The following thesis is an attempt to illustrate the
development of style in English Renaissance poetry from the
beginning of the Reformation, under Henry VIII, through the
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, to the Restoration of the
monarchy in 1660, using, as a principal guide to this development,
the work of the major sonneteers: Wyatt and Surrey,
Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. The fundamental
theorem upon which the thesis rests is dependent
upon the following assumptions: that the unifying principle
which gives art its structure resides in the artist's subconscious and is largely beyond his wilful control; that
this principle is shaped to a great extent by various forces
in the artist's intellectual environment which help to mold
his whole personality; and that the structure of art in general and of poetry in particular must therefore reflect at
least the more general characteristics of that intellectual
environment, regardless of the artistes individual peculiarities.
Even a very cursory examination of the intellectual
history of the English Renaissance will reveal that the period is in a state of constant flux and can be divided into
three distinct but consecutive phases: the ordered, certain world of the High Renaissance is brought to the peak of its
stability during the last two decades of the sixteenth century;
in the 1950’s it begins to show clear signs of breaking
down, under the shattering impact of Copernicus and the
New Philosophy, and by the early seventeenth century it has
collapsed into chaos and generated a thoroughgoing neurotic
insecurity; the remainder of the seventeenth century is devoted
to a gradual philosophical reintegration, working toward
the ultimate solidarity of eighteenth century rationalism,
and reaching its first plateau with the relative calm
of the early Restoration period. These three phases of intellectual
development are all clearly represented In the
literature of the period, as well as in the other arts, in
the High Renaissance, mannerist, and baroque styles.
The sonnets of the Renaissance are particularly useful
for illustrating the development of literary style for three
reasons: they are compact, well-defined, and therefore very
convenient microcosms of poetic structure which, because of
their precise definition, lend themselves readily to a comparative
study; they display a great deal of attention to
the strictly formal aspects of poetry and are therefore more
than casually relevant to an examination of style; and finally,
they are written in greater quantity than any of the
shorter poetic forms and they appear continuously throughout
the period in the work of most of the major poets. It appears that among the sonneteers of the Renaissance,
Spenser, Donne, and Milton are respectively the most distinct representatives of the High Renaissance, mannerist,
and baroque styles in poetry. Spenser, in his ordered ritualistic treatment of NeoPlatonism and courtly love typifies
the High Renaissance; Donne, in his disingenuous inversion of
Elizabethan idealism, reflects the insecurity of the Jacobean
period; and Milton, in his broadly comprehensive affirmation
of new certainties of vision, exhibits there integration of
baroque thought. Wyatt and Surrey are working toward the
Spenserian conception of poeticunity; Sidney is working
away from Spenser, or at least from what Spenser represents,
even though his sonnets appear several years earlier; and
Shakespeare is progressively more and more caught up in the
movement towards mannerism which is displayed so consistently
in the poetry of Donne, in the sonnets of these seven poets,
then, the style of English poetry can be seen to run through
a complete cycle, reflecting in miniature not only the structural principles of art in general but the whole intellectual development of England's, golden age. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/41690 |
| Date | January 1962 |
| Creators | Dunn, Ian Sinclair |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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