MODULE English LITERATURE

- American
#Renaissance Period

Historical Background 3
The term Renaissance, literally means "rebirth" and is the period in European civilization
immediately following the Middle Ages, conventionally held to have been characterized by a
surge of interest in classical learning and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery
and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of
astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or
application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner's compass,
and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the
revival of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.
The literary scene of the period was dominated by a group of New England writers, the
“Brahmins,” notably Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell
Lowell. They were aristocrats, steeped in foreign culture, active as professors at Harvard
College, and interested in creating a genteel American literature based on foreign models.
Longfellow adapted European methods of storytelling and versifying to narrative poems dealing
with American history. Holmes, in his occasional poems and his “Breakfast-Table” series (1858–
91), brought touches of urbanity and jocosity to polite literature. Lowell put much of his
homeland’s outlook and values into verse, especially in his satirical Biglow Papers (1848–67).
One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists, centred in
the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller. The Transcendentalists
contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. They advocated
reforms in church, state, and society, contributing to the rise of free religion and the abolition
movement and to the formation of various utopian communities, such as Brook Farm. The
abolition movement was also bolstered by other New England writers, including the Quaker poet
John Greenleaf Whittier and the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852) dramatized the plight of the black slave.

Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers—
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman—whose novels and poetry left a
permanent imprint on American literature. Contemporary with these writers but outside the New
England circle was the Southern genius Edgar Allan Poe, who later in the century had a strong
impact on European literature.

From the Civil War to 1914

Like the Revolution and the election of Andrew Jackson, the Civil War was a turning point in
U.S. history and a beginning of new ways of living. Industry became increasingly important,
factories rose and cities grew, and agrarian preeminence declined. The frontier, which before had
always been an important factor in the economic scheme, moved steadily westward and, toward
the end of the 19th century, vanished. The rise of modern America was accompanied, naturally,
by important mutations in literature

Literary comedians

74 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

3
Although they continued to employ some devices of the older American humorists, a group of
comic writers that rose to prominence was different in important ways from the older group.
Charles Farrar Browne, David Ross Locke, Charles Henry Smith, Henry Wheeler Shaw, and
Edgar Wilson Nye wrote, respectively, as Artemus Ward, Petroleum V. (for Vesuvius) Nasby,
Bill Arp, Josh Billings, and Bill Nye. Appealing to a national audience, these authors forsook the
sectional characterizations of earlier humorists and assumed the roles of less individualized
literary comedians. The nature of the humour thus shifted from character portrayal to verbal
devices such as poor grammar, bad spelling, and slang, incongruously combined with Latinate
words and learned allusions. Most that they wrote wore badly, but thousands of Americans in
their time and some in later times found these authors vastly amusing.

Congratulations. You have just proven that you have Shakespeare in you. Now, read the
informative text below for you to have a clearer mental picture of William Shakespeare’s life,
works, and contributions in English literature.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

William Shakespeare, Shakespeare also spelled Shakspere, byname Bard of Avon or Swan of
Avon, (baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England—died April
23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon), English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the
English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time.

75 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

Shakespeare occupies a position unique3in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and
Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, have transcended national
barriers; but no writer’s living reputation can compare to that of Shakespeare, whose plays,
written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries for a small repertory theatre, are now performed
and read more often and in more countries than ever before. The prophecy of his great
contemporary, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for
all time,” has been fulfilled.

It may be audacious even to attempt a definition of his greatness, but it is not so difficult
to describe the gifts that enabled him to create imaginative visions of pathos and mirth that,
whether read or witnessed in the theatre, fill the mind and linger there. He is a writer of great
intellectual rapidity, perceptiveness, and poetic power. Other writers have had these qualities, but
with Shakespeare the keenness of mind was applied not to abstruse or remote subjects but to
human beings and their complete range of emotions and conflicts. Other writers have applied
their keenness of mind in this way, but Shakespeare is astonishingly clever with words and
images, so that his mental energy, when applied to intelligible human situations, finds full and
memorable expression, convincing and imaginatively stimulating. As if this were not enough, the
art form into which his creative energies went was not remote and bookish but involved the vivid
stage impersonation of human beings, commanding sympathy and inviting vicarious
participation. Thus, Shakespeare’s merits can survive translation into other languages and into
cultures remote from that of Elizabethan England.

Life
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is surprisingly large for
one of his station in life, many find it a little disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from
documents of an official character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills,
conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court—these are the dusty details. There are,
however, many contemporary allusions to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of
flesh and blood to the biographical skeleton.

Early life in Stratford

`The parish register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, shows that
he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23. His
father, John Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an alderman
and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before the grant of a further charter to
Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in various kinds of trade and appears to have suffered some
fluctuations in prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an
ancient family and was the heiress to some land. (Given the somewhat rigid social distinctions of
the 16th century, this marriage must have been a step up the social scale for John Shakespeare.

Shakespeare enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education there was free,
the schoolmaster’s salary being paid by the borough. No lists of the pupils who were at the
school in the 16th century have survived, but it would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of the

76 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

3
town did not send his son there. The boy’s education would consist mostly of Latin studies—
learning to read, write, and speak the language fairly well and studying some of the Classical
historians, moralists, and poets. Shakespeare did not go on to the university, and indeed it is
unlikely that the scholarly round of logic, rhetoric, and other studies then followed there would
have interested him.
Instead, at age 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not known, but the episcopal
registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated November 28, 1582, and executed by two yeomen
of Stratford, named
Sandells and Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the issue of a license for the marriage of
William Shakespeare and “Anne Hathaway of Stratford,” upon the consent of her friends and
upon once asking of the banns. (Anne died in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good
evidence to associate her with a family of Hathaways who inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now
much visited, 2 miles [3.2 km] from Stratford.) The next date of interest is found in the records
of the Stratford church, where a daughter, named Susanna, born to William Shakespeare, was
baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2, 1585, twins were baptized, Hamnet and Judith.
(Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died 11 years later.)
How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins to appear in
London theatre records, is not known. There are stories—given currency long after his death—of
stealing deer and getting into trouble with a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near
Stratford; of earning his living as a schoolmaster in the country; of going to London and gaining
entry to the world of theatre by minding the horses of theatregoers. It has also been conjectured
that Shakespeare spent some time as a member of a great household and that he was a soldier,
perhaps in the Low Countries. In lieu of external evidence, such extrapolations about
Shakespeare’s life have often been made from the internal “evidence” of his writings. But this
method is unsatisfactory: one cannot conclude, for example, from his allusions to the law that
Shakespeare was a lawyer, for he was clearly a writer who without difficulty could get whatever
knowledge he needed for the composition of his plays.

Sonnet
SONNET comes from the Italian sonetto, which means “a little sound or song," the
sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries. Traditionally, the
sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which employ one of several rhyme
schemes and adhere to a tightly structured thematic organization.

The Shakespearean, or English sonnet, follows a different set of rules. Here, three
quatrains and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The couplet plays a
pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the
previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end.

Poetry Devices

77 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

Poetry is said to come from ancient songs,3 prayers or rituals. Now, it has evolved to any literary
work that is associated with the expression of feelings and ideas and such expression is given
intensity by the use of the following devices.

Poetry like any other art, has its techniques and devices. Becoming a poet liked by others is not
an easy thing to do and it so happens that the cause of this is the way the author of poem uses the
available devices to his advantage or purposes. The following are some of the major devices
used in many of the poems:

FORM

This is usually the first thing a reader notices in a poem. One poem might not have the same
with the other. A poet uses the form to effectively EXPRESS what he or she wants to convey
to his readers. Form refers to how the poem is being arranged. Traditional poetry

RHYTHM

it implies an up down motion or rise, pause and fall. It is the pivot point of all the elements as it
creates the pleasant gliding effect when a poem is read. It helps readers to travel along the
lines of the poem with a certain enjoyable tempo created by the components of rhythm.

LINES

Poems compose a line or a number of lines. These are the vehicle of the authors’ thoughts
and ideas. These are the building blocks with which the poem is being arranged into form.
The words of each line proceed as usual from left to right, but they curiously end where the
poet wants them to stop. Therefore, lines may either be of equal length or it may not.

Besides the length and margining of the first word in each line, the punctuation at the end of
each is also a major tool for the poet. At times, it signals, full stop, other times a gentle and
slight pause and at some time, it connotes a sudden break and so on.it is with the
punctuations that there exist a dramatic sensation of moods and images.

STANZAS

The lines in a poem are most often divided into sections looking as some sort of paragraphing.
These are STANZAS. A stanza refers to the grouping of the lines.

There are different types of stanzas:

COUPLET A two line stanza (last two lines of Shakespearian sonnets)

TERCET/ TERZA RIMA A three line stanza (like that of Haiku)
QUATRAIN A four line stanza

78 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

CINQUIAN A five line3

stanza
SESTET A six line stanza
SEPTET A seven line
stanza
OCTAVE An eight line
stanza

FOOT- this refers to the stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

Iambic 1 unstressed + 1 stressed

Dactylic 1 stressed +2 unstressed
Anapestic 2 short syllables + 1 long syllable
Trochaic 1 stressed+ 1 unstressed
Spondee 2 stressed syllables

RHYME

- a rhyme is a SONIC imitation usually at the end of the syllables of words. It refers to the
resemblance of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at
the ends of lines of poetry. There are basically two kinds of rhyme used in poetry. The first is
the most common and most typically used. It is the END RHYME. Words at the end of the first
line is in the same sound with the next line. The second type of rhyme is called INTERNAL
RHYME. This kind of rhyming is different from END RHYME since its rhyming takes place
somewhere within the line somewhere within the line and not at the end. But most find it more
natural to use rhyming at the end and not in the middle of the poem’s lines

METER

The number of syllables per line and the designated stress on syllables refer to meter.

LINE-BREAK

- the interval that marks the end of a line in a poem.

Tone

The authors’ attitude, stated or implied toward his or her subject. Some possible attitudes are
pessimism, optimism. Earnestness, seriousness, bitterness, humorous and joyful. An author’s
tone can be revealed through his personal choice of words and details.

Mood

79 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

3
The atmosphere build in the literary work. The choice of setting, objects, details, images and
words all contribute towards creating a specific mood. For example, an author may create a
mood of mystery around a character or setting but may treat the character or setting in an ironic,
serious or humorous tone.

IMAGERY

-Language that appeals to the senses. They are the total sensory suggestion of poetry. They
suggest symbols, myth, and archetype. The image is a kind of verbal shorthand wherein the poet,
through his images, perceive intuitive similarities of unlike objects. Good poets are good image-
makers as they know how to reinforce their thoughts with concrete words. Essentially, there are
five types of imagery, each correspond to one of our senses.

VISUAL AUDITORY GUSTATORY TACTILE OLFACTORY

Picture Scream Sweet Grasp Fragrant
Flash Shout Fresh Rugged Rich aroma
Bright Whisper Juicy Cold Stinky
Sharp Squeal Salty Hard Musty
Clear Listen bitter peaceful Odor

FIGURES OF SPEECH

A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for vivid or rhetorical effect. Writers express their
creativity through this as it greatly contribute in the vivacity of their speech. The following
names few.

Figure of Speech Definition Example

1. ALLITERATION This is the use of the same letter or The hare habitually
sound at the beginning of closely hibernates.
connected words.

2. ANTITHESIS This shows contradicting ideas in a It was the best of

grammatically parallel expression. experience. It was the
In other words, this uses worst of experience.
contradicting concepts.

3. APOSTROPHE This is an expression addressed to Oh death, take me.

someone who is dead, to a non-
existent or an inanimate object.

4. ASSONANCE This is an expression composed of “make or break”

several words having the same

80 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

3
vowel sounds.

5. ASYNDETON This omits the use of conjunctions I came, I saw, I

between parts of the sentence conquered.

6. ELIPSIS This is the omission of an I did not believe

unnecessary word or words in the everything until…
middle of the sentence to produce a
dramatic effect.

This is usually followed by three

periods
(…)

7. EUPHEMISM This is an indirect or a mild word or The people in the

expression substituted for one that Narcolist were put to
is considered to be too blunt or correctional
harsh. facility. (instead of jail.)

8. HYPERBOLE This us ab exaggerated statement or I think of you every

claim. minute of every day.

9. IRONY This is typically an expression that “You gave me the best

normally signifies the opposite, plan. Its only problem is
typically fir humorous or emphatic that it is very impossible
effect. to be done”

10. LITOTES This is an understatement in which A concept of no small

an affirmative is expressed by the importance.
negative of its contrary.

11. METAPHOR A direct comparison of objects or You are the only hope I
persons. It is not stated, therefore it have.
is implied and unlike the simile, It
does not use “like” or “as”

12. METONYMY This expression uses substitution or “The pen and the plume”
representation of something that it represents a writer.
is associated with.

13. ONOMATOPEIA This is a word derived from a sound Splash of water

81 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

made by3an animal, a person, or Neigh of the horse

nature.

14. OXYMORON This expression uses contradictory This is the right-mistake

terms in the same phrase.

15. PARADOX This is a seemingly contradictory or The French are thought

absurd statement which when to have an unhealthful
investigated may prove to be true or lifestyle, yet have a long
well founded. life expectancy.

16. PERSONIFICATION This assigns actions done by humans The wind howled
to something non-human or abstract. furiously last night.

17. POLYSYNDETON This uses the repetition of This is painful, but I

conjunctions for rhetoric effect.
know it will give me the
best price,
but then again, it’ s
painful but I really like
this.

18. RHETORICAL This asks a question not to be How could you do such
QUESTION answered but only to express a thing?
distinct message.

19. SIMILE This is used to compare two
different ideas or objects, making
them the same by using “as”, “like”,
“as if” or “as though”
20. SYNECDOCHE This states a part to represent a
whole or vice versa.
My love’s scent is like the
sweetness of cherries.
“Ten brilliant minds” to
mean, ten intelligent
people.

Sonnet 18
By: William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of
May, And summer’s lease hath all too short
a date:

82 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

Sometime too hot 3the eye of the heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;

By thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Understanding the Poetic Devices

DIRECTION: Determine the different poetic devices employed in the

Sonnet.

Tone and Mood

Line and Stanza

Rhyme

Figures of Speech

83 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

Imagery

Theme

Comprehension Questions:
1. How does Shakespeare describe the nature of ideal LOVE?
________________________________________________________________________
______
________________________________________________________________________
_____________
______________________________________________________________________________
_______
______________________________________________________________________________
_______ ____________________________________________________________________.

2. How do you interpret the defensive challenge in the last Couplet?

__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
_______
__________________________________________________________________________
_______
__________________________________________________________________________
_______
__________________________________________________________________________
_______
___.

Here is another sonnet of William Shakespeare for you to reflect upon. Read the poem orally as a class. For the
unlocking of difficulties, have the game word hunt

Sonnet 116

84 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

3 Shakespeare
By: William

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when alteration
finds Or bends with the remover
to remove.
O no! it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth is unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of
doom If this be error and upon me
prov’d, I never writ, nor no man
ever lov’d.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY

Comprehension Questions:

1. How does Shakespeare describe the nature of ideal LOVE?

_____________________________________________________________________________
_
___________________________________________________________________________
_______
___________________________________________________________________________
_______
___________________________________________________________________________
_______
___________________________________________________________________________
__.

2. How do you interpret the defensive challenge in the last Couplet?

___________________________________________________________________________

85 | P a g e
 MODULE English LITERATURE
- American
#Renaissance Period

3
___________________________________________________________________________
_______
___________________________________________________________________________
_______
___________________________________________________________________________
_______
___________________________________________________________________________
_____.

ROMEO AND JULIET

Romeo and Juliet is a play by William Shakespeare written about 1594-96 and first published in
an unauthorized quarto in 1597. An authorized quarto appeared in 1599, substantially longer and
more reliable.

Shakespeare sets the scene in Verona, Italy. Juliet and Romeo meet and fall instantly in love at a
masked ball of the Capulets, and they profess their love when Romeo unwilling to leave, climbs
the wall into the orchard garden of her family’s house and finds her alone at her window.
Because their well-to-do families are enemies, the two are married secretly by Friar Laurence.
When Tybalt, a Capulet seeks out Romeo in revenge for the insult of Romeo’s having dared to
shower his attentions on Juliet, an ensuing scuffle ends in the death of Romeo’s dearest friend,
Mercutio. Impelled by a code of honor among men. Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished to
Mantua by the Prince of Verona, who has been insistent that the family feuding cease. When
Juliet is already secretly married, arranges a marriage with the eminently eligible Count Paris,
the young bride seeks out Friar Laurence for assistance in her desperate situation. He gives her a
potion that will make her appear to be dead and proposes that she take it and that Romeo rescue
her. She complies. Romeo however, unaware of the friar’s scheme because a letter has failed to
reach him, returns to Verona on hearing of Juliet’s apparent death. He encounters a grieving
Paris at Juliet’s tomb, reluctantly kills him when Paris attempts to prevent Romeo from entering
the tomb, and finds Juliet in the burial vault. There he gives her a last kiss and kills himself with
poison. Juliet awakens, sees the dead Romeo, and kills herself. The families learn what has
happened and end their feud.

86 | P a g e