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Abstract(s)
The English Renaissance by and large coincides with the period when Elizabeth I ruled, and constitutes a golden age, as far as literary production is regarded. After the disruptive dynastic conflicts of the Wars of the Roses and the not less disruptive events originated by her schismatic father, Elizabeth Tudor would skillfully instill peace and stability in her nation, and would become the inspiring, paradigmatic muse amidst a complex, refined, educated court society which was so influenced by Humanism. Many changes took place at every level of society, culture and worldview, although they did not erase the past: many traditions and heritages, namely the classical, the medieval and the Dantean-Petrarchan, were rather re-read, re-formulated, re-created. In such a context, the two most relevant literary genres - drama and lyric poetry - exhibit a mixture of continuity and change, as well as a dynamic and unique fictional experimentalism in the vernacular language, carried out by a pleiad of writers within the spirit of an active and lively court society. The lady - idealised, praised and loved by the medieval troubadours and the Italian poets of the ‘Quattrocento’ - continues to be the centre and in the centre of the Elizabethan lyric poetry; the lyric ‘I’ continues to love her deeply, to long for her and for her presence, to express states of deep grief, sorrow and suffering. However, what is the nature of this Renaissance lady and of her centrality? What is her role and her scope? And what is the real purpose of the lyric ‘I’ when he vehemently makes the apology of the lady’s extreme beauty and expresses ‘pains uncessantly sustained’?
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Keywords
English Renaissance Elizabethan age Court society Lyric poetry
Citation
Publisher
Inter-Disciplinary Press