Although the Elizabethan age is called The Golden Age of English poetry and drama, it should also be regarded as a glorious age of English prose, for English prose was set on the track of glory by such great prose writers as Lyly, Greene, Lodge, Nashe, Deloney and Dekker withContinue Reading
During the 16th century English drama settled into a regular entertainment. The stage offered massive opportunities for the dramatists, but it remained in a state of chaos. In the 1580s group of playwrights, who had their education either from Oxford or Cambridge, stepped into the theatre as professional playwrights andContinue Reading
The term “metaphysical poets” was first used by Samuel Johnson (1744). The hallmark of their poetry is the metaphysical conceit, a reliance on intellectual wit, learned and sensuous imagery, and subtle argument. Although this method was by no means new, these men infused new life into English poetry by theContinue Reading
The Tudors are the most famous English royal dynasty, their name remaining at the forefront of European history thanks to films and television. Of course, the Tudors wouldn’t feature in the media without something to grab people’s attention, and the Tudors – Henry VII, his son Henry VIII and hisContinue Reading
Literary critics and historians have tended to partition Chaucer’s literary career into three major periods: the French, the Italian and the English, of which the last is a development of the first two. French Period What is referred to as Chaucer’s French period lasted until 1372. The poems of theContinue Reading
Simply speaking, romances are fantasies in which the authors make the fullest use of their imagination and fancy and create an ideal world, which bears little or no semblance with real life. In the middle of the fourteenth century a revival of the old English alliterative verse occurs through romances,Continue Reading
The dream vision was a favorite genre of medieval narrative poetry, in which a narrator falls asleep and dreams what becomes the main body of the story. This genre typically follows a structure whereby a narrator recounts his experience of falling asleep, dreaming, and waking; and the story is oftenContinue Reading
The amount of surviving Old English prose is much greater than the amount of poetry. Of the surviving prose, the majority consists of sermons and translations of religious works that were composed in Latin, for literacy in Anglo-Saxon England was largely the province of monks, nuns, and ecclesiastics (or ofContinue Reading
Religious poetry seems to have flourished in northern England-Northumbria-throughout the eighth century, though most of it has survived only in West Saxon transcriptions of the late tenth century. Much of it consists of retellings of books and episodes from the Old Testament. Much of this religious poetry is anonymous, butContinue Reading
Anglo Saxon literature frequently took up the theme of fights and hostilities, in which the nobility of a character was brought out through a display of courage, valour, loyalty to the lord and the community and a thirst for glory. Glory was the most coveted thing because death lurked everywhere.Continue Reading
