Thursday, April 21, 2016

Renaissance 1500-1660

  • focus on individual & what's within ourselves instead of outside
  • world view shifts from religion and after life to one stressing human life on Earth
  • popular themes: development of human potential; many aspects of love explored
    • unrequited love
    • constant
    • timeless
    • courtly
    • subject to change
  • 1607 - Jamestown settled
  • 1620 - Pilgrim's land at Plymouth
  • 1649-1660 - Commonwealth period - England ruled by Parliament
  • 1558-1603 - Reign of Queen Elizabeth I
Shakespeare: 1591-1613 Writing
  • Ambition as a living force driving on a heroic nature otherwise possessed of aims and capable of great deeds
  • Revenge as a living force driving human nature
  • Hamlet
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The role of the supernatural in Hamlet & Macbeth
  • In what way is the Merchant of Venice a potential tragedy but in the end a comedy?
  • A comparison of the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth
  • No one necessarily only way to interpret Shakespeare or his characters
  • Not just a writer of his era, but rather of all time, giving him universality
    • as alive today as he was then
    • appeals to as wide an audience today as then
    • incredible range of what it's like to be human - presents human conditions greater than any other writer

Spencer - Stanzas
Milton - Iambic pentameter unrhymed
Pope - Heroic couplet rhymed iambic pentameter
An epic should be about submission, inward wars. Face your inward demons, spiritual, emotional, new type of hero - Eve becomes the hero because she embraces the battle against herself.

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