The English Renaissance

The English Renaissance and its Conflicts

• The English Renaissance was a revival of classical culture that became fashionable in England during the Tudor dynasty (1495-1642).
• The term "Renaissance" was coined by Mathew Arnold in "Culture and Anarchy" (1869) and is used to refer to literary and cultural aspects, focusing on personal and individual identity.
• Some historians prefer the designation "early modern," which is inclusive of social, economic, and political factors, in addition to the arts.
• The English Renaissance came late to England compared to other European countries due to insularity.
• Authors like Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare were prominent during the English Renaissance.
• The label "early modern" suggests that this period was foundational for the common culture of the West, including capitalism, the nation-state, and scientific inquiry.
• The English Renaissance was marked by conflicts, including intellectual conflict with humanism and religious conflict with the Protestant Reformation.
• Humanism was the major intellectual movement of the Renaissance that produced a cultural rebirth by studying and imitating the classical culture of ancient Rome and Greece.
• The Protestant Reformation began in England in 1534 when Parliament declared King Henry VIII the supreme head of the Church in the country after Pope Clement VII did not annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
• Elizabeth I consolidated the Protestant Reformation in England during her reign of forty-five years by defeating threats to the nation's security from inside and from abroad.
• The English Renaissance is foundational for contemporary notions of selfhood and more participatory government.
• The labels "Renaissance" and "early modern" continue to have convenience and recognition value in public and academic discourse.

Exploring Early Modern England: Gender Conflict, Cultural and Economic Conflict, Colonialism and World Exploration

• Early modern English drama reflected the gender ideology that restricted women's roles to the domestic sphere, making them passive victims or assertive, sexually independent transgressors.
• Richard Hakluyt, an explorer and writer, convinced King James to establish an English settlement in the New World, advocating the financial and political benefits of permanent settlements in North America.
• The British Empire was a nineteenth-century invention, and concerns about internal cohesion outweighed external expansion in the age of Shakespeare.
• Spanish involvement in the New World made people in England aware of the potential value of colonialism, with early proponents emphasizing the intertwined economic, religious, and political benefits.
• The literature of the period explored the possibilities and pitfalls of colonialism, and writers debated its moral and religious foundations.
• England's first colony in Virginia was unsuccessful, with the first successful settlement established in 1620.
• Within England, sources of information about foreign lands ranged from unreliable to fantastic, with many depending on miraculous tales from classical and medieval sources.
• Pliny's History of the World and Mandeville's Travels combined geographical detail with tales of romance and wondrous exoticism, fact with fiction.
• Early modern explorers exploited expectations of marvels in the New World, and American natives were situated within the context and occasionally exhibited commercially in London.
• The exploration of new places allowed the English to learn more about other cultures and re-evaluate their own culture from a new perspective.
• Colonialism was not an easy route to wealth and glory in the early modern period, and the actual progress of English colonialism was considerably less glorious than expansionist rhetoric suggested.
• Despite the challenges, economic, religious, and political benefits continued to motivate English colonization schemes in the New World.

Political Conflict and Outstanding Features of the English Renaissance

• National consciousness and pride emerged in England for the first time, with many expectations.
• James I declared that monarchy is the supremest thing on earth, kings are God's lieutenants and are called gods in the Scriptures.
• The English Renaissance was a complex and comprehensive movement, with two extrapolated views: Idealistic view and Pragmatic view.
• The revival of classical learning and humanism led to a new conception of man and the universe, with man as the centre of the universe and a focus on the material world.
• Shakespeare's writings explored the centrality of man, man's perfection, and the relation between the material and spiritual worlds.
• The Renaissance saw the discovery of the secular importance of material values, and the emergence of professional writers and a new literary consciousness.
• The new learning was more than a revival of classical learning, with eclectic and pragmatic learning and an educational ideal to produce a well-educated and polished gentleman suited for public life.
• Self-fashioning and the malleability of the self became important, with humanists as the educated elite who brought new learning into matter.
• The Elizabethan Age saw the English Court, with Queen Elizabeth I as the centre of absolute power, ambition, and culture.
• The Court controlled every aspect of life, with patronage system and control of arts through miscellanies.
• The English Reformation, the plague, and the conflict with Spain (Spanish Armada) were important events during the Renaissance.
• The Renaissance was not a golden period, but a period of radical shift in human thought, unprecedented commitment to contextualization and interdisciplinarity, and contradictory movement.