FREE ESSAY ON RENAISSANCE

RENAISSANCE

When the Renaissance crept into the world's social senses people were moved. However, when
the Renaissance began to affect the literature of the sixteenth century, the world was
changed forever. The Renaissance, meaning a "re-birth," was a time of many changes. These
changes wrought pandemonium among the civilized people of earth. There was a recovery and
discovery of medieval texts in which scholars were deeply impressed by. Those in love
with the arts and literature now had more choices to view and read. There was an outpour
of those individuals attempting to create paintings that exemplified the feelings that
saturated the minds of the brilliant scholars. Most importantly, however, was the huge
change of the role of the church in everything. Martin Luther nailed up his "95 Thesis"
and thus began the Reformation of the Catholic Church. With this came a rushing tide of
secularization in Europe. This, of course, blew over into literature and the arts. 
The Faerie Queen is one epic that included the ideals and morals that the excommunicated
Christians found rather intriguing and good to follow after. One can easily compare the
Red Cross Knight to a Christ figure. Other characters can be paralleled to Biblical men
and women as well. It was the era of discovery. People chose to discover themselves.
Identities were formed and the individual man began to take more notice of himself than
any other. This was a more difficult task for the Protestants because of their
commitments. However, they were surrounded by this culture, lived in it, and were
comfortable in the right to think about one's self more often. In The Faerie Queen we see
the "hero" attempt to fight off the evil thing that is plaguing a friend who has asked
for his help. Here is the Christian once again the helper and sustainer of life. The
Reformation had caused a sort of brave attitude to cover Europe.
Another genre of writing that was popular during the Renaissance was the sonnet.
Shakespeare loved his sonnets and wrote many that coincide with the ideals that were ever
present in this time period. This is where the greater secularization became too obvious.
The self is the main character in Shakespeare's sonnets. How the self (the speaker) feels
or reacts, what he dreams or wishes are shared with the audience. Time is a god. Nature
is a god. During the medieval period his sonnets would have had to be changed to add some
sort of religious purpose before any audience could read them. However, with remarkable
split from the Church of England, new things took place. New and individual theologies
were made up. Specifically, in the first two lines of one of Shakespeare's sonnets, he
writes "When my love swears that she is made of truth,/I do believe her, though I know
she lies." This sonnet continues to relish in the fact that these to liars are in love so
they are perfect for each other and they "lie" together. Many of his sonnets have such a
secular theme in them like this one has. This author would obviously cause problems if he
had been written and published three hundred years earlier. Seeing the changes when one
compares this sonnet to a work like The Faerie Queen, one can tell that the Renaissance
was a time where so many changes were occurring. It was a period of constant re-birth,
from beginning to end.