Period+List

• This period and early Stuart periods represented the most brilliant century of all. • The reign of Elizabeth (1558 -1603), later succeeded by the Stuart king James VI of Scotland (a.k.a James I of England). • Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Roger Ascham, Richard Hooker, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare • The pinnacle of __poetry__: the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, dramatic blank verse • The golden age of __drama__: variety of splendid prose (ordinary speech style), historical chronicles, adaptations of the Holy Scriptures, pamphlets, and literary criticism to the first English novels. • As the century turned, most literature grew darker which more or less coincided with the death of Elizabeth.
 * 1558-1603: Elizabethan Age:**

• Latin Jacobus meaning "James", Period of visual and literary arts during the reign of James I of England (1603-25). • There was no distinct stylistic transition from the Elizabethan to the Jacobean Age. • The poet and dramatist __Ben Jonson__ was the leading literary figure: he had a __Medival philosophy__ rather then idealism of the Tudor era. The characters he created had behavioral differences result from a prevalence of one of the body's __four "humors__": blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Over the other three; which corresponded with the four elements of the universe, air, water, fire, and earth. These caused clichés. He was a master of stylistic writing and lead many other authors to follow him. • __The Revenge Play__: popularized by John Webster and Thomas Kyd. George Chapman, they were revenge tragedies • __The King James Bible__: started in 1604 and completed in 1611. The standard Bible of the Church of England. Headed by James I himself, who supervised the work of 47 scholars. The meter was made to mimic the original Hebrew verse. • The main metaphysical poet of the early 17th century was __John Donne__: Influenced by continental Baroque, subject matters of both Christian mysticism and eroticism, metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to reach surprise effects. The oxymoron constantly in his poetry • __Baroque Poetry__: Baroque poetry served the same ends as the art of the period; the Baroque style is lofty, sweeping, epic, and religious.
 * 1603-1625: Jacobean Age:**

• The Period during the reign of Charles I, had flourishing __political literature__. • Pamphlets written by idealist tackled the faction in the __English civil war__. There were vicious personal attacks and arguments of controversy, propaganda, to high-minded schemes to reform the nation. • //Leviathan// by Thomas Hobbes was one of the most important works of British political philosophy: Hobbes wrote that chaos or civil war - situations identified with a state of nature and the famous motto //Bellum omnium contra omnes// (the war of all against all). He plainly put that they need a strong central government to avert war. • The arrests of authors and the suppression of their works were common.
 * 1625-1649 : Caroline Age :**

• The short period where Oliver Cromwell reigned England he imposed a very strict form of Christianity upon the country, Puritanism: type of Protestants that believed in strict religious discipline and called for the simpler of acts of worship. • England during the Interregnum became oppressive in its own fashion. Theater was banned. • This period ended the progressive movement of Renaissance Literature.
 * 1649-1660 : Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum):**