The Early Modern Period:

Historical background

Renaissance or the Early Modern period: 1500 to 1700 (16th – 17th centuries)

Old, geocentric views: the earth is the center of the universe. The universe consists of
four elements: water, earth, fire, air. There are different types of human characters as a
result of misbalance of the four “humors” /lat. sekreti/ in the body: the phlegm is
equivalent to water as an element and its excess is a cause of a slow, phlegmatic type;
the excess of blood, equivalent to the element of fire, produces the sanguine type (a
good natured, merry person); the choleric type is a product of excess of a yellow
humor (secret) and produces a jealous, revengeful person; the melancholic type is a
result of the excess of black humor in the body.

The age is characterized by bustling markets, newly opened universities, ambitious

noblemen developing their public careers.

Language
Spanish, Italian and French are the main languages in Europe; Latin is still the
international language (e.g. Thomas More’s Utopia was written in Latin first, in
1517). By the end of 16 century, the process of English linguistic self-confidence was
finished (Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, Bible translations). Protestantism played
its part in this process by its reliance on reading the Holy Scriptures (the Bible) in
English translation.

Politics
There is political stability unlike the previous (15 th) century when the feudal barons
and the rivalry among them caused lots of social and political turmoil and
disintegration in the culture. The Tudor line was established by Owen Tudor (a
Welshman who married Catherine, Henry the V’s widow, from the Lancaster line (‘the
red rose’); their grandson, the earl of Richmond, defeated Richard III at Bosworth
Field and was crowned as Henry VII in 1485; he married Elizabeth of York (from “the
white rose”) and thus ended the War of the Roses.
The authority was centralized in the monarch; the Parliament decided only on some
major issues, like taxes.

Commerce: the international trade was becoming more and more dynamic; fencing
off pastures is happening in England (ograduvanje) to raise sheep. The effects were
creation of a Renaissance ‘proletariat and poverty’. London was the fastest growing
town in Europe; the population in 30 years doubled (form 60,000 in 1520 to 120,000
in 1550);

Printing: Caxton’s printing press was an important technological, cultural and

historical event. The availability of printed books contributed to rise of literacy.
Guttenberg’s moving type (printing press) and Protestantism with its translations of
the Bible from Latin (the most important ones were Tyndel’s) encouraged silent and
individual reading of the Bible besides the communal one and contributed to the
general literacy.

Culture: The Renaissance culture was a rhetorical one. There was a tendency in
literature and in everyday speech (especially at the Court) to use complex verbal
signals. In general, the Court culture was marked by ostentatiousness (nametlivost,
percenje, preteranost) in speech/writing, clothes (at Queen Elizabeth’s Court people
wore ruffs /mnogu visoki kruti jaki) and behavior; the art of concealing real messages
in speech/writing was a real art; it was reflected in the poetry of the period which was
a powerful social vent /ventil/ to air out frustrations, fear and liberal ideas in this
period of royal political totalitarian regime.

The Court idealized the past; it organized tournaments which reflected the nostalgia
for chivalric values of Medieval times (the discovery of gunpowder changed the ways
of fighting wars). Also, the court highly valued rhetoric, poetry, music, and masques.
Il Cortegiano (The Courtier) by Castiglione was a model of the perfect
gentlemanly behavior; the royal proximity (blisokost do kralot) was crucial for
one’s career; the court poets Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard Earl of Surry,
Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh were deeply affected by this reality.
Religious matters:
Henry VIII, the defender of the faith attacked Martin Luther; he threatened the clergy
and subdued them. He divorced Anne Boleyn in 1533 and was excommunicated by
the Pope. He introduced the Acts of Succession (new dynastic settlement); the Acts of
Supremacy (the King as the supreme head of the Church of England).
Thomas More (a Catholic thinker and writer) refused to support the King. In 1535 he
was beheaded. Religious extremists were punished; Anabaptists were burned;
William Tyndal was exiled for his contribution in translating the Bible. In November
1515, Martin Luther published his works and began attacking the Catholic Church,
“the Satan’s church” which was robbing the people by selling indulgences
(oprostnici);

Renaissance and Humanism

There was a general rebirth of the letters and arts and a recovery of facts and artifacts
of Classical antiquity. New aesthetic forms and ideas emerged and new worlds were
discovered. The new individual versus the old communal set of values was emerging.
“Man’s the measure of all things”, Pico Mirandola’s slogan and his ideas of
individual’s malleability (kovlivost, oblikuvanje) and reshaping one’s life according to
individual choices and freedom, was spreading. The humanist ideas were also spread
by More’s Utopia (1516). There were general reforms and changes of institutions; the
educational curricula were changed and new subjects were added (grammar, logic,
rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, music, literature, culture, Greek, Latin). Didactic
books were published: “The Schoolmaster” by Roger Ascham, “The Governor” by Sir
Thomas Elyot.

Tudor aesthetics and ideas:

In 1512 Erasmus wrote “De Copia” (copiousness - mnostvo, bogatstvo od nesto). It
was a source to teach one about expressive power, verbal richness, eloquence,
mannerism of expression, rhetorical devises, rhetorical culture. The educated men and
authors knew and used more than 200 figures of speech. Thus, verbal self-display,
ornamented language, clothes, jewelry and furniture was the tendency. John Lily’s
character Eupheus engendered the term euphemism – excessive indirectness in speech
(which Shakespeare ridiculed in his plays). The Protestant iconoclastic ideology was
against ornaments of any kind and sacraments in the churches. Music and singing was
considered a social grace and musical literacy was common quality (lute, viol, harp).
Singing madrigals (singing in 2-8 voices), hymns and ballads was very popular. The
popular arts and artistic skills were flourishing: poetry, music, landscaping,
architecture and dance. The typical design of the age consisted of elaborate, intricate
(kompleksni), regular, shapes and forms; highly patterned surfaces (ukrasni
sablonzirani dezeni). Beauty, concord, harmony and order in cosmos were reflected in
poetry (sonnet) and music. The appeal of symmetry, proportion, and the fascination
with the order in the cosmos came from the respect of classical arts and literature.
There was a sense of wonder at the world as seen for the fist time; admiration and
imitation of classics.

Renaissance poetry was not only interested in cunning (vesto sozdadeni) illusions of
representational accuracy, but also in magical power of exquisite workmanship in
order to draw readers into fabricated worlds. Poetry was seen as a social grace
(opstestveno blagorodna rabota).

Sir Philip Sydney was writing about the magical power of poetry which equals
the moral power; creating second nature is more superior, but not as an escapist
fantasy, but a model to be emulated (imitated) and built into the reality; a
didactic role of poetry is important; human sinfulness and corrupted life are part
of reality, but poetry can mark the way back to Eden (rajot) and towards a
virtuous, fulfilled existence with the persuasive force, energy and vividness of its
figurative language; poetry impels ( gi tera, stimulira) readers towards the good.
Legends of religious and national heroes; pastoral heroic, lyrical satiric elegiac,
tragic, comic poetry. Poetic forms: sonnets, epistles /poslanija/, epigrams /short,
witty poem/, funeral elegies, masques.
 Pastoral poetry and its motifs and themes are the main markers of Tudor
poetry: tending flocks, participating at singing contents, leisure, humility,
contentment, the simplicity of country life. The pastoral songs/poems depicted the
joys of shepherds’ lives or their disappointments in love (e.g. Christopher Marlow’s
“The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”). Epics and long poems talked about distant
past; Homer and Virgil were the models; heroic honor, martial courage; loyalty,
friendship, leadership were the main values (e.g. Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie
Queene” was a romantic epic with tangled episodic plots, exotic adventures, love-war
and medieval allegories. It was pastoral satire or mythological narrative with comic
elements and philosophical meditations; it is a wonderful bland of genres and ideas
which reflect the overall renaissance culture.

Literary life was going on in literary circles; artists and poets had many patrons; it
was common to dedicate the same book to many patrons and to print it many times.
Also the middle class reading public was growing.

Lots of men studied at universities; the Inns of Court were the first law schools.
Knowledge and education became necessary for one to hold public service positions,
or manage noblemen’s estates. Spenser and Marlow were on scholarships and Thomas
Nash and Robert Greene were called the University wits.

There were no copy rights and many pirated, cheap literary manuscripts were
produced. At the same there were no freedoms of expression and press. The
government regulations were stringent; printing was strictly limited to certain areas,
so printing was not allowed outside the city of London, Oxford and Cambridge
(London had the Register of Stationers’ company, the guild of book traders). Prior
approval of the official censors (political, judicial and ecclesiastical) was needed.
Thus, self-censorship and indirectness marked the writing style of the time.