b. Romance

Arthurian romances

c. Allegory

Piers Plowman

d. Religious narratives such as the saints' legends

e. Fabliau

Chaucer's Miller's Tale

f. Ballad

English and Scottish popular ballads

III. Drama

a. Miracle and mystery plays

b. Moralities

c. Chronicle plays

d. Farces

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORMS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

FROM 1550-1660

Poetry

After 1550 the English people began to feel the full effect of the Renaissance, that great expansive movement in every field of life which so profoundly changed European civilization. The invention of printing, the discovery of new lands, the breaking down of old habits of life, the rise of the national spirit, the stirring changes in religious organization and beliefs, the new interest in art-all these phases of the Renaissance were influential in modernizing English literature. But the greatest effect of the Renaissance upon the development of forms in English literature came from that aspect which we call "the revival of learning," the discovery, interpretation, and translation of the Greek and Roman classics. Now for the first time there was available for English writers a great literature in which the sense of form was preeminent and of which there existed, in the Poetics of Aristotle and the Art of Poetry of Horace, a careful

and well-reasoned criticism. The first discoverers and interpreters of the classic literatures were the Italians, and it was upon the Italian interpreters of the classics that Englishmen leaned in the sixteenth century. In addition to the influence of the classics, the native English inheritance deepened and widened.

In 1557 was published a little book edited by a certain Tottel, a publisher, called Songs and Sonnets, but now generally known as Tottel's Miscellany. In this little book are the first poems to show the distinctly modern influences in lyrical poetry. The native lyric strain blossoms forth into ✓ poetry of deep and sincere personal expression. The men of the time seem to have a new and exuberant gift of melody and beauty, and for the next hundred years the song flourished as never before or since. One reason for this lyrical outburst was the fact that the new interest in drama constantly demanded new songs to be set to music. This combination of music and poetry is reflected particularly in the beautiful songs which appear in Shakespeare's plays.

But the native English music was to be tempered by the influence of the odes of Horace. Charmed by their urbanity, regularity, grace, and neatness, such writers as Ben Jonson (1573-1637) and Robert Herrick (1591-1674) wrote lyrical poems which for courtly compliment and elegant grace are unsurpassed in English literature.

In the seventeenth century Shakespeare's "native woodnotes wild" and Jonson's recapturing of classic perfection were not to hold the field alone. In revolt against sweetness and classic charm, John Donne (1573-1631) developed a type of lyric poetry which consciously aims at roughness and cynicism in thought and expression. His example was followed by the so-called "metaphysical poets" who carried extravagance and artificiality to a last extreme in

the use of tortured figures of speech or "conceits" and often printed the lines of their poems in such forms as an altar or a pair of wings.

With these new types of lyrical poetry went an outburst of interest in the writing of the sonnet. This form of lyrical expression was originated in Italy by Petrarch (1304–1374) who used it to sing the praises of the "lovely Laura." Sonnets were first written in English by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 15171547) whose poems appear in Tottel's Miscellany. In the second half of the sixteenth century the form had an immense vogue, being brought to perfection by Shakespeare. At this period the sonnet form consisted of fourteen iambic pentameter lines falling by their rhymes into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. This is called the Elizabethan sonnet. In the seventeenth century when interest in these sonnets waned, Milton revived the form in its modern arrangement of octave and sestet. This is called the Italian sonnet.

Elizabethan sonnet:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare

Italian sonnet:

octave When I consider how my light is spent

sestet

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

Milton

A third form of lyrical poetry, the ode, came into English literature with the increasing knowledge of classic literature. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) conceived of the classic ode as a series of stanzas each made up of irregular lines, written upon some serious and dignified theme in highly rhetorical language. His so-called "Pindaric odes," named from the famous Greek poet Pindar, became fashionable, and all the poets of any standing in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries tried their hands at them. The ode in a form nearer to the classic practice had to wait until the late eighteenth century with Thomas Gray.

A fourth form of lyric poetry was the pastoral elegy written under the influence of the Greek poet Theocritus. Milton's Lycidas is the best example.

Many minor forms of lyric poetry imitative of the poems of the classics appear. One of the most interesting of these is the marriage hymn, well illustrated by the glowing Prothalamion and Epithalamion of Edmund Spenser (1552-1599).

Narrative poetry continued to flourish after 1550 in many forms. One of the most common was the long narrative poem

on a classical subject written with a wealth of elaborate detail. A good example is the Venus and Adonis of Shakespeare.

Pastoral poetry was also common. Spenser's The Shepherd's Calendar, modeled upon the various idyls of Theocritus, set the fashion for a variety of forms of pastoral poetry which to-day have a merely curious interest.

The allegory lost ground, though it received new splendor at the hands of Spenser in his long and intricate romanceallegory The Faerie Queen which in its varied and elaborate beauty is almost an epic of the early Renaissance in England. The poem had a striking influence upon later writers especially because of the following "Spenserian stanza" which Spenser invented:

"And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard; but carelesse Quiet lyes,
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimycs."

A new type of poetry, developed at the end of the great creative years from 1550 to 1660, is descriptive poetry, well illustrated by Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. These poems became rapidly popular and in later years exercised an important influence upon the development of English literature.

Prose

After the Renaissance, prose began to take its place as a vehicle of creative literature. Early prose was clumsy and involved. Lacking the restraining influence which meter exercised over poetry, prose could spread itself at will over a subject, with no control but the caprice of the writer.