Key Concepts in Renaissance Literature

Malcolm Hebron

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780230507678
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350310360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

The volume provides readers with a clear introduction to English Renaissance literary texts. Concise but detailed entries are alphabetically arranged, providing a coherent overview of central issues in the study of writings of the Renaissance era. Cross-referencing and suggestions for further reading indicate connections between topics.

1 Contexts: History, Politics, Culture

Historical Introduction

The English Renaissance has no clear beginning, but the date of 1485 will serve as a starting point. In this year, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and so initiated the rule of the House of Tudor that was to last through five monarchs until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. The date of 1485 is a useful vantage point from which to look at a wider panorama. In Italy, especially in the Republic of Florence, humanists were engaging with the language and ideas of the Greeks and Romans, and artists and poets were similarly energising their work with classical ideas. In 1453, the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) had fallen to the Turks. Greek scholars continued their emigration westwards at a faster rate, and the resulting spread of knowledge of Greek contributed to the detailed study of ancient Greek philosophy and re-examination of the scriptures and the early Christian Church: the latter avenue of enquiry would contribute to the upheaval of the Reformation. The fall of Constantinople also meant that the overland trade routes between Europe and Asia were effectively lost, and explorers were forced to search for alternative means of reaching the Indies (the source of luxury goods and essential spices for preserving food). The first voyage of Columbus, in 1492, was only a few years off, and the consequent discovery of a new continent (America) and a new ocean (the Pacific) was about to transform ideas about the size and nature of the globe and its human inhabitants. Printing in movable type had been invented about a generation ago, and Caxton had already set up his press in Westminster (1476). By selecting these elements, we can portray the age as one of revolutionary change.

Yet when Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VII, probably no one in England would have heralded the dawn of a new era. Bosworth could have been seen as just the latest in a series of conflicts between two branches of the royal family, the Houses of York and Lancaster. This conflict, known as the Wars of the Roses, had lasted 30 years (1455–1485), causing destabilising fragmentations of power and largely sealing English cultural life off from continental developments. On becoming King (and his claim to the crown was decidedly weak), the Welshman Henry Tudor first had to consolidate his power in the realm. This he did by eliminating rivals, reducing the power of local lords and strengthening both royal finances and the national economy. By marrying the Yorkist Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, Henry symbolised a union between the two Houses; the Earl of Warwick, who had a stronger claim to the throne, was imprisoned and later executed. Two colourful episodes in Henry’s reign were provided by pretenders to the throne: Lambert Simnel pretended to be Warwick and, having been easily defeated at Stoke (1487), was employed in the royal kitchens. Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be the younger of the princes in the tower (allegedly murdered on the orders of Richard III), was executed (1497). A more insidious threat to central power came from overmighty local lords, who commanded bands of retainers amounting to small private armies. These were reduced through statutes which prohibited liveried servants in great households. Justice was enforced through the King’s Council, the Star Chamber (so called because of the ceiling decoration), and by local justices of the peace. In all of these, gentry and lesser nobility loyal to the King supplanted the great magnates: the rise of these ‘new men’ is an important social theme in the period. Royal income was increased through the ruthless taxation methods pursued by the churchmen Morton and Fox and the ‘ravening wolves’ Empson and Dudley. England’s principal export was wool, and important treaties were made with the Flemish, who imported this for their cloth industry.

Henry’s chief aim was to unify the nation around the central power of the crown. Marriages were arranged with the aim of consolidating relations at home and abroad. Henry’s eldest son Arthur was married to Catherine of Aragon (1501) – binding England to the great power of Spain – and his daughter Margaret was married to James IV of Scotland (1502): the kings of the House of Stuart in the next century spring from this marriage. Slowly the intellectual currents of the continent found their way to England: Henry’s reign saw the first generation of English humanist scholars, such as Thomas Linacre (c.1460–1524), who studied in Italy, and William Grocyn (c.1446–1519), teacher to Erasmus, More and Colet. The climate for the ‘new learning’, based on the study of ancient Latin and Greek texts, was such that Erasmus, who came to Oxford in 1498, said that England could provide a first-rate classical education. The foundation of St Paul’s School (1509) marks the spread of such education. In the same year, Henry VII died, leaving an England more united around the throne and with a full treasury.

National cohesion and financial security provided a strong foundation for Henry VIII on his accession. At the outset, Henry’s popularity was consolidated by both his personal attributes and policies. His skill at courtly pursuits, from martial exercises to music, was generally admired, and his intellectual interests in astronomy, literature, theology and other disciplines led Erasmus and other humanists to look to him as a great patron of learning. Henry sought an imperial image and presented himself as a Renaissance prince, the equal of the emperor Charles V and Francis I of France. To this end, a massive building programme was undertaken, and many new palaces, including Whitehall, were constructed in his reign. Henry’s marriage (by papal dispensation) to Catherine of Aragon, his brother Arthur’s widow, was also well received, as was the calculated execution of the hated Empson and Dudley. Early in Henry’s reign, Scotland was defeated at the battle of Flodden (1513); this saw the death of James IV and the massacre of the Scottish nobility and thus severely damaged Scotland’s own Renaissance fortunes. Abroad, the great powers were France and the Holy Roman Empire: English policy, run by the brilliant Thomas Wolsey (Chancellor 1515), was to maintain the balance of power between them. One particularly colourful event as part of this policy was the spectacular meeting between Henry and Francis I at the Field of Cloth of Gold (1520). France and the Empire had a protracted conflict as they fought over possession of the weak Italian states, and Charles V’s sack of Rome in 1527 marked a significant gain for the empire and had momentous consequences for future English history.

Henry needed a male heir to continue the Tudor Dynasty, but the marriage with Catherine had produced only a daughter (Mary). Frustrated, and in love with Anne Boleyn, Henry sought papal permission for the annulment of his marriage on the grounds that marrying his brother’s widow was sinful. However, the Pope was now prisoner of Charles V, who happened to be nephew to the Queen, and hence was in no position to grant a divorce. Wolsey was dismissed for his failure to resolve ‘The King’s Great Matter’ satisfactorily and died shortly before facing trial for high treason (1530). Wolsey’s position as Henry’s right-hand man was taken by Thomas Cromwell (c.1485–1540), whose two main objectives were the establishment of the absolute power of the Crown and the separation of the English Church from Rome. With Cromwell’s assistance, Henry proceeded to marry Anne Boleyn and break allegiance with Rome in a series of Acts passed by the ‘Reformation Parliament’ (1529–1536); in the 1534 Act of Supremacy, he was declared ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’. Parliament was itself a totally compliant body whose business was to enact the royal will: any voicing of independent views was liable to be construed as treasonous. England was now a self-governing ‘empire’; in the contemporary sense of owing no fealty of any kind to any outside body. Henry was aware of the new Protestant ideas but was himself strongly Catholic: indeed, he had been acclaimed defender of the Faith (Fidei Defensor) by the Pope for a book refuting Luther. England was technically still part of the Catholic Church, only with Henry rather than the Pope in charge in England: the ‘Henrician Reformation’ was thus based on establishing non-papal Catholicism. However, Henry was also ready to exploit resentment at the Catholic establishment which the new ideas had stirred up and was insistent that obedience to the crown superseded loyalty to Rome. His rule was as absolute as any of his continental counterparts, and arguably more so, since he was ruler in both realms, Church and State. Thomas More was executed for his refusal to accept this new supreme status (1535): failure to conform to the King’s ruling on religious matters was tantamount to treason. The individual had no freedom of conscience whatever.

Henry next raised funds and grateful clients by raiding the vast holdings of the Church. Through the dissolution of the monasteries (1536, 1539), Church wealth passed to the crown, and the support of the new gentry was bought with massive transference of land. Many buildings fell into decay, while others were adapted as country houses. The welfare and educational services provided by abbeys and monasteries were utterly destroyed. A northern rebellion against these policies, the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), was crushed, but it indicated the affection many people felt for the old religion, especially in the northern counties. English Church doctrine, enshrined in the Six Articles (1539), incorporated elements of both the new protestantism and traditional practices. Religious observance was a set of practices prescribed by the state and enforced by law; Church teaching was intrinsically connected to state power. The quest for a male heir claimed another victim in Anne Boleyn, who had given Henry another daughter (Elizabeth, the future queen), a crime for which she was punished by execution for alleged infidelity (1536). Henry’s third wife Jane Seymour (m. 1536) eventually gave birth to Edward, who succeeded as Edward VI when Henry died an obese physical wreck in 1547.

Edward VI was only nine years old when he came to the throne, and his reign (1547–1553) is dominated by the two protectors, first the Duke of Somerset (1547–1549) and then the Duke of Northumberland (1549– 1553). How much policy was owing to the clever and sickly boy king is a matter of debate. Somerset continued Henry’s plan of marrying Edward to Mary Stuart (the infant Mary, Queen of Scots), but after the ‘rough wooing’, which consisted in invasion and the sacking of Edinburgh, Mary was instead married to the French prince, later Francis II. A moderate protestant, Somerset relaxed Henry’s laws against heresy, and more continental reformers entered the country. In line with Reformation thinking, the Chantry Chapels (dedicated to saying masses for the dead) were deemed superstitious and dissolved in 1547; Cranmer’s first Prayer Book in English of 1549 gave liturgical form to this blend of Protestant belief and inherited custom and was reinforced by an Act of Uniformity which imposed it on the whole country (angering Cornishmen, who resented having to say prayers in English rather than Latin). Somerset’s years of control were also marked by severe economic hardship, a situation worsened by the policy of enclosures: this refers to the enclosing (with hedges) of public land, which was sold to private landlords for sheep farming, causing unemployment and misery in rural areas (sheep farming requires far less human labour than the cultivation of crops). The uprisings which followed, such as Robert Ket’s rebellion in 1549, led to Somerset’s downfall and replacement by the rapacious Northumberland. Under him, England turned towards a more extreme form of Protestantism: churches were ransacked, and a huge number of ecclesiastical artworks were destroyed on the puritanical principle that they promoted idolatry (the worshipping of images). The second version of the Prayer Book (1552) and the accompanying Act of Uniformity were much more protestant in content. When it became clear that Edward was dying, Northumberland tried to avoid the passing of the crown to Edward’s Catholic half-sister Mary (the daughter of Catherine of Aragon) and persuaded Edward to designate his (Northumberland’s) own daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey as heir. Yet when Edward died, Mary succeeded in escaping arrest and it soon became clear that it was she who commanded popular allegiance. The unfortunate Lady Jane Grey was ‘Queen for nine days’ before being executed. Mary duly took the crown in 1553.

Mary Tudor is still known as ‘Bloody Mary’ for her persecution of English Protestants as part of her policy of returning England to the Church of Rome. Yet she was initially welcomed after Northumberland’s extreme brand of Protestantism had offended traditional sensibilities. Early in her reign, Mary dismissed several protestant bishops, and Parliament repealed religious legislation passed under Edward. However, Mary’s plan to marry King Philip II of Spain caused apprehension: alliance with Spain would, it was feared, bring the loss of independence, and the introduction of the Inquisition, the most notorious of the tools of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church’s strategy of defending and reinforcing itself in the face of Protestant attacks. Sir Thomas Wyatt led a rebellion against this marriage in 1554; on its failure, he was executed, and Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth (daughter of Anne Boleyn) was arrested and, initially, imprisoned in the Tower of London. Mary and Philip were married at Winchester in 1554, and the nation was pardoned by Cardinal Pole for the sin of schism (division of the Church). In 1555, the Marian persecutions began: the most famous victims were Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. The tribulations of the Protestant martyrs under ‘Bloody Mary’ were recorded in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ and caused such revulsion that the cause of returning to the Catholic Church lost public support (though it might be said they were mild compared to state atrocities elsewhere). The last years of Mary’s reign saw the loss of England’s last possession in France, Calais (1558). Mary died the same year, probably of a cancer which she took to be a pregnancy, the marriage with Philip having produced no heir. The next in succession was thus Elizabeth, whose long reign (1558–1603) produced the ‘Elizabethan Age’, which is at the centre of our general notion of the English Renaissance.

Under previous monarchs, the English Church had broken with Rome and moved from Catholicism to moderate, then extreme Protestantism and back again. Popular religious sensibility was probably a mixture of these various strands, while separate groups adhered rigorously to different confessions and positions. An important part of domestic policy was the ‘Elizabethan Settlement’ (1559), an attempt to forge a Church under which most English could unite. This so-called via media (middle way) combined elements of Catholic discipline (such as church ceremony) with protestant teaching. The Settlement excluded, as nonconformists, committed Catholics at one end and Calvinist Puritans and Presbyterians at the other (Presbyterians believe in a church governed by elders rather than a hierarchy of bishops): a degree of national unity was achieved, and enforced through compulsory church attendance and fines for absenteeism, though dissent continued throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Elizabeth I herself seemed to wish for obedience rather than compelling inner adherence to certain articles of faith by making ‘windows into men’s souls’. Nobles and others with Catholic affiliations could be tolerated provided they paid their fines and did not make trouble. Nonetheless, persecution of heretics, including torture and execution, continued to be a routine method of state policing. Another unifying strategy, which also served to distract from such matters, was the cultivation of Elizabeth’s image as the Virgin Queen, effectively portrayed through various media from portraits to tournaments. Under Elizabeth, the court flourished and was largely responsible for the flourishing of the arts: the age saw remarkable creations in art (Hilliard), music (Gibbons, Tallis, Byrd), architecture (grand country houses like Hardwick Hall) and of course literature. A frequent characteristic of artistic creation was rich pattern and ornament, partly to advertise the wealth of the new rich who paid for it. Next to artistic achievement, the age is also famous for its statesman (Cecil, Walsingham) and sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Editor’s Preface
• General Introduction
• 1 Contexts: History, Politics, Culture
• 2 Texts: Themes, Issues, Concepts
• 3 Criticism: Approaches, Theory, Practice
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Index