Untitled Quiz

Study Notes

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement that flourished in England from the late 15th to the early 17th centuries.
It was influenced by the pan-European Renaissance that began in Italy in the late 14th century.
The English Renaissance is often marked by the start of the Tudor Dynasty in 1485 with the end of the Wars of the Roses.
The Elizabethan era (second half of the 16th century) is considered the peak of the English Renaissance.

The English Renaissance witnessed a flourishing of English vernacular literature, facilitated by the growing use of the printing press.
The period is notable for the works of poets like Edmund Spenser, whose epic poem "The Faerie Queene" had a significant impact on English literature.
Lyrics by William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt, and others, often circulating in manuscript form before publication, were also influential.
The English Renaissance theatre was a prominent feature of the era, with playwrights like Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson producing some of the most celebrated works in history.
Queen Elizabeth I herself was a product of Renaissance humanism and wrote occasional poems.

Notable philosophers and intellectuals of the English Renaissance include Thomas More and Francis Bacon.
The Tudor monarchs were highly educated, and Italian literature was popular, providing inspiration for many of Shakespeare's plays.
English thought advanced towards modern science with the development of the Baconian Method, a precursor to the Scientific Method.
The Book of Common Prayer (1549) and the King James Version of the Bible (1611) significantly shaped the English consciousness.

England was slower to embrace Renaissance styles in visual arts, relying on imported foreign artists like Hans Holbein until after the Renaissance.
The Reformation led to a period of iconoclasm, destroying much of medieval religious art and significantly impacting the skill of painting in England.
Portraiture and later landscape art became dominant forms in English art.
The invention of the portrait miniature emerged from the declining art of illuminated manuscripts.
Though developed by foreign artists, English natives like Nicolas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver produced some of the finest miniature portraits by the late 16th century, while larger oil portraits were still mainly created by foreign artists.
The portrait miniature gained popularity throughout Europe by the 18th century.
Portraits of Elizabeth I were tightly controlled and developed into a stylized and unrealistic iconic style.

English Renaissance music engaged more closely with continental developments than visual arts and survived the Reformation relatively successfully.
William Byrd and other significant composers were Catholic.
The Elizabethan madrigal, although distinct from Italian tradition, was influenced by it.
Other leading composers included Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, and John Dowland.
The Venetian School's polychoral productions were anticipated in the works of Thomas Tallis, and the Palestrina style from the Roman School was assimilated before the publication of "Musical Transalpina" in the music of composers like William Byrd.
The Italian and English Renaissances shared a specific musical aesthetic.
Italy was the musical center of Europe in the late 16th century, and the madrigal emerged as a prominent musical form.
In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published "Musica transalpina" in England, a collection of Anglicized Italian madrigals, which sparked a madrigal vogue in England.