Hi friends, welcome to my channel and welcome to yet another important video in the history of English literature series. So far we have covered four videos in this series and we have also covered four ages in those four videos namely Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Age of Chaucer and Age of Revival and today in this fifth video we are going to talk about Elizabethan period. Elizabethan period is said to be one of the most important period in the history of English literature this is known as the golden period why because some really really amazing writers some really prominent writers were born in this period and they started writing in this period and one such example is mr williams shakespeare so elizabethan period started in the year 1558 and it continued till 1603 and during this period a lot of important socio-economic changes happened in england the first important thing in regards to this period is that Elizabeth the Queen the great queen was ruling England during this period she is known as the virgin queen because she never married and she bought a lot of political stability in England because she was the queen during whose period England was very stable as we saw in the age of revival that various wars were taking place in regards to France and England and also civil war was taking place between the houses of York and Linchester in England itself but during this period of Elizabethan age there were no wars and because there were no words people started working towards various other art forms and one such art form was literature also at the same time in the age of revival we saw that printing press came to england and now that printing presses in england a lot of books can be written and can be circulated in the society so printing press was one such invention which changed how literature was seen in England. At the same time, this was a period when a lot of sailors went to distant lands and new lands were discovered by England.
So it was this time when Columbus went into a sale and he discovered one of the most finest countries. At the same time, you find that British colonization, the period where Britain started colonizing so many nations, this was the period when all of that started. So in short, as you can see, that a lot of good changes were happening in and across England during this period.
and one of the most important change that you must understand in order to understand the literature and that is renaissance so this was a period when renaissance came into england now what is renaissance we are going to discuss it very soon in our video but before that you must remember the fact that renaissance was a movement that started in italy but during the elizabethan period it started having an impact on england itself. So that is the reason why this period is known as Elizabethan period and some people also called it as the English Renaissance. So Renaissance began in 14th century when people started taking interest in the learnings of the ancient civilizations, specifically of Greek and Roman civilization. So Renaissance, if you look at the term means rebirth. So rebirth of what?
Rebirth of the ancient Roman and Greek civilization. People were so amazed by the ancient Roman culture, civilization, their art forms that they sort of wanted that to come back and that is how Renessa began. Now what you need to understand here when it comes to Renessa is that Renessa began in Italy which is said to be the birthplace because Rome was the center of renaissance rome is one of the cities in italy and rome was the capital of roman civilization so during roman civilization all the major operations happened in the city of rome which now is a part of Italy.
So Italy is said to be the birthplace of Renessa where all the Roman architecture, art forms are readily visible. Now these people coming from the northern parts of Europe, they visited Italy and they were dazzled by the Roman art forms. their literature, their culture and they had this love of renaissance inside them which they carried when they settled in their own countries like Germany, Spain, England and that is how renaissance spread all across Europe during the 14th and 15th century. What you also need to understand here is that renaissance spread across Europe by a phenomena called cultural diffusion.
Now when it comes to renaissance, two other important terms that you might come across cross are cultural diffusion and renaissance humanism. Now, let us understand them one by one. Cultural diffusion is basically the idea where the main idea is spreading across from a center point to others, so just like renaissance began in Italy and it branched out to other parts of Europe, similarly, if we have any idea that has a center point and from there it moves on to the other part that is. is called cultural diffusion.
And then we have humanism. What is humanism? Humanism is a philosophy which says that humans have worth, dignity and power.
So humanism basically believes that life should be centered around humanity and reason and it should not be centered around church and its regulation. So we all know that before Renessa came into England, church was having having supreme power over everybody. So even the plays literature art everything was centered around church. But when renaissance came they kind of started with the idea that humans are important humans are the finest creation of God and therefore life should be centered around reason which is one of the most important faculty of humans and it should be centered around humanity and it should not be centered around.
Bible and Church and its regulations. Now that we had a detailed discussion on Renaissance and on the Elizabethan period, it is time to look at some famous literary works and some important writers. If you look at the works written during the Elizabethan period, you will find that they belong to either of these two categories.
Either they were dramas written by playwrights or they were poets. and some famous sonnets written by them. Novels did not start during this period so there were no novels. At times there were some pamphlets and essays written by writers like Francis Bacon and Wright Robert Greene but they were not so important. So in this particular lecture I'm going to take you through the major dramatist and the major poet though it is not possible for me to cover each of them in detail because of the time crunch.
If you want detailed lectures on these writers you can refer to my online course where I cover each of them in detail so there are more than 20 lectures on university with 18 lectures on William Shakespeare which I have discussed in my online course in this particular YouTube video I'm going to quickly take you to through the major dramatist and through the major poets if you want the detailed list of writers you can get it free of cost on my website arpatakarva.com now let us look at the major dramatist who were writing during this period without any doubt we have william shakespeare as the most important dramatist but i have already made two detailed videos on william shakespeare in my youtube channel you can go and watch them so i'm not going to talk about him so much in this particular video i'm going to instead take time and talk about the university wits university which was a writing group which is said to be the first profession group who came into the field of writing in Elizabethan period this group had seven members three of them were graduated from Cambridge three of them graduated from Oxford and one who is Thomas grid he did not go to Oxford or to Cambridge now if you look at these seven writers these are most important writers who started writing before Shakespeare came into the scene and the These people took literature and writing as their career. Till now, all the writers, like Age of Chaucer, Age of Revival, or those who were writing in the Norman period, were doing a lot more with writing. Writing was just like a hobby to them. But for university wits, writing was their profession.
So these were poets, these were writers, and these were pamphleteers. One most important pamphlet that was written by Robert Green, who is a part of University Wit, is known as brought with millions of repentants. This was a passage where he talked about Shakespeare and his writing talent and he calls Shakespeare as upstart crow beautified with our feathers. So basically he is appreciating Shakespeare's work.
Shakespeare's writing. On the other hand, we have some amazing works written by Christopher Marlowe like Dr. Faustus, which is centered on the idea of renaissance humanism. So Faustus'character is shown as a human. human reason is so important.
But at the same time, it showcases the flaws in Renaissance humanism. Somewhere, we can still see the influence of the church. So this was about the dramatists who were very, very important and who were writing during the Elizabethan period. Let us now take a look at the major poets and some amazing poetry written by them. Elizabethan period was blessed with so many amazing poets who who were mostly writing sonnets because sonnets was the most popular form of writing during this period.
And we all know that it was Henry Howard and Thomas Watt who contributed to blank verse and sonnets. There is an entire lecture on these two writers and their contribution in the field of literature, though we don't know them today. But it was because of them that blank verse, which was the most popular kind of literary writing.
that Shakespeare even used and mastered was done by these two people so it was Henry Howard and Thomas Watt who brought blank words and sonnets into the scene on top of that we have writers like Philip Sidney and Edmund Spencer who did some amazing work in the field of poetry Edmund Spencer is said to be the poet's poet and it was Spencer's poetry which somewhere started the Elizabethan period and you will be amazed to know that the poetry's name was Shepherd's calendar which he dedicated to a friend of his whose name is none other than Sir Philip Sidney so Philip Sidney was a very good friend of Edmund Spencer and Spencer dedicated Shepherd's calendar to Sidney he is known as the poet's poet as well as it was his poetry which kind of kick-started the Elizabethan period. On the other hand, we have William Shakespeare. Now, for Shakespeare, I don't think I would be able to do justice if I start talking about his sonnet collection in this particular lecture because he has written some fabulous, fabulous sonnets which are very dear to my heart. You can refer to my other lectures on William Shakespeare which is available on my YouTube channel for detailed study of this.
same and finally we land on to the last poet that we are going to discuss in this particular lecture who is sir philip sydney philip sydney is known as the renaissance man the perfect renaissance man why because if you look at philip sydney he was a courtier he was a soldier he was a writer he was a man of philosophy so he was a kind of person who had everything in himself and he met with a very tragic death so philip sydney we talk about so he died on a war front where he was thirsty he wanted water when he got the water he found that another soldier was thirsty so he gave his water to that man and that is how he died so you can look at the epitome of love and care this man demonstrated but he did not only do justice to humanity but at the same time he became the first literary critic in the field of English literature by writing a famous work and I'm pretty sure that you must have heard about this work in either your bachelor's or your master's and if you know the work that was written by him in the field of literary criticism make sure you comment in the section below and let me see how many of you get it right so with that note we complete our discussion on the Elizabethan age where we have discussed about the socio-political condition we We have discussed about the major dramatist and the major poets. That's it from my side for this lecture. We will meet very soon in the next lecture.
Till the time we meet next, happy learning, keep loving literature