Renaissance in England

              The Renaissance is generally referred to as a series of literary and cultural movements in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. These movements began in Italy and eventually expanded into Germany, France, England, and other parts of Europe. The English Renaissance dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century is associated with the pan-European Renaissance. The great Renaissance scholars studied the great civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome and came to the conclusion that their own cultural achievements rivaled those of antiquity.The word renaissance means “rebirth”, “renewal”. The idea of rebirth originated in the belief that Europeans had rediscovered the superiority of Greek and Roman culture after many centuries of what they considered intellectual and cultural decline. The Renaissance was marked by an intense interest in the visible world and in the knowledge derived from concrete sensory experience. It turned away from the abstract speculations and interest in life after death that characterized the Middle Ages. Although Christianity was not abandoned, the otherworldliness and monastic ideology of the Middle Ages were largely discarded. The focus during the Renaissance turned from abstract discussions of religious issues to the morality of human actions. The civilization of the Renaissance was the creation of prosperous cities and of rulers who drew substantial income from their urban subjects in the Italian city-states and the countries of England and France.

       Renaissance attitudes and philosophy had a complex influence on the evolution of literature. The humanist reverence for the classics of ancient Greece and Rome tended to stifle spontaneous literary creation and to encourage imitation of classical authors. However, the restless curiosity of the Renaissance, the interest in the world, and the exposure to urban influences created a demand for a vernacular, or native, literature that expressed the new excitement and variety of contemporary life. Moreover, Renaissance individuality, with its concern for personal fame, encouraged writers to try daring experiments in order to win praise from the critics and support from influential patrons.The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and those of his contemporary, Henry Howard the Earl of Surrey, were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the French of Ronsard and others. While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the English sonnet.