5. The English ballads of the XV century.

Though there were no original authors in the 15 century, folk literature could not stop developing and the century witnessed another wave of folklore, especially in the form of ballads. They became popular in England and Scotland and were lyrical poems, recited or sung to the accompaniment of a flute or a bagpipe. Ballads and songs expressed the feelings and thoughts of people, therefore the author is not felt in them.

They were handed out by word of mouth from generation to generation and the help of printing helped to preserve them. They continued to develop till the 18 century.

In the 15 century William Caxton set up the first printing press in London in 1476.

Ballads can be divided into 3 main groups:

-historical - those based on historical facts

-heroic - about the people persecuted by the law or their own families.

-romantic - telling of love and noble deeds.

The most popular ballad cycle is The Robin Hood Ballads, which consists of 40 heroic ballads with the element of romance. Robin Hood is believed to have lived in the 12 century when Henry II reigned and his son Richard I also know to be Lion hearted, in Sherwood Forest not far from Nottingham. Robin Hood was known as a relentless enemy of the Norman barons and sheriffs and protector of the poor and oppressed.

6. The history of the English sonnet.

The Renaissance period in England roughly coincides with the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, another name for this historical and cultural epoch is the Elizabethan Age.

The English poets at that time imitated foreign models, the most important of which was the sonnet, the poetic form which is originally Italian. It was brought to perfection by the great Italian poet Francesco Petrarca.

A Petrarch sonnet is a poem of 14 lines: two quatrains (4-line stanzas) and two terzets (3-line stanzas). The rhyming pattern of the quatrains is abba abba; the rhymes of the terzets could vary: ccd eed; cde cde; cdc dcd.

As can been seen, it's rather difficult to compose a sonnet observing the strict form and alteration of lines. Besides, in a classical sonnet a thought is put forth in the first quatrain, another thought in the second, these two thoughts intersect in the first terzet, and a solution is reached in the second terzet, usually in the last line of the sonnet. If the author is skillful enough, he makes the last word of the last line the most significant, this work is called the key of the sonnet.

The outstanding English poets of the middle of the16th century who were the first to bring the sonnet into the English literature were Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Sir Thomas Wyatt's most quoted poem is not, strictly speaking, a sonnet, but it might still serve as an example of an elaborate verse form with a strictly observed rhyming pattern.

Purely English form of the sonnet was invented by Henry Howard Surrey. It consisted of three quatrains and a couplet. Later William Shakespeare exploited this pattern in his verse, and such sonnets come to be generally called "Shakespearean".

Another great innovation of Surrey is blank verse. It's poetry written in regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always iambic pentameters.

There was another category of English Renaissance poets, who couldn't boast of noble birth: they came from poor families. Among such "non-aristocratic" authors was the greatest non-dramatic poet Edmund Spenser. He created a sonnet form of his own, the Spenserian sonnet. A sonnet form composed of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee.

And the special unique stanza which was constructed by Spenser and is now known as The Spenserian stanza. It's a fixed verse form for the Spenser's epic poem "The Faerie Queene". Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is "ababbcbcc."