Development of Western Europe Literature from Medieval Age to the Renaissance - Essay Example

Development of Western Europe Literature from Medieval Age to the Renaissance Civilization in Western Europe s way backin the Dark Age. Literary work is among the earliest element of art in this civilization. There have been profound developments in literature through time that have made it what it is today. These developments accompanied changes in the structures of society. This paper traces the development of Western Europe literature between the medieval period and the renaissance. It will use a number of literary works of different literary personalities of time to depict the situations and changes in the two periods. The paper will put forward justifications for these changes. Dante Alighieri is among the prominent literary voices of the medieval literature. His book the Inferno was published in 1308. Dante visits hell and gets a chance to witness the punishments of different sinners. Sinners are divided into nine different circles. Dante points out names of different popes and prominent personalities in Greek mythology that he saw in hell. He also plops a number of other names of persons in the Italian religious and political spheres that he notes in hell. This brings out the medieval perception of the punishment that befalls evil people (Lawall and Maynard 35). There is an underlying belief that evil will be punished with respect to the magnitude of the evil done. Dante explains that pagans will be in limbo where they will be far from God but will not be punished. The lustful will be punished by being exposed to great storms. Gluttonous people will be thrown in to garbage while the avaricious people will be forced to push big rocks in hell, and the wrathful will be put under water. Dante indicates that hell is divided into upper hell and lower hell. Passive evils doers will be punished from upper hell while the active will be in the lower hell. The sinners who receive the severest punishment include the heretics, violent, fraudulent and the traitors. Those who betray trust will be put in ice, and this is where Satan will be (Dante and Steven 41). The book ends with Virgil and Dante leaving hell to go to purgatory. Dante’s inferno is a good example of the way medieval writings depicted the society’s perceptions and belief system. They were directed to the people either propagating the beliefs, or cautioning them against doing evil to one another. Sappho is suspected to have been born around 620BC. She was born in an aristocratic family in Lesbos. Ovid relates Phaon’s story, and it is believed that Sappho committed suicide after Phaon declined her love. Interestingly, her writing breaks away from the classical perception of poets as craftspeople speaking to groups to poets as creatures with feelings and whose voices are overheard. Love pervades both her songs and poems. This is seen in her religious poems, ritual poems and those that are directed to certain persons like the epistolary number 2. Poem 1 in her Hymn to Aphrodite is clearly an individual outcry and self-centered in the form than religious. The way she emphasizes the erotic in her works breaks away from the traditional regulations of the time and comes out naturally as an individual’s complex conflicts and experiences (Johnson 33). Hymn to Aphrodite is a depiction love as being too strained by the social constraints such that it is hard to bloom. Poem 130 describes love as bittersweet and fragment number 38 reckons that love burns. Medieval writings were informed largely by religious beliefs placing the supernatural at the very central. Beowulf is an epic poem that was written in the medieval. Beowulf addresses issues of reputation and familial heritage. One cannot help noticing the tribal voice right in the beginning of the poem; male characters in the introductory passages are referred as their father’s sons. There is such profound centrality that the characters place on their families that they are not able to identify themselves exclusively by their names. Kinship ties are strongly portrayed through the poem. The people in the poem revere outstanding ancestors and strive to live up to their achievements (Lawall and Maynard 37). As much as Beowulf is a pagan, his fame assures him of memory after his death a concept that comes close to the Christian belief of life after death. The value system and code of behavior of the society in Beowulf is clearly articulated. Warriors exhibit courage and strength; kings possess valiant leadership skills and hospitality, and exemplary reputation is sought by all. Such is what is seen, in King Hrothgar’s endeavor, to protect his society and the devoted spirit of Beowulf as a warrior. The medieval religious influence is seen in the monsters that Beowulf must fight so as to emerge victorious. Grendel would represent Cain of the bible who killed his brother and the dragon could represent the biblical representation of Satan or the force of death as both are destroyed in the end (Nye 73). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight portrayed the centrality of society’s code of behavior in the life of its members during the medieval period. Chivalry pervades the happenings in the poem, and it is clearly informed by Christian teachings. Gawain’s shield illustrates a combination of the chivalry of the knight and Christian principles. Pentangle is an embodiment of the virtues cherished by knights including piety, generosity, courtesy, chastity and friendship. The poem depicts the community in Sir Gawain, and the Green Knight as a fallen world and Gawain’s conviction in both his knightly values and religious virtues are tested (Battles 56). The court scene subtly criticizes the way in which chivalry placed more importance on appearance and title above truth. People in this court tend to be governed largely by set behaviors and mannerisms. The participants of the courts strive hard to remain as solemnly calm despite spiteful words hauled at them by the Green Knight. The power of the supernatural is depicted in the miraculous appearance of a castle when Gawain prays while in the wilderness. The people who lived in the castle were more realistic and truthful than those Gawain met in the court (Lawall and Maynard 40). Gawain is impressed by the courteous greetings by the inhabitants of the castle and their close relationship with nature. Gawain’s stay at the castle challenges him variously. He declines his host’s wife’s advances to sleep with him. He is challenged by the Green Knight on the importance of remaining cognizant of his human nature even as he strives to uphold chivalry. In the lapse of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe underwent significant religious, cultural and political changes. Most of the traditions of the middle ages fell off. The most preeminent emergent feature of renaissance writings is the introduction of complex rules. There was clearly a shift from the scholastic philosophy of the pre-renaissance to a well pronounced formalism as evident in the poetry of the renaissance. The sonnet was established to consist 14 lines. The first 8 lines state the problem and the last six lines are about the resolution to the problem (Lawall and Maynard 42). The Italian sonnet differs from English sonnet. For instance Francis Petrarch’s sonnet 292, The Eyes That Drew from Me is an Italian sonnet that clearly demonstrates the pattern of 10 syllables of iambic pentameters; half of which are quieter than the other half. The Italian sonnet has its rhyme pattern as abba abba cdc dcd. Chivalry still features in renaissance writings including in romance and lyrics only this time it is expressed in symbolism and allegory. Unlike in the medieval renaissance writing combines both religious and secular allusions. ‘Are grains of dust, insensibility’ is the eighth line in The Eyes That Drew from Me. Here, Petrarch alludes to the Christian teaching that man came from dust and there is where he returns when he dies. It also alludes to Greek pre-Socratic profound saying the fairest universe is just but a dust-heap randomly piled (Boswell and Gordon 47). Shakespearean sonnets have four parts. The quatrains are the first three parts, and each is composed of four lines and has the rhyme pattern abab. The couplet is the fourth part and has the rhyme pattern cc. Quatrains carry a set of metaphors and symbols while the couplet either introduces a fresh insight into or sums up the metaphors or symbols (Callaghan 62). The speaker in Shakespeare’s sonnet 147 likens his love to disease. He articulates the traits of the disease in quatrain one; he breaks down the nature of the relationship to the physician (reason) in the second quatrain; he analyzes the outcomes of abandoning reason in the third quatrain, and the couplet points out the cause of his disease-like love as being betrayal from his lover. This comes close to Petrarch’s sonnet in that it could be looked at as if the first two quatrains are asking the question that the remaining one quatrain and the couplet attempt to address. It is important to note that Shakespeare’s ideas are largely dependent on and are developed by the form of the sonnet. Philip Sydney is one of the prominent founders of the English verse form. In his work, Astrophel and Stella, Sydney depicts Stella as a heroine in his lyrical poetry. This diverts significantly from the Italian poetic portrayal of the image of the female. Sydney paints her as moral and devoted to integrity (Stillman 58). Sydney’s tone is harmonized by an excellent use of narrative and myth. This enables him to describe the way in which the love of Stella develops while remaining positive. Sydney’s writings epitomize renaissance humanism especially in the way he brings Stella out as one who derives her virtue largely from moral duty and not from supernatural (Paradise love). She is presented as real and not as the ideal Italian woman. Sydney’s writings were termed by critics as European Petrarch, and his verse depicted the rhyme scheme abbaabba cdcdgg. Sydney’s poetry employed two techniques; compound epithets and inversion. The latter gave his works an intellectual and emotional touch. He would use either one syllable or two syllable words and would craft his verse in such a way that it would have a set of short words, in a line like in his sonnet 1 and sonnet 31. He wrote most of his sonnets in the first person, and there is a thin line between the voice of the persona and that of the author. This is Sydney’s idea of distancing himself from the actor so as to lead him to moral development. His works are able to merge the lyric and epic elements (Lawall and Maynard 44). Astrophel and Stella portray man maturing morally in the strife between intelligence and passion. In conclusion, Western Europe saw significant religious, political and cultural changes in the close of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century. These changes resulted on changes in literature as the traditions that greatly influenced medieval writings faded away and were replaced by those of the renaissance. Chief among these medieval traditions is chivalry that was governed largely by religion. Crossing over to the renaissance, chivalry found room in the literature of the time but was expressed largely artificially in romance and lyrics. Most importantly, there was the introduction of formal rules that were introduced during the renaissance. Writers in the renaissance had to manipulate words skillfully to meet the requirements of rhyme, meter and structured phrasing. Works Cited Battles, Paul. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2012. Print. Boswell, Jackson C, and Gordon Braden. Petrarch's English Laurels, 1475-1700. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2012. Print. Callaghan, Dympna. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print. Dante, Alighieri, and Steven Botterill. Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print. Johnson, Marguerite. Sappho. London: Duckworth, 2007. Print. Lawall, Sarah N, and Maynard Mack. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: Norton, 2002. Print. Nye, Robert. Beowulf: A New Telling. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1968. Print. Stillman, Robert E. Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008. Print. Read More