Background To Renaissance Studies

Subject: English Literature
Level: Secondary
Age Group: 11 - 14
Order Number: 5004

The units of this resource pack are information sheets, which can be used as handouts, to help students to gain a broader sense of context of any Elizabethan & Jacobean works they may be studying. As good teachers know, frequent reference to texts from the period encourages exploratory reading. Units can be used separately and individually and topics include:

• Mediaeval and Renaissance - macrocosm, microcosm, order, correspondences, patterns of thought
• The Elizabethans and language - Euphues, Arcadia, leaming, conceits, rhetoric
• The sonnet - Petrarch, Wyatt, The Elizabethans
• Blank verse - basic pattern, Gorboduc to Shakespeare and after
• Revenge tragedy - characteristics, Italy, Machiavelli, attitudes
• The villain/hero - the Vice, the Machiavel, Marlowe, Shakespeare
• The dumbshow - history, five functions with examples
• The masque - history, anti-masque, structure, masques in plays
• The emblem - portraits of Elizabeth, literature and art, examples
• Background to - context, ideas, 'metaphysical', critics metaphysical poetry
• The Tudor view of history - kingship, pattern and purpose of history
• Descendants of Edward - family tree from Edward III to James