The Tudor dynasty, Philip Sidney, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica The Tudor dynasty, Philip Sidney, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE TUDOR DYNASTY HENRY VII In 1485 Henry VII defeated Richard III in the battle of Bosworth, and got to the throne. During his reign, England lived a period of financial and governmental stability, and he partly managed this by restructuring the patronage system and controlling the nobles’ power by rewarding and punishing (through fines) them. Henry was an able ruler and he founded the English naval power, creating a mercantile fleet to promote trade with foreign countries. Moreover he paid little attention to Parliament, relying instead on a small circle of trusted men. HENRY VIII After his death, in 1509, his son, Henry VIII was been crowned. He was a poet and a sportsman and he preferred to maintain a magnificent court, yet he was also brutal, in fact he executed those who angered him (even his wives..) he married six times: he divorced the first, Catherine of Aragon; the second, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded, the third, Jane, died. He divorced the fourth, beheaded the fifth and the sixth survived him. HENRY VIII’s wives | CATHERINE - ANNE BOLEYN - JANE SEYMOUR - 4th - 5th - 6th (divorced) (beheaded) (died) (divorced) (beheaded) (survived fhim) | | | MARY I ELIZABETH I EDWARD VI THE REFORMATION The Reformation, which was led by Martin Luther and took place in the first half of the 16th century, weakened the international power of the Roman Church. Henry VIII was keen to have a male heir, but his first wife Catherine had only borne him a daughter, Mary. His determination to divorce her, and marry Anne Boleyn, brought him into a direct conflict with the Catholic Church, and Pope Clement VII eventually excommunicated him. So he issued the Act of Supremacy (1534) and declared himself “Supreme Head of the Church”, ending the rule of the Catholic one in England and, as a consequence, earning the lands owned by the Pope. A scholar, Thomas More, refused to recognize the act and the king’s divorce and for this reason he was accused of treason, committed to the Tower of London, and was beheaded in 1535. EDWARD VI - MARY I: RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION Edward succeeded to his father at the age of ten, in 1547, and ruled for only six years, until his death. He was supervised by Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote the first “Book of Common Prayer”, that contained prayers and aids to religious devotion in English. Mary I, who succeeded to the half-brother Edward, was known as “Bloody Mary” because of her persecution of Protestants as she tried to restore the Catholic religion. In 1554 she married Philip II of Spain, and this brought her into wars with France. Under her reign, around 300 English Protestant were burnt, including Cranmer. Mary died childless in 1558 and she was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, who restored Protestantism as the national religion. PHILIP SIDNEY LIFE Philip Sidney was borne in 1554 into a wealthy family of Penshurst, in Kent. Educated at school and Christ Church College, Oxford, Sidney travelled and studied throughout Europe where he was ofter sent on official missions as an ambassador for Queen Elizabeth. He died from a gunshot wound received during an attack on a Spanish convoy in 1586. ASTROPHEL AND STELLA Astrophel and Stella is a sonnet sequence of 108 sonnets and 11 songs: the theme that unifies the sonnets is the unrequited love of Astrophel for Stella; he cannot have her because she is unreachable, so she becomes a virtual reality for the poet. Overall this sequence is a brilliant portrait of obsessive love, , which runs through the whole range of emotions, from self-pity to joy and tenderness, then back to despair. Sidney and Astrophel are similar for some aspects (both courtiers, politicians and soldiers), but the poet often views him with comic detachment, gently mocking his hero for his vanity. Moreover, in Sidney’s sonnets there is humour as well as pathos. WITH HOW SAD STEPS, O MOON It is an Elizabethan sonnet, made up of 3 quatrains and a final couplet. In this sonnet, the speaker imagines the moon is suffering as much as he does, because they both love in vain. The Moon is personified, in fact it is given human attributes (wan face, love-acquainted eyes,..) and the speaker addresses it with a series of rhetorical questions through which he aims at highlighting the similarity of their states of mind. Through the whole poem, the speaking voice wonders if, even so distantly, love and pains are the same as on earth. The poet starts with the external observation of the moon, and supposes that its “wan face”, its “languished grace”, its silence, are all marks of love or pain. In the final couplet, he states that his pain is due to the cruelty of the woman who is too proud and ungrateful to return his love, though she loves to be loved. The sonnet is a variation on the well-consumed convention of Petrarchan sonnets, presenting the poet in a state of sorrow and frustration due to the insensitivity of a woman who, though beautiful, refuses to give in to his feelings. Similarly, the convention is followed also in the sense of irrationality and senselessness of the love-sentiment, which, though painful, cannot be stopped or overcome. The originality and wit of Sidney lie in the subtle allusion between his beloved,whose name is Stella, therefore a star, and the projection of his own feeling up to heaven, where stars shine.