I sing of a maiden

That is makelees (=matchless):

King of alle kinges

To her sone she chees (=choose)

He cam also stille

Ther (=where) his moder was

As dewe in Aprille

That falleth on the gras.

Like the romance, the fabliau is a French literary invention of the late Middle Ages. It may be defined as a humorous short story in verse, dealing with middle- or lower-class characters, and involving some kind of trickery or practical joke. The fabliau was extremely popular in France, but it never became a major genre in Britain. In the typical French fabliau the emphasis lies upon the sequence of comic events, upon the ingenuity of the trick; characterisation and setting are minimal, and the characters are usually no more than types - the scheming wife, the clever lover, the foolish husband, the duped merchant, etc. This pattern is apparent in the anonymous British examples, ranging from the early Dame Sirith (c. 1300) to the late Freiris of Berwick (c. 1500), as it is also in Chaucer's Shipman's Tale.

The supreme accomplishment in the fabliau is the work of Chaucer in the tales of the Miller, Reeve, and Merchant in the Canterbury Tales. In these great tales Chaucer once again transforms and transcends the genre in which he is working. He does this by combining the usual comic plot with vastly enriched characterisation, setting and emotional atmosphere, so that the hilarious climax seems to arise inevitably out of the characters of the chief personages in each story; at the same time the tale reflects the peculiar traits of its pilgrim teller. The result is a rich, complex, human comedy.

Chapter 3. English Literature of Renaissance

The fifteenth century was an age of violent contrasts. The age was marked with two parallel processes going in full swing. While feudal relations and the feudal mode of production were decaying, bourgeois relations and the bourgeois mode of production were developing rapidly. Thus the decline of the feudal estate created favourable conditions for internal wars to rage all over the country.

The War of the Roses (1455 - 85) started on the background of England's defeat in the Hundred Years War (1337 - 1453) between England and France. The defeat in France had brought back the most warlike nobles who were greatly dissatisfied with their losses and who were unfit for peaceful work. The war was a dynastic struggle between two most powerful feudal families - the House of Lancaster (had the emblem of the red rose) and the House of York (had the emblem of the white rose).

After terrible struggle and bloodshed which lasted thirty years the war ended in 1485 after the battlle of Bosworth. Henry of Richmond or Henry Tudor won that battle against Richard III. The latter was killed in the battle. Henry Tudor became Henry VII (1485 - 1509). Moreover, Henry was wise enough to marry the heiress of the House of York. Thus, Henry VII formed a new monarchy, the Tudor monarchy - an absolute monarchy - which started a new relationship in the society. The monarchy was supported by the new nobility and the emerging bourgeoisie. The contradiction between the bourgeois large-scale production and the feudal system of the Middle Age England with the English church (catholic) at the head hampered the development of the country and implanted discontent in its population.

Thus, the discontent with the church and feudalism, competition of the English bourgeoisie with their rivals in Europe to secure the expanding of overseas colonial trade, could no longer afford to let the Pope intervene in English affairs. Henry VIII's divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was a convenient pretext to break away from Rome. Henry VIII and the Parliament adopted the Act of Supremacy (1534) which recognised the Anglican church as the only official church in the country with the king (Henry VIII) as its head. The new church differed very little from the former Catholic church, which was the reason for further discontent in the country and which eventually led to the emergence of the puritan movement in England.

In the sixteenth century, by the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, English merchants were challenging the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly. The English bourgeoisie having accumulated power and wealth at home was interested in colonial expansion. In this ventures the Tudor monarchs and especially Queen Elizabeth assisted the merchants and seamen-pirates by granting them charters and patents to trade and to found overseas settlements. Thousands of Spanish ships were robbed by the English and the open war with Spain was coming near. In England Spain supported the Catholic elements headed by Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who was next in line, after Elizabeth, to the English throne. Philip, king of Spain, began to build a huge fleet of galleons - an Armada. After the death of Mary Stuart who was executed for her role in plotting against the English state, Philip of Spain openly claimed the English throne. To enforce his claim, he, in May 1588, sent a great fleet of a hundred and thirty vessels against England. The Spanish Armada was completely defeated by the English navy in 1588 in the English Channel. The victory of England meant the establishment of England's naval supremacy.

The limited world of chivalrous romances did not suffice to express the great changes which had occurred in the European society during the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries. New methods of production, new concepts and ideas about the world had to be expressed in a new literature (art on the whole). The discovery of the beauty of ancient Greek art, the spreading of direct knowledge of Greek classical literature, the acquaintance with Greek philosophy and science, the acceptance of man as the new dimension of life and art (Renaissance) arose first in Italy during the fourteenth through fifteenth centuries and gave a great impulse to the development of the fine arts, architecture, literature, philosophy, scientific studies, medical and technical experiments.

In England we may distinguish three periods of the Renaissance: the first period happened at the end of the fifteenth century and lasted till the first half of the sixteenth century; the second period was marked by the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558 - 1603) and the literary activity of William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616); and the third period flourished after Shakespeare's death, which ended with the beginning of the Puritan revolution (mid seventeenth century).

The early Tudor period was the time of transition from late medieval to Renaissance culture. Historically, the early Tudor period extends from the accession of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, in 1485 to the accession of the last and greatest of that name, Elizabeth I, in 1558. In terms of creative literature in all genres this era is singularly barren. The fact is the more surprising since we are accustomed to thinking of early Tudor times as the beginning of Renaissance in England., when the floodgates of the New Learning, the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, finally opened and stimulating influences poured in from the continent. At the same time the introduction of the printing press, first established by William Caxton in 1476, resulted in a rapid increase of the literacy rate and provided new opportunities for writers. Nonetheless this new world was very slow in producing native literary fruits; for generations England seemed to be simply absorbing and gradually adjusting to the new influences, rather than creating. It is significant that what was probably the greatest single work of creative imagination during the entire period, Sir Thomas More's Utopia, was written not in English but in Latin. New writing in English, though copious, was for the most part mediocre, and not at all revolutionary, fully justifying C. S. Lewis's designation of the period as the 'Drab Age'. Medieval attitudes and practices persisted for generations in the renaissance, giving way only very slowly to the changes that eventually led to the great flowering of English literature and culture in the golden age of Elizabeth.

The poets at the court of Henry VIII who introduced the 'sweet new Italian style' represent a spot of brilliance that we associate with the beginning of English Renaissance. But it was not until the 1580's that a sudden proliferation of writers who are, in C. S. Lewis's terms, 'golden' in manner and in matter, took place. The reign of Queen Elizabeth saw the development of the English language as an instrument of prose and poetry. In poetry, Elizabethan literature is especially rich in lyric forms, which are often closely related to folk traditional forms. In this respect outstanding were Edmund Spenser (1552 - 99), author of the nice The Faerie Queene, which is a combination of chivalrous romance and allegory; Philip Sydney (1554 - 86), poet, critic, statesman and soldier, author of the Apology for Poetry, and some others. Sir Walter Raleigh, an outstanding explorer of his time was also a fine poet, though he is better known for his History of the World, written in prose.

The earliest of the gifted Tudor poets, John Skelton, was an eccentric kind of genius. His earlier poems are medieval and continental in style, though the best of them, The Bowge [wages] of Court, a satiric dream-vision depicting the corruption and madness of court life, has passages of real brilliance. Sir Thomas Wyatt was also an eccentric, but of a very different kind Wyatt's intrinsic importance and his glory lie in the powerfully personal style that he developed while working within conventional forms, those of the medieval English lyric and of the Petrarchan sonnet. At its best Wyatt's style is original, direct, spare, and unadorned; it has little of the mellifluous sweetness of Petrarch, but does have a strange, stark power of its own. Wyatt is inimitable; his grave, tormented utterance makes him one of the fine love poets in English literature.

Spenser is the first writer of verse to 'sum up' the aspirations and dreams of the Elizabethan age. His Faerie Queene, though unfinished at his death, is a monumental poem. It tells of the human virtues - love, faith, friendship, etc. - in the form of allegory, giving to each virtue a special knight or protector, and presenting in Gloriana (the Fairy Queen herself) the glory which comes from possession of virtue. Gloriana is also Queen Elizabeth, to whom Spenser addresses himself, and the whole poem is suffused with genuine devotion to the Queen and the country. Spenser is at one with both the people of England and the Court of England:he knows the traditions and superstitions of the common folk, he can use their earthy speech, but he is also filled with the sophistication of the aristocratic, and The Faerie Queene is full of noble ideals, patriotism, polite learning, and chivalry. What Spenser bequeathed to poets to come was a stanza of his own invention, called after him the Spenserian Stanza, which we can find much used in poets like Shelley, Keats, Tennyson - romantic poets who sought inspiration in the dreamy music of Spenser. The individual music of this stanza strikes up the very beginning of The Faerie Queene:

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain,

Yclad in mighty arms and silver shield,

Wherein old dints of deep wounds did remain,

The cruel marks of many a bloody field;

Yet arms till that time did never wield;

His angry steed did chide his foaming bit,

As much disdaining to the curb to yield;

Full jolly knight he seemed, and fair did sit,

As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit.

Another poet of great literary significance was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Surrey has historical importance for his skillful exploitation of the Italian sonnet and for his invention of the blank verse (unrhymed verse, especially in iambic pentameters) as a vehicle for his translation of the first two books of Virgil's Aeneid. The form he created, blank verse - ten syllables to a line, five stresses, no rhyme (the most suitable form for translating Virgil) - was highly admired by the Elizabethans, and probably he determined the choice of that medium by incomparably greater poets - Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne (he used the sonnet-form not only for the conventional love poetry, but also for his passionate religious poetry), and Milton. The poets who introduced 'sweet new Italian style' - Wyatt and Surrey - also introduced the sonnet form which had become a rage in Italy following Petrarch's infinite variety and skill in handling amatory lyrics in praise of his beloved Laura. His collection known as Canzoniere or Rime sparse (i.e., scattered rhymes) includes forms other than the sonnet (sestinas, madrigals) and subjects other than his varied psychological response to love such as those having a patriotic, moral, or religious cast. During his lifetime Petrarch was imitated, even plagiarised, and in the two centuries after his death Petrarchism became a craze - some imitating his language or his manner, some composing centoni - poems made from bits and pieces of other poets - and some interlarding their poems with Petrarchan lines. His influence had no geographic boundary.

Both Wyatt and Surrey used Petrarch for translation and/or adaptation; while Wyatt approximates the Italian form of the sonnet (an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet of three rhymes), for some of his sonnets Surrey introduces a variation - three quatrains and a concluding couplet - that was so attuned to the quality of the English language that it became the standard 'English' or Shakespearean form.

The sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines divided into two quatrains and two tercets (Italian sonnet) or into three quatrains and a final couplet (English sonnet). The so-called Shakespearean sonnet has the following rhyme-scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. The sonnet was brought to England at the end of the fifteenth century and transformed into the form most applicable for the national language. The English poets-humanists - Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser made the poetic genre very popular with the British public. Shakespeare wrote a cycle of sonnets (154 in number).

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters it 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;