-action sermons, to delighted provincial audiences.

In , the Red Lion was erected on the outskirts of London, one of the first commercial playhouses. From the very beginning, the theater had its detractors. Locals despised the crowd and the noise that the popular houses attracted, and the pubs and brothels that inevitably cropped up nearby. Many saw the theater as an invitation to laziness, with children abandoning their studies and laborers leaving work to see the plays. Others found the subject matter distasteful and wicked. The Puritans, in particular, aimed their barbs directly at the Elizabethan stage.

The intensely conservative offshoot of Protestantism, the Puritans feared that the cross-dressing and playacting one found at the theater would lead to sexual corruption among the general populace.

One of the greatest stumbling blocks for artists and writers during the English Renaissance was the ever-present need to somehow eke a living out of their craft. The system of patronage was one means by which talented and creative individuals sustained themselves. A patron was an independently wealthy noble person who had a taste for the finer things, and lavished money and attention on artists who catered to that taste. In some cases, the patron surrounded themselves with poets and dramatists as a mere pretence.

On the other hand, many patrons had a deep and genuine appreciation for artistic creation. From the point of view of the starving artist who reaped the benefits of such generosity, it did not really matter either way.

Original manuscripts which have survived the ravages of time bear witness to the importance of securing the blessings of a wealthy patron. Typically such works are dedicated to the patron who provided the funds for its production. Or, the writer may be seeking the good favor of a patron who has yet to loosen their purse strings. There are even accounts of a single piece of literature being reproduced and dedicated to several potential patrons, a kind of wide net approach that demonstrates the business savvy required of the Renaissance artists.

In the majority of cases, artists had to give much of their time to a career in some other more lucrative field and only pursue their craft as a sort of hobby. Four hundred years have done little to change that unfortunate reality. The unbounded optimism and humanist spirit of the Renaissance could not go on forever. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the quest for human perfection had given way to decadence, cynicism, and an introversion which would stifle creativity for a long time to come.

In England, the rise of Puritanism, itself an offshoot of Renaissance philosophy, put the brakes on the pursuit of knowledge and aesthetic endeavors. In northern Europe the scholarly writings of Erasmus, the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Edmund Spenser, and the writings of Sir Philip Sidney may be considered Renaissance in character. The literature of the Renaissance was written within the general movement of the Renaissance that arose in 13th century Italy and continued until the 16th century while being diffused into the western world.

It is characterized by the adoption of a Humanist philosophy and the recovery of the classical literature of Antiquity and benefited from the spread of printing in the latter part of the 15th century. For the writers of the Renaissance, Greco-Roman inspiration was shown both in the themes of their writing and in the literary forms they used.

The world was considered from an anthropocentric perspective. Platonic ideas were revived and put to the service of Christianity. The search for pleasures of the senses and a critical and rational spirit completed the ideological panorama of the period. New literary genres such as the essay and new metrical forms such as the sonnet and Spenserian stanza made their appearance.

The creation of the printing press using movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in the s encouraged authors to write in their local vernacular rather than in Greek or Latin classical languages, widening the reading audience and promoting the spread of Renaissance ideas.

The impact of the Renaissance varied across the continent; countries that were predominantly Catholic or predominantly Protestant experienced the Renaissance differently.

Areas where the Orthodox Church was culturally dominant, as well as those areas of Europe under Islamic rule, were more or less outside its influence. Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had their origin in late 13th century Florence, in particular in the writings of Dante Alighieri — and Petrarch — Italian prose of the 13th century was as abundant and varied as its poetry.

In the year a period of new literature began. The literature and poetry of the Renaissance was largely influenced by the developing science and philosophy. The Humanist Francesco Petrarch, a key figure in the renewed sense of scholarship, was also an accomplished poet, publishing several important works of poetry. He wrote poetry in Latin, notably the Punic War epic Africa , but is today remembered for his works in the Italian vernacular, especially the Canzoniere , a collection of love sonnets dedicated to his unrequited love, Laura.

He was the foremost writer of sonnets in Italian, and translations of his work into English by Thomas Wyatt established the sonnet form in England, where it was employed by William Shakespeare and countless other poets. His major work was The Decameron , a collection of stories told by ten storytellers who have fled to the outskirts of Florence to escape the black plague over ten nights. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic.

Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence, it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose. Boccaccio wrote his imaginative literature mostly in the Italian vernacular, as well as other works in Latin, and is particularly noted for his realistic dialogue that differed from that of his contemporaries, medieval writers who usually followed formulaic models for character and plot.

Discussions between Boccaccio and Petrarch were instrumental in Boccaccio writing the Genealogia deorum gentilium ; the first edition was completed in and it remained one of the key reference works on classical mythology for over years. It served as an extended defense for the studies of ancient literature and thought. Despite the Pagan beliefs at the core of the Genealogia deorum gentilium , Boccaccio believed that much could be learned from antiquity.

Thus, he challenged the arguments of clerical intellectuals who wanted to limit access to classical sources to prevent any moral harm to Christian readers. The revival of classical antiquity became a foundation of the Renaissance, and his defense of the importance of ancient literature was an essential requirement for its development.

A depiction of Giovanni Boccaccio and Florentines who have fled from the plague, the frame story for The Decameron. A generation before Petrarch and Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri set the stage for Renaissance literature.

In the late Middle Ages, the overwhelming majority of poetry was written in Latin, and therefore was accessible only to affluent and educated audiences. In De vulgari eloquentia On Eloquence in the Vernacular , however, Dante defended use of the vernacular in literature. He himself would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life and the aforementioned Divine Comedy ; this choice, though highly unorthodox, set a hugely important precedent that later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow.

Therefore, poetry and drama were no longer intended for just the privileged. Poetry and drama became shared artistic concepts among all classes because of the newfound influx of information. Poetry in the Renaissance became one of the most valued forms of literature and was often accompanied by music.

According to The Literature Network , the poetic forms most commonly employed during this period were the lyric, tragedy, elegy or pastoral. One of the most significant poems written during this time is the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton