Just like Italy in the14th century, the Renaissance in Britain began with the rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman cultures. The university resumed the teaching of ancient Greek, and then there was a large-scale translation activity. Many scholars and writers translated the academic and literary masterpieces of ancient Greece, Rome and modern Italy and France into early modern English. Philosophers, educators, historians, politicians and religious figures have all engaged in writing and expressed humanistic thoughts in different ways, including Thomas? Moore wrote Utopia in Latin (15 16). This work depicts an ideal society that advocates learning without private ownership and religious oppression in the way of a traveler's overseas experience. It strongly condemns the reality of "sheep eating people" in Britain, and encloses land on a large scale in order to produce more wool, forcing poor farmers to be displaced.
Poetry creation is unprecedentedly active, a large number of poems are published, and important poems that were popular for a while are also published one after another. Among them, Miscellaneous Notes (1557) published Walter and Surrey's imitation of Italian sonnets, which made this poetic style take root in Britain. In the 1990s, famous poets such as Sidney published sonnets, which still mainly praised love, but broke through the old pattern and injected new content. More important than sonnets are other poetic styles, lyrical, narrative, ironic or philosophical. With outstanding representative writers, Spencer achieved the greatest success. His main work The Fairy Queen (1590 ~ 1596) is large in scale and rich in content. It takes the genre of medieval knight legend as the main means, but it opposes Catholicism in spirit and praises Queen Elizabeth, the symbol of the British nation. It conveyed Puritanism's strict moral concept, and with beautiful and changeable rhymes, Spencer was not only unique in the poetry circle at that time.
The achievements of poetry also include the successful application of blank poetry in the script. The combination of poetry and drama produced the proudest literary achievements of this period: poetry and drama. Since the 1980s of 16, the authors of poetic dramas have got rid of the religious color and crude skills of medieval mystery dramas, miracle dramas and moral dramas, established a lively new drama, keenly and strongly expressed the spirit of the times, and made many bold innovations in art ... Marlowe was the first person who successfully transformed blank poems into drama media. He wrote magnificent figures with "magnificent poems", such as Timur (1590), the founder of the Central Asian Empire, and Dr. Faust's German doctor who pursued infinite knowledge in the tragedy (1604). At the same time, Edward II (1594) added another one. Marlowe died early, but the poetic drama continued to grow. Through the creative practice of Kidd, Green, Chapman, Dirk, Middleton, meston, Heywood and others, the theme has been enlarged, and the skills have become more mature, and finally it has become Shakespeare's masterpiece.
Shakespeare is an actor and playwright, who wrote 37 plays in his life. He learned from others, created his own works, and wrote famous works in historical dramas, comedies, tragedies and legendary dramas. His nine historical plays cover 300 years of British history from King John to Henry V (that is, from13rd century to15th century). The scene is unprecedented, and the author also writes magnificent, anti-feudal and anti-civil war, and enthusiastically praises the formation of the nation-state. His comedies are lively and interesting, with a strong flavor of life. One of them, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596) and You Are Happy (1600), is full of romantic poetry and fascinating. The Merchant of Venice (1597) raised economic issues such as overseas trade and Jewish usury with vivid scenes of court confrontation. Twelfth Night (160 1) with complete structure and sharp language exposes the hypocrisy of the Puritans. His genius in writing tragedies was first seen in Romeo and Juliet (1595), praising freedom and love as fresh as morning dew. The death of a pair of innocent youths strongly accused the cruelty of feudal families, which provided another long-term attractive theme for later literature and art in Western Europe and even the world. 1600 years later, his thoughts were deeper and his skills were better, and he created a series of outstanding tragedies. Among them, Hamlet (160 1) wrote that a young humanist faced evil forces, treated him unreasonably after doubts and hesitations, and finally drifted among the people, but in the process he realized the truth. Macbeth (1606) discussed the destructiveness of ambition, but in an atmosphere full of superstition and terror, the author asked the sinners in his works to dissect their own hearts from time to time, and meditation and reflection gave this tragedy greater depth. The works of this period marked that Shakespeare reached the peak of dramatic art, and later he turned to the writing of legendary plays with the theme of forgiveness and reconciliation, among which The Tempest (16 1 1) is still a fascinating masterpiece.
At the end of Shakespeare's creation, poetic drama was still prosperous. Not only did Baumont and Fletcher write legendary plays, but also social satires that Shakespeare never tried appeared, with Jonson as the representative writer. His best plays are The Fox (staged in 1606) and The Alchemist (staged in 16 10), exposing the swindlers, alchemists, diners, sluts and Puritans in London in the early 7th century. Their poems are elegant and powerful. But Jonson later wrote a masked play and appealed to the court. At the same time, murder dramas written by Webster and Turner appeared on the stage. They played up pornography and horror with excellent poetic talents, and the failure of poetic drama has appeared. When the plays of Ford, Hugh Lai and others were staged, they were not only obscene in content, but also vain in rhyme, which was deeply disliked by the increasingly powerful bourgeois who believed in Puritanism. The parliament they controlled passed a decree on 1642 to close all theaters. After 60 years of brilliant growth, English poetic drama, which rose from16th century, has failed.
There are also rich and colorful prose works in Renaissance literature. /kloc-English in the 0/6th century is a little miscellaneous, but it is very expressive, and it can do everything in narrative, metaphor, scenery description and argumentation. So there are various styles of prose, such as Li Li's Buddha (1579 ~ 1580). Understanding Xiao Chang is like Nash's Unfortunate Traveler (1594), and Miyaje is like Hooke's On the Laws of Church Policy (1594 ~ 1597), just like Bacon's essay (1597 ~ 65438+). The above two books, Li Li and Nash, are also novels in primitive form. In addition, there are three books about small-town craftsmen written by Deloney, especially the noble industry written by the shoemaker (1600), which are close to the later realistic novels in details. It is precisely because of his strong English expression ability at this time that many excellent translations have been produced in large-scale translation activities, such as Plutarch's Comparative Biographies of Greek and Roman Celebrities (1579) and florio's Montaigne Essays (1603). They are all books mentioned by Shakespeare. The most important translation from 65438 to the beginning of the 7th century was the English Bible published by King James I in 16 1 1. It is the result of collective translation by 47 scholars, which absorbs the advantages of previous English versions, uses concise and vivid words, and has a great and lasting impact on later English. The above-mentioned activities in thought, scholarship, poetry, poetic drama, prose and translation have made outstanding achievements, especially poetic drama, which made literature in this period one of the peaks in Europe and even the world.