Ideas/Techniques of the Renaissance period

Question 1

The Art of Imitation

Answer 1

Recommended way of writing- ‘Bees gather nectar from different flowers; this is then transformed into honey’-Horace and Senela. Favourite Humanist metaphor.

Question 2

Falling Language

Answer 2

After the fall, language is incapable of portraying purity as it is corrupted. Eg. Astrophil and Stella.

Question 3

Metatheatre

Answer 3

Challenge’s theatre’s claims to be simply realistic. Unlikeness of life to dramatic art. Eg. the function of violence in The Spanish Tragedy- cyclic,controversial, some of it futile.

Question 4

Culturally Central

Answer 4

Plays staged at court. Plays licensed by a court official.

Question 5

Culturally Marginal

Answer 5

Plays staged in London suburbs. Accessible to the illiterate and a commercial phenomenon.

Question 6

The Revenge Tragedy

Answer 6

A new genre which gained popularity. Death by entertainment. Eg. The Spanish Tragedy.

Question 7

Machiavellian

Answer 7

Eg. Lorenzo in The Spanish Tragedy. A “puppet master,” cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct. Other machiavellians include Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello and Richard of Gloucester in Richard III.

Question 8

Anaphora

Answer 8

Repetition- ‘Thus must…/ Thus must…/ And thus…’

Question 9

Meta-theatrical

Answer 9

Play within a play. Eg. Volpone

Question 10

‘The Self’

Answer 10

Soul-searching, individualism, examination of the internal voice as well as the external. Eg. Thomas Wyatt (subject in the changing world), George Herbert, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Clifford (former two life-writing.)

Question 11

Self-centredness

Answer 11

One who has a mind, body and a soul.

Question 12

Self-scrutiny and awareness

Answer 12

Almost characters walking around themselves, looking at their own experiences from an outsider’s POV.

Question 13

Rhetorical self-hood

Answer 13

Eg. Margaret Cavendish expresses humility yet is daring- ‘I hope my readers will not think me vain.’

Question 14

Petrarch

Answer 14

Major influence upon Renaissance writers/ poets. Italian poet- creator of the sonnet. Renaissance writers such as Sidney, Wyatt and Donne all used Petrarch’s sonnet in different ways and used their own techniques to self-define their own work.

Question 15

Conjunction

Answer 15

Joining together syntactic units (eg. with, and, or, but.)

Question 16

Relativization

Answer 16

Relative clauses, subordinate to the main clause, provide additional information. Eg. links provided by relative pronouns (who, which, whose, whom, that.)

Question 17

Parataxis

Answer 17

Produced through the use of conjunctions (and, or, but) like stringing beads. Could be re-written as five separate sentences.

Question 18

Co-relatives

Answer 18

Eg. ‘both,’ ‘and,’ ‘not’, ‘but’ , ‘also’, ‘as’, ‘so.’ Can create a sense of inevitability, that there is a logical progression from one idea to the next. Potentially coercive, directing the reading.

Question 19

Ebbing and flowing

Answer 19

Movement back and fourth within the sentence.

Question 20

Hypotaxis

Answer 20

‘Stuffing envelopes.’ The subordination of one clause to another.

Question 21

Flattery

Answer 21

Flattering tone to another character/real person.

Question 22

Tacitean Prose

Answer 22

Based on Cicero. Briefer, more aphoristic (learned sound bites.)