The Influence
of the Renaissance on English Literature
Introduction:
It is difficult to
date or define the Renaissance. Etymologically the term, which was first used
in England only as late as the nineteenth century, means’ “re-birth”.
Broadly speaking, the Renaissance implies that re-awakening of learning which
came to Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The Renaissance was not only an English
but a European phenomenon; and basically considered, it signalised a thorough
substitution of the medieval habits of thought by new attitudes. The dawn of
the Renaissance came first to Italy and a little later to France. To England it
came much later, roughly about the beginning of the sixteenth century. As we
have said at the outset, it is difficult to date the Renaissance; however, it
may be mentioned that in Italy the impact of Greek learning was first felt when
after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople the Greek scholars fled and took
refuge in Italy carrying with them a vast treasure of ancient Greek literature
in manuscript. The study of this literature fired the soul and imagination of
the Italy of that time and created a new kind of intellectual and
aesthetic culture quite different from that of the Middle Ages. The light of
the Renaissance came very slowly to the isolated island of England, so that
when it did come in all its brilliance in the sixteenth century, the
Renaissance in Italy had already become a spent force.
