The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603)
Sixteen century is called as the Renaissance. The renaissance is the name given to the flowering of the arts, literature and politics that marked the transtition from the European middle ages to the modern Era. It began in the 14 th century in Italy, where it reached its height in the early 16th century, and spread throughhout Europe. The impluse for the renaissance was the revival of interest in Classical (greek and Roman) culture, and its predominant charachteristic was humanism an interest in human beings and in the potential of human nature, apart from religious values. Humanism was not anti religion; on the contrary, the sixteen century was an intensly religion acts, but it did imply a reduction in the overwhelming autority that the church had exercised in the middle age. There was a new spirit of freedom, summed up by the young humanist philosopher Pico della Mirandola (1463-94): ‘ Constrained by limits [man] shall ordain for himself the limits of his nature.
Little memorable poetry was written in England in the century after chaucer’s death, perhaps because everyone was trying to imitate chaucer. As in so many others respects, English poetry of the early sixteen century took its example from Italy. Thomas wyatt, who visited Italy in 1557, wrote the first English sonnets as well as translating petrarch, from whom he learned the art.
Henry Howard,Earl of Surrey, also wrote sonnets after petrarch, but he addopted a different rhyming system, which become standard for Shachpeare and other Enlgish Sonneteers. He was also the first to use blank verse – in this translation of Aeneid. He was executed on an improbable charge of reason in 1547.
The same lamentable fate befell the admirable SirTomas more in 1547 when, as Lord Chansellor, he could not bring himself to accept Henry VIII’s reformation of the Engish Church. Literature was more great recreation, and he wrote (in Latin) Utopia, an early attemp to describe an ideal civilisation, while was on diplomatic business abroad. Prominant literary figures were often to be found at his house, anf some were painted there by Holbein, who was introduced by another visitors, the Dutch-born Erasmus (d.1536), thye greatest humanist scholar of the age whose output was prodigious. It was more who suggested the idea behind Erasmus’s most famous work, the praise of Folly, a satire aimed chiefly at the leader of the Church. His scholarly work on classical and early Christian writers, and his translation of the Bible, had an immeasurable effect on contemporary European culture and encouraged the reformation, though Erasmus himself remained loyal to, though critical of, the Roman Catholic Church.
Socio-Cultural Condition
The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of unprecedented change. It was the beginning of the modern era, and it saw a revolution in almost every aspect of life. The century opened with the discovery of a new continent. The renaissance in Italy was peaking and spreading north, even arriving in backwaters like England. Life was largely prosperous for the average person, the economy was growing. The mechanisms of commerce, systems of international finance, ocean-going trading fleets, an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, were all building a recognizably capitalist, -based economy. Geniuses were stepping all over each other on the street corners producing scientific innovation after innovation. Technological innovations were changing the nature of warfare and the military caste nature of society, the cannon probably had a great deal to do with the rise of the centralized nation state as we know it. The printing press created a media revolution. It brought ideas, partisan rhetoric, and how-to manuals to the people. Most of all, it brought the Bible, in its original tongues and in the vernacular, to the masses. A spirit of inquiry, a desire to return to first principles, was blowing through the Church, which had been the unifying cultural foundation of Europe for a millennium.
The first half of the century saw what contemporaries viewed as the most earth-shattering change in the century: the Reformation. The cultural consensus of Europe based on universal participation in the Body of Christ was broken, never to be restored. Along with the Reformation came challenges to secular society. The nature and organization of power and government came under reevaluation as well. No one could imagine religious change without it going hand-in-hand with social and political change, as indeed it did.
There were other things fueling the furnaces of change. The economy was a prosperous one at the beginning of the century, with even the average peasant able to afford a bit of meat in the stew pot. People were optimistic about the future, they were having larger families and the population was growing. The combination of population pressure and inflation exacerbated by the flow of gold and silver from the New World saw that cut effective wages in half by about mid-century. Changing economic conditions saw many peasants lose their land as the terms of their tenancy become much lessfavorable, while land was becoming concentrated in the hands of the elites, especially the rising bourgeousie. Homelessness and vagrancy were on the rise, and towns experienced a sense of crisis trying to deal with the poor. By the end of the century, a peasant almost never saw meat, and many of them had reached such a state of despair about the future that they engaged in widespread revolts. Tensions between the social orders were high on many levels. Although the peasants and more marginal classes of people were struggling, the middle class was growing and generally becoming more powerful. In a port city like Calais, located on the north Atlantic with an active maritime trade with the English, Dutch, and other French ports, the quality of material life saw an overall improvement. People in towns had leisure time to spend in, gaming and drinking, hard liquor as an escape from a hard life began to be a social problem during this time.
Language used
The last years of the fifteenth century mark the end of the Middle English period and the beginning of what is called the early Modern English period. The development of the language during the sixteenth century seems at first both paradoxical and chaotic. On the one hand, there was a movement to make the language more uniform; on the other hand, it continued to be, in both its spoken and written forms, more plastic than it is now, and it was commonly created to suit the requirements of individual expression.
Some of the confusion during the sixteenth century was due to the persistence of regional dialects. William Caxton, England's first printer, commented on the problem with some exasperation:
. . . That comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from another. In so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchautes were in a ship in tamyse for to haue sayled ouer the see into zelandeand for lacke of wynde thei taryed atte forlond. and wente to land for to refreshe them And one of thaym named sheffelde a mercer came in to an hows and axed for mete and specyally he axyd after eggys And the goode wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaut was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe. but wolde haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym well Loo what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte. egges or eyren certynly it is harde to playse euery man by cause of dyuersitie & chauge of langage.
Contributing to the problem of regional variations was the lack of any standard system of spelling and pronunciation. A writer spelled according to his own tastes, and a reader had to have a certain amount of agility and imagination. The world fellow, for example, was spelled variously as fallow, felowe, felow, fallowe; and where might be spelled where, whear, were, wheare, whair. Strangely, with all these variations, the Elizabethans seem to have had little difficulty in communicating.
In contrast to the tremendous embellishment of its vocabulary, the grammatical structure of English underwent relatively few changes in the sixteenth century. Some time in the last part of the century, a shift in the pronunciation of long vowels settled the pronunciation of English close to what it is today.
Irregularities and variations within the language remained, however. Elizabethan idiom observed no rigid grammatical rules. Shakespeare could, for instance, use phrases like "stranger'd with an oath", "nor this is not my nose neither", "it dislikes me". The grammar seems foreign, but the sense does not. Kneen and knees, shoon and shoes, have wrote or have written, most boldest or most bold - all were equally correct. Service could be pronounced "sarvice", smart could be pronounced "smert". Not surprisingly, the major focus of the following centuries was to be on the continuing movement to standardise English.
Example of prose and poem
Poem
Example of the poem which is written in 16th period is Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnet 73
That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which snake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet
birds sang.
In me tou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self,that seals up all in rest.
In me tou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceive’st, which makes thy love
more strong,
to love that well which thou must leave
ere long.
The England sonnets is different with other country sonnets, for instance, in England sonnets, there are 3 stanzas have 4 lines in each that tell about view, feeling, and opinion about death and the last couple of lines are the conclusion/narrator view. The sonnets always in purpose to narrator would like to communicate with the reader about the death and the awareness that everything will be end and the deep of love. Like ballads, the sonnets tell about the death and love.
This sonnet tells about the death. The poet expresses by using many figurative languages. Shakespeare compares yellow leaves and the old man who will die. He also compares the process of human being until they die. We also find figurative language between age and autumn, age and twilight, old age and dying fire. Then we find imagery because it involves many senses, hearing, listening, and seeing.
a) Prose
During the Elizabethan period, Latin gradually gave way to English as the language of learning, and English prose finally achieved its maturity. Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia (1516) in Latin. When Sir Francis Bacon wrote his account of a Utopian society, The New Atlantis in 1626, he wrote in English. Two events, one just before and one at the end of the Elizabethan age, contributed immensely to the stabilisation of the English language: the introduction of the printing press into England in 1476, and the King James translation of the Bible, published in 1611. It is no exaggeration to say that what Shakespeare did for poetry and drama; the King James Bible did for prose. The models they set have been the standards by which all later poetry, drama, and prose have been judged.
The novel depicts a mythical island, Bensalem, which is discovered by the crew of a European ship after they are lost in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of Peru. The minimal plot serves the gradual unfolding of the island, its customs, but most importantly, its state-sponsored scientific institution, Salomon's House, "which house or college ... is the very eye of this kingdom."
On arriving to Bensalem, the travellers are initially instructed to leave without landing, but are successively quarantined to "the House of Strangers", then given greater leave to explore the island, and finally granted an explanation of Salomon's House. Their conversations with the inhabitants disclose how they in such isolation came to be Christian, how they came to know so much of the outside world (without themselves being known), the history and origin of the island's government and the establishment of Salomon's House by King Solamona, the Bensalemite customs regarding marriage and family, and purpose, properties, and activities of Salomon's House. The interlocutors include the governor of the House of Strangers, Joabin the Jew, and the Father of Salomon's House.
Only the best and brightest of Bensalem's citizens are selected to join Salomon's House, in which scientific experiments are conducted in Baconian method in order to understand and conquer nature, and to apply the collected knowledge to the betterment of society. Near the end of the work, the Father of Salomon's House catalogues the activities of the institution's members:
“For the several employments and offices of our fellows, we have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts. These we call merchants of light.
“We have three that collect the experiments which are in all books. These we call depredators.
“We have three that collect the experiments of all mechanical arts, and also of liberal sciences, and also of practices which are not brought into arts. These we call mystery–men.
“We have three that try new experiments, such as themselves think good. These we call pioneers or miners.
“We have three that draw the experiments of the former four into titles and tables, to give the better light for the drawing of observations and axioms out of them. These we call compilers.
“We have three that bend themselves, looking into the experiments of their fellows, and cast about how to draw out of them things of use and practice for man’s life and knowledge, as well for works as for plain demonstration of causes, means of natural divinations, and the easy and clear discovery of the virtues and parts of bodies. These we call dowry–men or benefactors.
“Then after divers meetings and consults of our whole number, to consider of the former labours and collections, we have three that take care out of them to direct new experiments, of a higher light, more penetrating into nature than the former. These we call lamps.
“We have three others that do execute the experiments so directed, and report them. These we call inoculators.
“Lastly, we have three that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms. These we call interpreters of nature."
Even this short excerpt demonstrates that Bacon understood that science requires analysis and not just the accumulation of observations. Bacon also foresaw that the design of experiments could be improved.
Chapter III
Conclusion
In summary, sixteen century is the Renaissance that is given to the flowering of the arts, literature and politics that marked the transtition from the European middle ages to the modern Era. It began in the 14 th century in Italy, and then it reached its height in the early 16th century, and spread throughhout Europe.
It came about under the influence of Greek and Roman model. Its emphasis was humanist that is on regarding the human figure and reason without a necessary relating of it to the superhuman.
There was a revolution in almost every aspect of life. The economy was growing such producing scientific, while the technological innovations were changing the nature of warfare and the military caste nature of society. It indicates that the Body of Christ was broken.
The language during the sixteenth century seems at first both paradoxical and chaotic. Its spoken and written forms are more plastic that it was commonly created to suit the requirements of individual expression. Thus, the example of poem and prose above seems like Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare and in the Elizabethan period where Latin gave way to English as the language of learning as its maturity.
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