英国文学史及选读chapter 5 the Renaissance

1、English Literature of the Renaissance,Chapter 5 Section I The Historical Background: Economic, Political and Cultural,The Renaissance in Europe,The Renaissance as an epoch of social and cultural development embraced all Western Europe. On the foundations of medieval society and culture the Renaissan

2、ce first rose in Italy in the 14th century and came to a flowering in the 15th and then in the 16th century it spread to other countries, notably France, and thence to Germany and England and Spain and the Low Countries (Holland and Belgium). About the chief characteristics of this epoch Engels wrot

3、e in his introduction to the “Dialectics of Nature 自然辩证法”:,“Modern natural science, which alone has achieved an all-round systematic and scientific development, dates, like all more recent history, from that mighty epoch which we Germans term the Reformation, and which the French term the Renaissanc

4、e and the Italians the Cinquecento It is the epoch which had its rise in the last half of the 15th century. Royalty, with the support of the burghers of the towns, broke the power of the feudal nobility and established the great monarchies, based essentially on nationality, within which the modern E

5、uropean nations and modern bourgeois society came to development.,And while the burghers and nobles were still fighting one another, the peasant war in Germany pointed prophetically to future class struggles, not only by bringing on to the stage the peasants in revolt that was no longer anything new

6、 but behind them the beginning of the modern proletariat, with the red flag in their hands and the demand for common ownership of goods on their lips.,In the manuscripts saved from the fall of Byzantium, in the antique statutes dug out of the ruins of Rome, a new world was revealed to the astonished

7、 West, that of ancient Greece; the ghost of the Middle Ages vanished before its shinning forms; Italy rose to an undreamt-of flowering of art, which seemed like a reflection of classical antiquity and was never attained again.,In Italy, France and Germany a new literature arose, the first modern lit

8、erature; shortly afterwards came the classical epochs of English and Spanish literature. The bounds of the old orbis terrarum were pierced. Only now for the first time was the world really discovered and the basis laid for subsequent world trade and the transition from handicraft to manufacture, whi

9、ch in its formed the starting point for modern large industry.,The dictatorship of the church over mens minds was shattered; it was directly cast off by the majority of the Germanic peoples, who adopted Protestantism, while among the Latins a cheerful spirit of free thought, taken over from the Arab

10、s and nourished by the newly discovered Greek philosophy, took root more and more and prepared the way for the materialism of the 18th century.”,The chief characteristics of Engels analysis,1) politically the feudal nobility lost their power and with the establishment of the great monarchies there w

11、as the centralization of power necessary for the development of the bourgeoisie; 2) the Catholic church was either substituted by Protestantism as a result of the so-called Reformation 宗教改革 (as in Germany and England) or weakened in its dictatorship over mens minds (as in Italy and France and Spain)

12、;,3) geographical discoveries opened up colonial expansion and trade routes to distant parts of the world and brought back gold and silver and other wealth and also broadened mens mental horizons; 4) in the countryside the peasants were terribly exploited and they either rose in uprisings or ran awa

13、y and flocked to the cities and added to the proletariat 无产阶级 there;,5) in the cities the merchants and the master artisans grew in wealth and in power and became the bourgeoisie, while handicraft turned gradually into manufacture and the modern proletariat sprang up among the employed workers in th

14、e factories;,6) finally, culturally, as the interest in God and in the life after death was transformed into the exaltation of man and an absorption in earthly life and as materialistic philosophy and scientific thought gradually replaced the church dogmas and religious mysticism of the Middle Ages,

15、 a totally new culture rose out of the revival of the old culture of ancient Greece and Rome and out of the emergence of a new philosophy and science and art and literature through the exploration of the infinite capabilities of man.,Progressive writers known as humanists,In literature, in the 14th

16、and 15th centuries, in Italy, we have Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto 阿里奥斯托 and Tasso 塔索; In the 16th century in France there were Rabelais (拉伯雷，弗朗索瓦) and Montaigne (蒙田); In Germany, von Hutten (胡滕，乌尔里希冯) (a supporter of Martin Luther) and Martin Luther; In Holland Erasmus 伊拉兹马斯; In Spain Cervantes 塞凡提

17、斯; And in England Thomas More and Marlowe and Shakespeare.,As they best voiced the human aspirations for freedom and equality and against the tyranny of feudal rule and ecclesiastical domination. And they used various ways to attack the civil wars and welcome the centralized rule of monarchs, sing t

18、he praises of geographical and scientific discoveries and explorations and with them the trade expansions and the amassing of wealth from abroad, condemn political oppression and religious dogmatism and persecution and satire the numerous social vices of money-worship and cheating and dissipation 挥霍

19、 and hypocrisy 伪善 of all sorts.,Three major events in the domestic affairs - the end of feudal division,1) The War of the Roses - came as the last of baronial wars in 1455-1485, thoroughly weakened feudalism and actually killed off most of the feudal nobility. (next page) Henry VII (1485-1509) and H

20、enry VIII (1509-1547) laid the foundations of a strong monarchy.,The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England, fought between supporters of two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York (the red and the white rose, resp

21、ectively).,2) The intensification 激烈化 of economic exploitation of the peasants including the large scale enclosure of common land to be used for pasturage 畜牧业. This led to the peasants and plebeians uprisings of Jack Cade (凯德，杰克) in 1450 and of Robert Kett (凯特，罗伯特) 1549 and to the wholesale eviction

22、 逐出 of peasants from the countryside who were thereby hurled onto the labour-market in the cities as free plebeians.,3) The Reformation which in England took the form of the establishment of the Anglican Church and the disavowing 否认 of the authority of the Pope in Rome. This led to the stoppage 中断 o

23、f the papal 教皇的revenues in the form of monopolies and especially to the confiscation of the lands and properties of the monasteries. This in turn led to the creation by the king of a new aristocracy with land estates and to the expropriation of the tenants on the land and of the inmates of the monas

24、teries 僧侣.,These three major events resulted in the expropriation 征用 of the noble mens retinue 随员, the expropriation of the peasants from the countryside and the confiscation of the monasteries - plus the geographical exploration and trade expansion and the spoliation of gold and other treasure from

25、 abroad, constituted what Marx called the primitive accumulation of capital. All this paved the way for the establishment of the capitalist relations in replacement of the feudal social system.,And the result was the growth of the cities, the development of a capitalist textile industry and a big ov

26、erseas trade, and the parliament representing the interests chiefly of the bourgeoisie co-operated well with the centralized monarchical rule, with minor reservations and conflicts.,Stages and Trends of English Literature of the Renaissance,1) from the last years of the 15th century to the first hal

27、f of the 16th, from the introduction of the first printing press by William Caxton (卡克斯顿，威廉) in 1473/6 down to the prose of Thomas More (especially his Utopia), and the poetry of Skelton (斯克尔顿，约翰) and Wyatt (华埃特，托马斯) and the later dramas;,2) second half of the 16th century, but especially the last t

28、wo decades: a) in poetry, from the influence of Wyatt and Surrey (萨里伯爵) in Tottles Miscellany杂集 (托特尔，理查德) in 1557, through the sonnets and longer poetical works, of Sidney (锡德尼，菲利普) and Spenser to Shakespeare and Ben Johnson and John Donne; b) in drama, from the influences of church drama and folk d

29、rama and ancient classical drama through the University Wits, chiefly Marlowe 马洛, to the more mature comedies and the early tragedies of Shakespeare;,c) in prose fiction, from the prose romances of Sidney to the picaresque 流浪汉体裁小说的 Unfortunate Traveller不幸的旅人 of Nashe (纳什，托马斯) and the more realistic

30、narratives of Deloneys (德罗尼，托马斯) about city plebeians and labouring people. 3) the first quarter of the 17th century or the Jacobean period (James Is reign 1603-1625):,a) in drama, from the great tragedies of Shakespeares to his later tragi-comedies and from the comedies of humours of Ben Johnsons and the tragi-comedies of Beaumont (博蒙特，弗朗西斯) and Fletcher (弗莱彻); b) in poetry, from Ben Johnson and Donne to their followers and the imitators of Spenser;