ENGLISH RENAISSANCE AND ITS RELATIONS WITH THE CONTINENTAL MILIEU

1. The Renaissance in Europe: A Chronological and Topographical Survey

The historical period following the Middle Ages in Europe is, as it is well-known, commonly termed Renaissance. It comprises approximately all the sixteenth century, although its precedents can be found in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and its enduring effects would be felt well into the seventeenth. In this respect, it appears first in Italy in the works of its artist and writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who showed a renewed interest in man and in classical Greek and Latin culture for their own sake more or less detached from the theocentric medieval view which conceived of man only in its spiritual dimension in relation to a rigid and centralised doctrinal core of beliefs.

From the historical point of view the Renaissance witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner's compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.

So this period of European history goes along naturally with Humanism, which means the orientation of the European scholars towards the classical culture and art of Greece and Rome, in an attempt to imitate and reconstruct its past splendour. This aim was facilitated by the flight of the Eastern intellectuals from Byzantium after its fall in 1453 and their admittance into Italy, for they brought into that country many books and ideas related to the classic antiquity. Humanism had several significant features. First, it took human nature in all of its various manifestations and achievements as its subject. Second, it emphasised the dignity of man. In place of the medieval ideal of a life of penance as the highest and noblest form of human activity, the Humanists looked to the struggle of creation and the attempt to exert mastery over nature. Thirdly, Humanism looked forward to a rebirth of a lost human spirit and wisdom. In the course of striving to recover it, however, the Humanists assisted in the consolidation of a new spiritual and intellectual outlook and in the development of a new body of knowledge. The effect of Humanism was to help men break free from the mental strictures imposed by religious orthodoxy, to inspire free inquiry and criticism, and to inspire a new confidence in the possibilities of human thought and creations.

Humanism was initiated by secular men of letters rather than by the scholar-clerics who had dominated medieval intellectual life and had developed the scholastic philosophy. Humanism began and achieved fruition first in Italy. Its predecessors were men like Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and its chief protagonists included Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457), Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-1499). In the Netherlands the enormous figure of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1465-1536) stands out distinctively. He lived in Venice, Rome, Oxford, Cambridge (as a lecturer of Greek) and Basel. In Spain we can quote the names of Antonio de Nebrija (1441-1552) and Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540), who lectured at the universities of Lovaine, Oxford and Paris. In England we can make out a first generation of humanists who went to Italy to learn Greek from the exiles from Constantinople and on their return to England established a sound teaching of Greek at Oxford: William Grocyn (1446?-1519), Thomas Linacre (1460?-1524), physician and scholar; and, above all, John Colet (1467?-1519); but, of course, the most outstanding English humanist was Thomas More (1478-1535).

In general the Renaissance writers in Europe adopted as their models on the one hand, the classical writers of Rome and Greece and, on the other hand, the great Italian writers of the fourteenth century: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. The literary topics are a reflection of the Renaissance ideology of anthropocentrism, enjoyment of terrene pleasures and ambition of worldly renown (fame): poets sings now above all of human love, nature and either sophisticated and unreal or nationalistic epic deeds leading to fame. Philosophical and political topics, in dialogue form, and history were also quite popular during the Renaissance.

Latin played a very important role in the development of the vernacular languages, which were used now by the different nations as a way to exalt their differences. It was the lingua franca of diplomacy, science and teaching, and, consequently, was used to lecture in all the European universities, following the current idea that human knowledge could only be expressed in a noble and wise language. During the Renaissance it met a renewal in its study and a wish to try to speak it in a more correct and polished way. This brought about indirectly that the vernaculars were used more and more by those who lacked a full command of Latin in order not to spoil it. At the same time Latin and the Latin writers were also viewed as a model on which to mould the modern languages.

Now let us briefly see the main literary developments in Italy, France and Spain during this period:

Italy is graced with being the birthplay of Renaissance. Princes and churchmen fostered and protected all the arts. The great number of writers who appeared in this period either began new genres or amply and originally developed elements sketched by the foregoing men of letters. In this line, for example, Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530) wrote his Arcadia, grounding himself on Theocritus (born c. 300 B.C.), Virgil's Georgics and Boccaccio's Ninfale d'Ameto, and initiating the fashion in Europe of the pastoral novel in prose with interspersed poems.

In the domain of the treatise we must mention Baldassare di Castiglione (1478-1529). He wrote Il cortegiano, a conduct-book in which he presents the ideal of the perfect Renaissance gentleman elegant, cultured, exquisite, besides a good soldier in opposition to the medieval hero. In this same area, but in the district of political thought, an indispensable figure is that of Niccolò Machiavelli (1496-1527), Florentian politician and diplomat whose Il principe had ample repercussion all throughout Europe, and especially on English drama. Here he takes as a model the political attitude of Cesar Borgia and holds that the political behaviour of a statesman should be subordinated to political success, introducing thus the justification of the reason of state.

Another important development of European dimension in Italy is the emergence of learned epic poetry. Trying to follow the steps of Homer and Virgil, several Italian poets undertook the task of composing long epic poems, whose matter is that of the old medieval epic made more fantastic through the fifteenth-century fashion of the books of chivalry and highly sophisticated and refined now at the hands of such famous poets as Matteo Maria Boiardo (1434-1494) with his poem Orlando innamorato, in which Roland is turned now into an errand knight who performs astounding deeds; Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) and his Orlando furioso, a continuation of the former work but much better and widely influential in Europe; and Torcuato Tasso (1544-1595), as important as Ariosto, with his Gerusalemme liberata, on the capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade by Godfrey of Bouillon.

Italy must also be brought about when dealing with the development of the narrative genre. Boccaccio had already set the fashion, as we now, with his Decameron; but his example of short narratives or novelle was followed well into the seventeenth century by succeeding prose writers, whose stories served as matter for many English and Spanish plays. Masuccio de Salerno wrote tales following the steps of Boccaccio, but of a cruder nature; Franco Sachetti (1335-1400) wrote some 223 novelle; and more or less the same number wrote the two most important novelle writers of the period: Mateo Bandello (1485-1553) with his Novelle, Giambattista Giraldi, also known as Cinthio, with his Hecathommithi.

France comes into contact with the Renaissance at the end of the fifteenth century and beginning of the sixteenth, as a consequence of the military expeditions of Charles VIII, Louis XII and Francis I. In this way the French got into contact with the new Italian culture and fashion: social refinement, cult of the art and love of the Greek and Latin antiquity.

Prose in France is represented first and foremost by François Rabelais (1494-1553). He received a painstaking education, professed as a monk and, having renounced de clerical vows, studied medicine; kept correspondence with Erasmus and published Pantagruel (The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Renowned Pantagruel, King of the Dipsodes) in 1532. It is the joyful story of a fantastical giant travelling in France and exposing satirically the many contemporary social and cultural shortcomings of the country. In Gargantua (La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua, 1534) he narrates the adventures of Pantagruel's supposed father, focussing now on the pedagogical and dialectical methods of La Sorbonne. Both books received several additions and caused a great deal of scandal. In them he endeavours to destroy the medieval ideology and the construction of a cultural system on Renaissance bases. Another fundamental prose-writer is Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), of European dimension for his famous Essais (Essays), in which his humanist and stoic ideals stand out.

In poetry we must cite Clement Marot (1496-1554), secretary to Marguerite of Navarre (authoress of The Heptameron), who made him realize the importance of the Italian Renaissance. Influenced by the Reformation, he was compelled to go into exile. His most famous works are "Épître à Lyon Jamet" and "Épîtres au roi". He was one of the first French poets to attempt the Petrarchan sonnet form and to create new or to improve existing lyrical forms, composing "chansons" and "cantiques" and originating the blazon (1536), a satiric verse describing, as a rule, some aspect of the female body in minute detail. The influence of Marot was evident in England among the Elizabethans, notably Edmund Spenser, and was revived in France in the 17th century.

However, the full adherence to the the new Italianate fashion was not carried out till several years later by the effort of a group of poets that called themselves La Pléiade. They took their name from that given by the ancient Alexandrian critics to seven tragic poets of the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BC). The natural leader of the group was Pierre Ronsard, but it also included Joachim du Bellay, Jean Dorat, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Rémy Belleau, Pontus de Tyard, and Étienne Jodelle. The principles of La Pléiade were set forth by du Bellay in Défense et illustration de la langue françoise (1549), a document that advocated the enrichment of the French language by discreet imitation and borrowing from the language and literary forms of the classics and the works of the Italian Renaissanceincluding such forms as the Pindaric and Horatian ode, the Virgilian epic, and the Petrarchan sonnet. As a poet, we must mention Du Bellay (1525-1560). His most important work is Antiquités de Rome, a poem in which the high veneration felt for the ancient ruins of the old metropolis is mixed with his dejection at the destruction of the Roman grandeur by time. Pierre Ronsard (1524-1585) is, however, the genius of the French Renaissance lyric. Steeped in the tradition of the classics of Greece and Rome, he rejected soon any kind of ambition in order to devote himself to poetry. During his life his published a great number of lyrical works: Odes (Pindaric, Horatian and Anacreontic), Les Amours (1552), Continuation des amours and Nouvelles Continuations, Hymnes. He also wrote La Franciade, which he intended to be the French counterpoint of The Aeneid, but was left incomplete. Ronsard is an extraordinary poet when he keeps to the thrust of sincere feeling, but dwindle when he sticks too much to classical models or exhibits unnecessary erudition.

In Spain the Renaissance came relatively early by reason of the ample contact held with Italy through the kingdom of Arragon, which kept under its dominion part of the Italian peninsula and the isle of Sicily. Other facts to be taken into account concerning the spreading of the Renaissance through Spain are the invention and regular use of the printing press and the transformation of Spain into the main basis of Charles V's Empire, which comprised the Low Countries, Germany and extensive territories in Italy.

Accordingly two main periods can be distinguished in the adaptation of the Renaissance in Spain:

a) The end of the Catholic Monarchs' reign and the epoch of Charles V (1500-1556). This is a period characterized by imitation and acclimatization of Italian forms and themes, for the journey of Spanish poets in Italy and the coming of Italian humanists (Martir de Anglería, Marineo Sículo, Castiglione) to Spain helped considerably to spread widely the Renaissance tastes and forms.

b) The reign of Philip II (1556-1598), characterized by the naturalitation of themes and the incorporation of religious subjects and the rejection, as an effect of the Contrareformation, of any form of heterodoxy.

It is during Charles V's reign when the a definite Petrarchan school can be seen in Spain: out of the contact with Italy the hendecasyllable is adopted as well as the love and the pastoral themes.

The two most important poets of the period are Juan Boscán (1487-1542), who was the first succeeding in adapting the sonnet, wrote a magnificent translation of Il cortegiano and was highly influential in shaping the Renaissance direction of Garcilaso's poetry. This one is, as everybody knows the most Renaissance poet in Spain with only thirty-eight sonnets, five songs, three eclogues, two elegies and one epistle.

Another important names within the domain of the Petrarchan school in Spain are Hernando de Acuña (?1520-1580), Gutierre de Cetina (1520-?1557) and Francisco de Figueroa. In the times of Philip II, the most important figure representing the Petrarchan tradition is Fernando de Herrera (1534-1597).

In Portugal we can only mention, for lack of space, Saa de Miranda (1485-1558), a friend of Garcilaso and the adaptator of the new style, and Luis de Camoes who shares many traits of it, too. In Germany the best poet of the Renaissance is Hans Sach (1494-1576).

The Renaissance in England shows two main characteristics: it affected literature relatively late, when in France and Italy it was already dying out, and it was mixed up with the Reformation.

During the fifteenth century several English intellectuals went to Italy to learn from the exiled scholars from Constantinople which had been captured by the Turks in 1453. These men returned to England as teachers and scholars and established so sound a teaching of Greek at Oxford that even Erasmus came to England to learn it. Among those scholars, we must mention William Grocyn (1446?-1519), Thomas Linacre (1460?-1524), John Colet (1467-1519), this last one a teacher of Erasmus.

Thomas More (1478-1535), disciple of the aforesaid and friend of Erasmus was the first Humanist to possess a creative gift for Literature. Although he wrote his Utopia in Latin, he wrote in English as well (poems, translations, tracts and The History of King Richard the Thirde) and is therefore important to the development of prose.

Later humanists are the so-called Educationists, teachers and scholars of the generation following More, some of them protestant and all exerting a strong influence in the cultural life of the time. Among them, we can count: Sir Thomas Elyot (1490?-1546), Sir John Cheke (1514-1547), Sir Thomas Wilson (1525-1581) and Roger Ascham (1515-1568).

An important ferment of the cultural scene was the influence of translations into English, first of all Bible translation during the 16th century in one version made out of the blending of the previous translations by William Tyndale (1484-1536) and Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) in 1537 (Antwerp) and later in 1539 with the support of the Crown, being in successive editions widely spread throughout England. As for the other translations, suffice it to say that the Elizabethan age was extremely prolific in writing and publishing (the Short Title Catalogue of the Bibliographical society lists 26,000 items published between 1475-1640) and many of the works were translations. Among the most significant we can quote translations from the classics Plautus, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, Cicero, Plutarch, Apuleius, from the Greek: Thucydides, Herodotus, Aristotle, Homer (though not the dramatists or Plato); Italian: Boccaccio (Decameron, only fragments), Bandello, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Tasso (though "The Prince" was not translated); French: Montaigne's Essays, very popular and many translations of classical works; Spanish: Cervantes's Don Quixote and Fray Antonio López de Guevara's The Diall of Princes and Lazarillo de Tormes.

In poetry, a new mood was going to develop under the reign of Henry VIII, brought about by Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Before, we only have the last descendants of the School of Chaucer, Stephen Hawes (1475-1523?), Alexander Barclay (1475-1552), John Skelton (1460?- 1529) and the Scottish William Dunbar (1463?-1530?) and Gavin Douglas (1475?-1522), who, despite their different merits, were definitely medieval and, finally, had drawn verse to langour (Stephen Hawes) and disorder (John Skelton).

Though Wyatt and Surrey lived in the 1st half of the 16th century and their works had surely circulated in the form of manuscripts, their verse was not published till 1557, when the printer Richard Tottel published the Songes and Sonnettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earl of Surrey and other, commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany. Among the others we find Wyatt, Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Lord Vaux, John Heywood, the dramatist and Edward Somerset, plus 130 poems by unknown authors. It was greatly popular, since the work ran to 9 editions between 1557 and 1587.

During the second part of the sixteenth century (80's and 90's), the Italianate forms are naturalized and the full potentialities of English verse arise at the hands of England's best poets of the time (and practitioners of the sonnet form): Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

2. The medieval Inheritance

The Renaissance in Italy was not an abrupt break with the past, although there it started much earlier and in many aspects achieved its greatest moments. However, it only occasionally broke with religious orthodoxy. In the northern countries the religious breach is apparent and characteristic, although, in the end, this is one more of many medieval characteristics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Italy itself the proto-Renaissance of the 14^th and 15^th centuries is either entirely medieval Dante (13^th century) or two-faced (that is, looking both to the Middle Ages and to the oncoming Renaissance). This is the case of Petrarch and Boccaccio, who, although being humanists in their interest and command of classical text in Latin, history and philology (especially Petrarch), evince clear medieval traits (they underwent more or less sudden religious crisis and had their own kinds of retractations for their profane works and interests). But even part of the complex poetical system called Petrarchism, as it arose at the hands of Petrarch, owes a lot to the medieval tradition: the provenzal lyrics of the troubadours, who, during the 13^th century, and following the defeat of Provenze in the battle of Muret (1213), were scattered over Italy. There, in Sicily, at the court of Frederick II, they helped to shape the Italian lyric in the so-called Sicilian school, which, in turn was going to be instrumental in the emergence of dolce stil nuovo of Florence, which already connects with Dante and possesses several of the most characteristic marks of the Petrarchan poetry. So, the sonnet is not a Florentine creation, though it was there that it was developed at the hands of the stilnovist, but a Sicilian invention (the first poet Sicilian poet in using this stanza is Giacomo de Lentini between 1230-1240).

In the other countries the medieval elements appeared often mixed with Renaissance traits in diverse degrees of quantity and tempo. Such characteristics as the general belief in the Ptolomeic cosmography, the theocentric view, the reaction against secularity, the persistence of popular forms of art and entertainment (such as the moralities and dance of death), or of popular metres and medieval literary tradition, practised more or less intermingled with Renaissance and classical moods (as in the case of Wyatt, Surrey, Garcilaso and Boscán), etc. shows that in the 16^th century there still remained much of the medieval awareness of life.

3. The Petrarchist inheritance: Il Canzoniere

Petrarch has been aptly defined as the last of the great medieval spirit and the first of the Renaissance. On the one hand he maintains the mystic idealism of the Middle Ages; on the other hand, he breaths into the ambience of the forthcoming Renaissance in his imitation and interest for the classics, and, above all, in the discovery of the modern personal subjective experience of love. What Petrarch really gave to the succeeding poets is a series of core conventions and formal traits, which modified and enlarged with due accretions was going to be loosely called afterwards the Petrarchist tradition, highly influential during the centuries sealed by the spirit of the Renaissance (15^th to 18^th).

If we attempt a short summary of Petrarchism we should note:

1. The love relationship is understood in terms of vassalage: the lover attempts to raise himself over the limitations of reality after the ideal of the beloved. This vassalage may go without the return of the love by the mistress.

2. Petrarchism insists on the unique character of the sentimental vicissitude.

3. This vicissitude involves an existential dimension, which, in turn, implies two things, that the action a) is placed within the domain of the unaccomplished, the deficient, the troubled, and b) the register of style is high.

4. The beloved one may be beautiful and cruel without justification, which makes the lover to stand in conflict with himself, torn apart between revolt and acceptation.

5. The lover is seized by a kind of transport, in which the flesh is not necessarily ruled out, but with a clear predominance of exaltation of sentiment and introspection.

Concerning form, several of the many traits brought about by Petrarchism can be mentioned here:

1. Figure of word consisting in introducing the beloved's name with a double meaning: characteristically in Petrarch Laura is confused with "lauro" (laurel) and "l'aure" (breeze).

2. Asyndetic cumulation.

3. Fixed types of tropes or images:

Metaphors: expressing movement from the body to the soul (piercing arrows, portrait of the beloved into the heart of the lover); chasing and catching (the beloved one is the game; the lover is captured into the net of the lady's headdress); elementary (earth, water, air, fire) associations (the warmth of love = heat, weeping = water; sighs = air, the mistress' heart = stone.

Antonomasia (the beloved one is termed "dolce guerrera" or "la mia dolce enemica", "e'l pastor ch'a Golia ruppe la fronte" = "the shepherd who broke the forehead to Goliath", i.e, David).

Synechdoches: a part of the body (eyes, hair, hands) is isolated and made stand for the whole beloved one.

4. Figures of thought:

The moment in which the poet fell in love is dated and retold.

The "conceit", "concetto" or "conceto", a kind of sustained and extended image (throughout the sestet or the octave or the whole sonnet): the ship wandering astray in the sea.

Oxymoron: "dolce guerrera", "dolce enemica", heats and colds together (to get frozen in sheer heat, for instance), etc

Antithesis: a long sentence is arranged on opposing term.

Hyperbole to express the rare qualities (both physically and morally) of the beloved one, the power of poetry or the humbleness of the poem.

Together with these recurrent traits (and many other which are not mentioned here) we find some other which were added by the Italian followers of Petrarch during the fifteenth century (for example, Antonio Tebaldeo, Pietro Bembo) or by the rediscovery and cultivation of the classics poets (Sapho, Catulus, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Anacreon) of Greece and Rome.

4. The English Sonnet and Its Relation to the European Tradition: Wyatt, Spenser, Ronsard, Garcilaso

A direct outcome of the Renaissance is the vogue of sonnet sequences that ensued in Europe (Italy, France, Spain and England) during some time or other of the sixteenth century. Anyway, each country has its own rhythm of development and its peak moments of fashion. Concerning England, we can distinguish five main moments: the first adaptations of the form at the hands of Wyatt and, in the following generation, at the hands of the Earl of Surrey (first half of the sixteenth century), the publication of the Tottel Miscellany (in fact entitled Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other), the first five years of the 1580's (1580-84) with the writing of Astrophel and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney, and finally the 1590's with the great eclosion of the great sonnet vogue of this decade with many names (Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson, etc.) among which the names of Edmund Spencer and William Shakespeare stand high.

In comparison with the continental pattern of sonnet (ABBA ABBA CDC DCD; with some variations in the sestet: CDC DCD; CDE CDE; CC DEDE) the English sonnet from the very beginning derived towards a certain peculiar form. Wyatt modelled his sonnets on those of Petrarch, but differing from him already in several aspects: Petrarch usually made sonnets divided in an octave (ABBA ABBA) and a sestet (CDC DCD or some other combination). This brings about two important consequences: (a) the Petrarchan sonnet resembles something like two linked poems expressing different aspects of the same idea, and (b) there is absence of any strong final emphasis, such as a concluding couplet would givesuch emphasis tending to make the sonnet fall into three parts instead of two. However, Wyatt, though generally using Petrarchan rhymes for the octave, accidentally or deliberately chose to end most of his sonnets with a couplet (ABBA ABBA CDDC EE), and thus helped to give a special character to the Elizabethan sonnet, which, as used by Surrey, settled down into three quatrains with alternate rhymes, and a final couplet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG[1]). With diverse variations Sir Philip Sidney (ABAB BABA CDCD EE[2]) in the 1580's and Spenser (ABAB BCBC CDCD EE), in the 1590's kept to this pattern, and when the form was taken by Shakespeare it exhibited the fully developed Elizabethan form receiving its most common name of Shakespearean sonnet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). The main consequence of this pattern is that it presents a characteristic closure by means of the final couplet working as a clinch by way of summary, coda or contraposition which give a more definite closing to the composition.

We have only space here to add that it was contemporary French rather than older Italian influence that moved the Elizabethan mind to sonnet-writing. The first inspiration came from Marot (1495-1544); though the sonnet was not naturalized in France until La Pléiade (Ronsard, 1524-85 and Du Bellay, 1525-60). Philip Desportes (1546-1606), a less important poet, was specially admired and imitated by the Elizabethans. Spenser, the true father of the Elizabethan sonnet, shows indebtedness to Du Bellay in the title of two group of sonnets, The Visions of Bellay and The Ruines of Rome by Bellay. He also translated from Marot another set, The Visions of Petrarch. Two of the sonnets in the Amoretti refer to the Platonic "Idea" of beauty which outshines any mortal embodiment. The "Idea", found also in numerous French writers, became a theme of later English sonnets, especially those of Michael Drayton (Idea's Mirror, printed 1594), who borrowed his very title from a sequence sonnet by a minor French poet, Claude de Pontoux. Samuel Daniel's Delia (1592) is inspired, as can be easily seen, in Maurice Scève's Delia (anagram for "Idea"), a long poem in "dizains" (Spanish "decimas") with a strong Platonic bent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albert, Edward. 1990. History of English Literature. Walton-on-Thames (Surrey), Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Victoria, Scarborough (Ontario): Nelson Ltd. 5th edition. Revised by J.A. Stone.

Barnard, Robert. 1984. A Short History of English Literature. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd. [library]

Baugh, Albert C: 1981. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. [library]

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Burgess, Anthony. 1974. English Literature. Longman. [library]

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Daiches, David. 1972. A Critical History of English Literature. London: Secker & Warburg.. [library]

Díaz Plaja, Guillermo. 1976. La literatura universal. Barcelona: Martín Casanovas Editor. [library]

Evans, Ifor. 1985. A Shosrt History of English Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin. [library]

Foster, Leonard. 1969. The Icy Fire: Five: Five Studies in European Petrarchism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Legouis, Emile. 1989. A Short History of English Literature. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. [library]

Legouis, E. & Cazamian, L. 1960. A History of English Literature. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. [library]

Lever, J. W. 1959. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet. London: Methuen.

Mortimer, Anthony. 1975. Petrarch Canzoniere in the English Renaissance. Bergamo: Minerva Italica.

Padilla Bolívar, A. 1983. Atlas de literatura universal. Barcelona: Jover, D. L. [library]

Parkinson de Sanz, Sara M.. 1975. Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana, expresamente escrita para contestar al Temario Oficial de Oposiciones a Cátedra de Inglés de Instituto de Bachillerato. Sara M. Parkinson, Depósito Legal M-9020-1975. I.S.B.N. 84-400- 8430-7. Tomos 1 a 3 (5 tomos).

Riquer Martín de y José María Valverde. 1955-58. Historia de la literatura universal. Vols. II y III. Barcelona: Planeta. 10 vols. [library]

Rees, D. G. 1960. "Italian and Italianate Poetry". In J. R. Brown and B Harris (eds.) Elizabethan Poetry. London: Stratford -Upon-Avon-Studies 2.

Roche, Thomas P. jr. 1989. Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequence. New York: AMS Press.

Sampson, George. 1970. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [library]

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Wischer, E. et alii. (eds.). 1989. Akal Historia de la literatura. Literatura y Sociedad en el mundo occidental. Madrid: Ediciones Akal. 4 vols.: Vol. 1: El mundo Antiguo, 1200 a.C. - 600 d.c.; Vol. 2: El mundo medieval: 600-1400; Vol. III: Renacimiento y Barroco, 1400-1700; Vol. IV: Ilustración y Romanticismo, 1700-1830. [library]

READINGS

Critical Backup

Abrams et alii. (eds.). 1973, etc. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Vol. I. (Any available edition: 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, or 6^th) [library]:

"The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603)".

The corresponding introduction to the authors read: Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare.

Gastón, Elduayen. 1994. "Siglo XVI". En Javier del Prado (coordinador) et alii Historia de la literatura francesa. Madrid: Cátedra (Crítica y Estudios Literarios), pp. 211-321. [library]

Kirkpatrick, Robin. 1995. English and Italian literature from Dante to Shakespeare: a Study of Source, Analogues and Divergence. London and New York: Longman.

Chapters 3: "Humanism and poetry", pp. 116-154.

López Estrad, Francisco. 1980. Siglo de Oro: Renacimiento. Vol. 2 de Francisco Rico (editor geeral) Historia y crítica de la literatura española. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica:

Lazaro Carreter, Fernando: "Imitación y originalidad en la poética renacentista", pp. 91-97.

Lapesa, Rafael: "La trayectoria poética de Garcilaso", pp. 127-131.

Stanton, Edward F.: "Ent tanto que de roas y azucena", pp. 134-137.

Lapesa, Rafael: "Castillejo y Cetina. Entre poesía de cancionero y poesía italianizante", pp. 149-155.

Mann, Nicholas. 1989 (1984). "Introducción" to the edition of Petrarca, Francesco. 1989. Cancionero. Madrid: Cátedra (Col. Letras Universales), 2 vols. Bilingual edition. Pp. 19-120.

Menéndez Peláez, Jesús (ed.). 1993. Historia de la literatura española. Vol. II: Renacimiento y Barroco. León: Editorial Everest. 3 vols. [librarty]:

Capitúlo I: "Introducción a la literatura del Renacimiento", Sections 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, pp. 42-46.

Capítulo III: "La poesía en el siglo XVI", Section III.1.2. "Corriente innovadora italianizante", pp. 160-180.

Pujol, Carlos. 1982. "Introducción" a su edición de Sonetos para Helena. Edición bilingüe de Carlos Pujol. Barcelona: Bruguera. 5-17

Gendre, André. 1993. "Introduction" to his edition of Les Amours et Les Folastries (1552-1560). Edition établie, présentée e tannotée par André Gendre. Paris: Librairie Générale Française, pp. 7-74.

SET READINGS

Abrams et alii. (eds.). 1973, etc. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Vol. I. (Any available edition: 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, or 6^th) [library]:

Thomas Wyatt: "The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Reign", "Farewell Love", "They Flee from Me".

Sir Philip Sidney, from Astrophil and Stella: Sonnets 5, 18.

Edmund Spenser, from Amoretti: Sonnet 34.

William Shakespeare, from his Sonnets: Sonnets 116 and 130.

Góngora, Luis de. 1969. Sonetos completos. Edición de Biruté Ciplijauskaité. Madrid: Castalia.

Sonnet 149.

Petrarca, Francesco. 1989. Cancionero. Madrid: Cátedra (Col. Letras Universales), 2 vols. Bilingual edition:

Sonnets 1, 12, 15, 20, 23, 35, 189.

Ronsard, Pierre de. 1982. Sonetos para Helena (Sonnets pour Hélene). Edición bilingüe de Carlos Pujol. Barcelona: Bruguera. Sonnet 6, 42, 49, 71 and 74.

Vega, Garcilaso de la. [any edition]:

Sonnets 1, 5, 17, 23

[1] The rhyming pattern of what is perhaps the first attempt at English sonnet ("The Long Love That in My Thought Dorh Harbour") is a little different: ABBA ABBA CDC CDD. Notice that the tendency is already to end the sonnet with a final couplet. The Earl of Surrey has also the following patterns: ABAB ABAB ABAB AA ("The Soote Season"), ABAB ABAB ABAB CC ("Alas! So All things Now Do Hold Their Peace").