Топики по английскому
.docUNIT 35
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Herbert Hoover assumed office under favorable circumstances. The country had never been more prosperous or society more healthy. Factories could not turn out automobiles, refrigerators, radios, and vacuum cleaners fast enough to keep up with the insatiable demand for new implements; hundreds of thousands of new houses, in fantastic colonial, Tudor, and modernistic styles, sprang up in the suburbs of great cities. Colleges and moving picture theaters were jammed; advertising rose from the level of a business to the higher levels of a science and an art. Every day some new and marvelous technological improvement gave assurance of still better times ahead. But fate was unkind. For the catastrophe came on October 29, 1929. Millions of investors lost their life savings. Business houses closed their doors, factories shut down, banks crashed, and millions of unemployed walked the streets in a vain search for work. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes; tax collections dropped to the point where cities and counties were unable to pay school teachers; foreign trade declined to an unprecedented low level. The great depression of 1929 lasted almost a full decade. It was unprecedented in length and in the wholesale poverty and tragedy which it inflicted upon society. And in another respect, too, it differed from earlier depressions: it was clearly the product of abundance, not of want. More completely than any other depression it was a monument to the breakdown of the system of distribution of wealth and of goods and to the failure of business leadership.
UNIT 34
WOODROW WILSON
Woodrow Wilson was in many respects the most remarkable figure in American politics since Jefferson. He was a scholar and an intellectual.
A romantic and an idealist, he was at the same time the most thoroughly realistic and skillful political leader since Lincoln. He was a moralist in politics and in international affairs. With an old-fashioned gallantry went a hot-tempered belligerence. His speeches had a lofty eloquence and a poetic beauty unmatched since Lincoln. He was a student of politics, had written several books on government, and had his own well-matured notions of the nature of the presidential office, of the party system, and of the place of the United States in the world of nations, and he was prepared to put these notions into effect. Impersonal in his relations, he attracted men to him as to an abstract principle, and he never permitted personal affection to interfere with his policies. Most of Wilson's life had been spent in academic classes, as professor of politics and president of Princeton University. In 1910 the Democratic bosses of New Jersey put him forward as window dressing, and he took over the whole political shop. Within two years he had driven the bosses from the political temples and transformed New Jersey from one of the rotten boroughs of American politics into a model commonwealth. In the process he had perfected many of the techniques he was later to use. It was Wilson's spectacular achievement in New Jersey that made him a national figure, and gave him the presidential nomination, and carried him to victory over Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson's inaugural address was at once a challenge and a promise.
UNIT 33
TSARISM
The internal organization of the Russian Empire, the despotic absolutism of its Government, while it served to separate Russia from the Western world, made possible its successful policy of conquest in Asia. Russian absolutism assured a continuity of policy, and a silent and unswerving carrying out of plans of expansion which would have been impossible in the states of the West, ruled by Ministers responsible to Parliaments. Throughout the nineteenth century we may note the successive steps of the advance eastward, across Siberia and into Central Asia. The Russians forged ahead in all directions where no stiff resistance was offered, through Turkestan to Afghanistan, towards the Pacific and the Persian Gulf.
With the development of industrialism which in the nineties began to make headway in Russia, the social ferment was becoming a serious menace to established authority. Repressive measures at home and an aggressive policy abroad were now vigorously launched. The Trans-Siberian railway was to serve as a main artery across the empire. It is not surprising that the prospect of linking the Eastern and Western world by a direct and rapid trade route, which was to cross Russian dominions from one end to the other, from the Pacific to the Black Sea and the Baltic, should have fired across the Caucasus, the Trans-Caspian and Trans-Manchurian extension, it appeared as though the Eastern hemisphere would soon become tributary of the Tsar.
But these vast schemes required capital, which was not available in Russia. Only France could provide Russia with it. Thus the Franco-Russian alliance grew of the loans floated in the Paris market. By this alliance Russia obtained not only the funds necessary to carry forward her plans of railway construction in Asia, but also security for her Western frontier, which was essential if she was to be in a position to pursue a bold policy in the Far East. A power was arising there which was soon to shatter Russian plane of domination, and lead indirectly to the destruction of the Muscovite Empire.
UNIT 32
THE CIVIL WAR
The conflict united the North and also the South. Each side had certain advantages. The North was far stronger in population, industrial resources, and wealth. The census of 1860 showed that twenty-three Northern states had twenty-two million people. And the Southern population had over nine million. The Northern railway system comprised about 22 000 miles, the Southern only 9000. The North held a tremendous advantage in its industrial development, for New York alone produced in 1860 a value of manufactured goods more than twice, and Pennsylvania nearly twice, that of the whole South. In the last three years of the conflict the North made nearly all of its own war supplies, while the South had to depend on foreign guns, foreign drugs and surgical equipment, and to a great extent on foreign ammunition. The North kept control of the navy and, with it, the ocean. It had a more adaptable and variegated economy. It had the strength lent by immigration. The South had in its favor the martial spirit of its people. All that it needed to do was to fight long and hard enough to persuade the North that it could not itself be conquered. It could afford to lose battles and even campaigns; it could afford to suffer defeat after defeat. The South would win if it could convince Northern opinion that a Union victory would cost too much. Many believed that the South also possessed a great advantage in controlling the world's main cotton supply, that Britain, needing this cotton to keep her mills busy, would intervene on the Southern side. Time showed that this was a miscalculation and that Britain needed Northern wheat no less than Southern cotton.
UNIT 31
NATIONAL UNITY
Before the Civil War the United States was largely a rural community, in spite of the fact that the census of 1860 showed a million and a quarter wage-earners and one thousand million dollars invested in industry. The Civil War and the re-establishment of the Union as 'one and indivisible' swept away all the old political issues of State rights. The Federal Government, after a few years of a reckless reconstruction policy, was glad to find a way out by permitting the Southern States to deal with their own affairs as they saw fit.
Men turned in disgust from politics and devoted their full energies to what had always been their principal concern, their economic interests. It was soon evident that the anti-slavery agitation in the North, the secession of the Southern States, the Civil War itself, were mere interludes in the process of national expansion.
Business now assumed first place, and a period of intense industrial development followed. But it was not by haphazard methods, such as had characterized the expansion westward of the pioneer be- ; fore the Civil War. The day of the pioneer was over. The day of the expert was at hand. This is the significant factor of the new epoch. It i is here that we may trace to its source the phenomenal industrial \ growth that took place. Here we may discover the beginnings of the j new industrial technique that was being developed and was to have such a remarkable influence in moulding the destiny of the American people.
It was not on the battlefields of the Civil War, nor through the firm policy of Lincoln, that the American people were bound into a nation. It was. not a sense of racial homogeneity such as we find in Europe that awakened their patriotism and made possible the knitting together into a compact whole of the various States of the Union without any radical change of the Constitution. The cause is to be discovered in the implicit acceptance of economic factors as controlling social life.
UNIT 30
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
In 1859 Charles Darwin published his "Origin of Species". From that date the doctrine of evolution made its way throughout the Western world. The new direction found favor at once with American scientists and among philosophers too, but it took a long time before theologians would admit Darwin to their universe. Enlightened theologians managed to reconcile religion and evolution. Gradually the more liberal Protestant churches were won over, but until well into the twentieth century the Presbyterian and Lutheran churches were in opposition to the new teachings. But the Roman Catholic Church rejected the "modernism". The philosophical response to the scientific findings was "pragmatism". Formulated by a group of New England thinkers, it speedily conquered most of the citadels of academic philosophy and achieved a popularity denied to most philosophies. Pragmatism was less a philosophy than a way of thinking about philosophy. It regarded truth not as absolute but as relative. Truth, as the pragmatists saw it, was not fixed and final, but still in the making. This meant that the emphasis of pragmatism was everywhere on evolution, growth, and change. The pragmatists accepted the fullest implications of organic evolution, and assumed that the social organism was as much subject to the evolutionary processes as the physical. This new way of looking at philosophy, and at the whole social order, quickly worked a revolution in American thought. It carried with it shift from the deductive to the inductive, from the intuitive to the experimental, from principle to practice, and from form to function.
UNIT
29
JEFFERSON'S ADMINISTRATION
The manner in which Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801 emphasized the fact that democracy had come into power. The ceremonies were the first to be held in Washington. Jefferson took the oath of office and quietly delivered one of the best addresses ever made by an incoming President. Part of Jefferson's address was a much-needed plea for conciliation. He begged the citizens to remember that political intolerance is as bad as religious intolerance and to unite as Americans in preserving the Union. The very fact that Jefferson was in the White House for two terms encouraged democratic procedures throughout the country. He abolished all the aristocratic trappings with which Washington had surrounded the presidency. To Jefferson the plainest citizen was as worthy of respect as the highest officer. He encouraged agriculture and promoted land settlement by purchasing the Indians' titles and helping them migrate westward. Believing that America should be a haven for the oppressed, he encouraged immigration by a liberal naturalization law. He tried hard to keep peace with other nations, for war would mean more government activity, more taxes, and less freedom. As a wave of Jeffersonian feeling swept over the nation, all commoners rejoiced. State after state was abolishing property qualifications for the ballot and for office and passing more humane laws as for debtors and criminals. Yet fate turned Jefferson and the country in a direction that he had not intended. By two steps he, the apostle of a strict construction of the Constitution, stretched the powers of the Federal government to the utmost; and, when he left office the war that he hated lay just ahead.
UNIT 28
CULTURE
New England placed great emphasis upon education. While the colonies were still in their infancy, they had made some elementary schooling compulsory. Grammar schools and academies flourished. Two colleges, Harvard and Yale, had been established. Harvard with a library of five thousand volumes, and good scientific apparatus, and the classics lagged little behind the best European universities. A number of colleges were founded in the middle and lower colonies — which trained Jefferson and many other public figures. The College of Philadelphia was set up by Franklin in 1755.
Newspapers, magazines, and almanacs were being published in the colonies. The oldest printing press in America was set up as early as 1639. On the eve of the Revolution Boston had five newspapers, and Philadelphia three. Wealth was accumulating faster and faster; finer houses were being built, luxury in food and dress was increasing. By 1750 all along the seaboard a well-to-do society, acquainted with the best European thought could be found. But at the same time the frontier was steadily being pressed westward, and the first streams of immigration were pouring through the passes of the Appalachians. Hardy pioneers of the border, with their long rifles and keen axes, cared nothing for luxury, fashion, or ideas; their mission in life was to tame the wilderness. Between the fashionable planters and merchants on the one side, the Indian-slaying frontiersmen on the other, stood the great mass of plain middle-class people who were the typical Americans of 1775. They felt that America was their destiny.
UNIT
27
A DEVELOPING AMERICANISM
Two main factors may be distinguished in the development of a distinctive American nationality during the colonial period, a character that was already crystallizing when the Revolution began. One factor was a new people — a mixture of different national stocks. The other factor was a new land — a rich and empty country. By 1775 a distinctly American society, with its own social, economic, and political traits, was emerging. At some points it approached closely to the European pattern. But the great mass of Americans was growing quite distinct from the European type in the old homeland. The emigration to America had fortunately taken place in a way which made the English language and English institutions everywhere dominant, so that the country possessed a general unity. Neither the Germans nor the French Huguenots set up a separate colony, as they might have done; they mingled with the first British comers, adopting their language and outlook. We should neither exaggerate nor underestimate the mixture of peoples in colonial days. At the time of the Revolution probably over three fourths of the white colonists were still of British blood; but the infusion of the Dutch, German, French, and other Continental stocks was significant. The first great waves of settlement had been English waves, and New England and the lowland parts of the South remained almost purely English. But while the original flow continued, in the eighteenth century two other heavy waves of emigration came from Europe — the German and the Scotch-Irish. Each was represented, at the outbreak of the Revolution, by hundreds of thousands of settlers.
UNIT 26
THE FIRST COLONIES
One of the most interesting colonies did not take on firm outlines till late in the century. A number of settlers, British, Dutch, and Swedish, had found their way into the area which later became Pennsylvania. When William Penn came into control of the region in 1681, he quieted the Indians by friendly treaties. To attract colonists he offered liberal terms, assuring all that they could obtain land, establish homes, and live in Justice and equality with their neighbours. No Christian would suffer from religious discrimination. In civil affairs the laws would rule. In 1682 he came over himself, bringing about a hundred colonists. Pennsylvania throve wonderfully, attracting a great variety of settlers from Britain and the Continent.
Two main instruments were used in the work of transferring Britons across the seas and founding new states. The first one was the charted trading companies organized primarily for profit. They could (distribute lands, operate mines, coin money, and organize the defence of their colonies. The king, who granted the charters, kept ultimate jurisdiction over the colonial governments. The other principal instrument of colonization was the proprietary grant. The proprietor was a man belonging to the British nobility to whom the Crown gave a territory in America as it might have given him an estate at home. The old rule of English law was that all land not otherwise held belonged to the king, and America fell under this rule. The proprietors were given large powers to devise a government. In 1682 Penn called together an assembly, all of whom were elected by the settlers, and allowed them to enact a constitution, or "Great Charter".
UNIT 25
NATURAL FEATURES OF NORTH AMERICA
The history of English settlement in America began on a beautiful April morning in 1607, when three storm-beaten ships of Captain Christopher Newport anchored near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, sending ashore men who found "fair meadows, and tall trees". With these ships were George Perey, and Captain John Smith. Perey records how they found noble forests, the ground carpeted with flowers; fine strawberries, oysters, game, and an Indian town. The Indians brought them corn bread and tobacco. For a time these first experiences in Virginia seemed enchanting. Perey's "Observations" describes the delight of the newcomers in the richly colored birds, the fruits and berries, the fine sturgeon, and the pleasant scenery. But his brave narrative, full of a wild poetry, ends in something like a shriek. For he tells how the Indians attacked the settlers, how the men were seized by cruel diseases, and how many died of famine.
The planting of a new nation in America was no holiday undertaking. It meant grim, dirty, toilsome, dangerous work. Here was a great continent, its Eastern third covered with pathless forests, its mountains, rivers, lakes, and rolling plains all upon a grandiose scale; its Northern stretches fiercely cold in winter; its Southern areas burning hot in summer, filled with wild beasts, and peopled by a warlike, cruel, and treacherous people still in the Stone Age of culture. In many respects it was a forbidding land. It could be reached only by a voyage so perilous that some ships buried as many as they landed. But despite all its drawbacks, it was admirably fitted to become the home of an energetic, thriving people.
UNIT 24
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HISTORICAL PAST
For thousands of years the Western Hemisphere lay hidden from the great civilizations of East and West. But toward the end of the fifteenth century Europe discovered a New World. During the next hundred years the Europeans spilled blood and gained treasure exploring this new continent. Almost overnight Western Europeans broadened their horizons. For centuries following the collapse of Rome, European civilization had been narrowed by newly risen and hostile forces, first the Arabs, mobilized by the faith of Islam, later by the Ottoman Turks, and always by the impenetrable barrier the ocean placed in the way of Europe's westward thrust.
All that changed during the century after Columbus discovered America. Christians repulsed the Turkish threat at the gates of Vienna in 1529, and Europeans gained a foothold in North Africa from which Islam had launched its invasion of Christendom. The waters of the Atlantic carried European vessels to the far reaches of the globe. It was no accident that ships bearing the flags of Spain, Portugal, and other European kingdoms, and not those of China, Japan, or other Eastern nations found a new world; nor was the timing of America's discovery accidental. The Western Hemisphere became Europe's prize because what had been happening in the Old World long before Columbus set sail in August, 1492, prepared Europeans for the role of successful colonizers and empire builders. In the vanguard of European expansion stood Portugal and Spain. The Iberian peninsula had played a minor role in European affairs until the Age of Columbus when its soldiers and sailors carved out great empires.
UNIT 23
PETER THE GREAT
The impact of Peter the Great upon Muscovy was like that of a peasant hitting a horse with his fist. Tsarism in Peter's lifetime received a new stamp owing to his exceptional character and abilities. Peter enforced compulsory service in the army, navy, and government on the landowners and himself set the example as the first servant of the state. He wrote of himself with full justification: "1 have not spared and I do not spare my life for my fatherland and people". Almost all Peter's reforms were born of military and naval requirements. Russia must be westernised in order to ensure the "two necessary things in government, namely order and defence". His task was to convert his subjects "from children into adults". He was inspired by devotion to Russia. His reforms until about 1715 were imposed too hastily. In his last dozen years, when war was less heavy and his contacts with the West were closer, the autocratic edicts gave way to systematic, carefully elaborated legislation that remoulded state and church alike. He had to crush in blood four serious uprisings, and he condemned to death his own son and heir, Alexis, on the ground of his being the ringleader of reaction. In actuality Alexis was a passive creature who was only hoping for his father's death. The opposition was leaderless; almost all interests in Russia were divided between supporters and opponents of Peter. He aimed at transforming Tsarism into a European kind of absolute monarchy, and to a certain extent he succeeded. Russia was never the same again, even though there was regress after Peter's death. He declared himself to be 'an absolute monarch who does not have to answer for any of his actions to anyone in the world'. This version of enlightened despotism appeared in Peter's new code for the army. The creation of a national standing army on Western model was one of the most fundamental of his legacies, and the links of Tsarism with military power and military spirit were knitted even more closely than before. Peter himself almost always appeared as a soldier or sailor and all succeeding emperors did likewise. No tsar has made such a lasting impression on Russia as Peter, whether in his works or his personality.
UNIT 22
ENGLISH PAINTING
English painting during the 17th century was dominated by foreign portraitists. Sir Peter Lely, who was a portraitist, began his activity in England in 1641. His portraits of the members of the court of Charles II set the pattern for English portraiture of the second half of the 17th century. British patrons in the 18th century collected paintings on religious or mythical subjects by foreign artists, but at home they commissioned portraits and landscapes. The Protestant church did little to encourage painting. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was followed by a brief flowering of decorative painting. William Hogarth was greatly influenced by the continental style. Early in his career he succeeded in breaking away from the straitjacket of portraiture, and in his moralizing paintings he showed the life of his contemporaries. He invented a new form of secular narrative painting. His
paintings were often tragicomedies. Hogarth's series were always engraved for a large public. Despite Hogarth's borrowings from continental old masters, he remained English. This, however, was not the case with all the next generation of painters. When Joshua Reynolds returned from Italy in 1752, he possessed a more profound acquaintance with the old masters than any of his contemporaries. His colouring can be compared with Rembrandt and Rubens, and his poses are indebted to the sculpture of Michelangelo. Thomas Gainsborough was in every way the antithesis to Reynolds. His tastes in portraiture lay in the delicate brushwork and ephemeral qualities of the Rococo. He preferred landscape painting to portraiture, and the strong Dutch influence in his earliest works later gave way to spontaneous landscapes composed from models.
UNIT 21
OLIVER CROMWELL
Oliver Cromwell, an English soldier and statesman of outstanding gifts and a forceful character was Lord Protector of the republican Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 to 1658. It is still difficult to appreciate the unique character of Cromwell's career, and the impact it made on its contemporaries. No private person until then had taken power to rule a great European kingdom, no subject had taken it up himself to sit in the judgement on his lawful sovereign, condemn with the formality of a lawful process, and publicly execute him as a criminal. In a country governed by custom, precedent, and common law, Cromwell completely changed the ancient frame of government, reforming Parliament and imposing written constitution. By conquest he incorporated the separate kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland into a single commonwealth with England. He remained the only British statesman whose entire career depended on the control and use of military power. Yet his achievement proved to be totally ephemeral. He left no political heir or legacy. Two centuries were to elapse before his reputation recovered. One of the leading generals on the parliamentary side in the English Civil War against King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell helped to bring about the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, and, as Lord Protector, he raised his country's status once more to that of a leading European power from the decline it had gone through since the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Cromwell was one of the most remarkable rulers in modern European history; for although a convinced Calvinist, he believed in the value of religious toleration.
UNIT 20
THE FIRST THEATRES
As time passed the open-air theatres became elaborate with painted decoration. Over the stage there was a gallery, so that the actors could stage scenes on more than one level. These theatres were related to. particular companies of actors who enjoyed the protection of a great lord. Shakespeare is likely to have learned his craft in the company of the builder of the Globe Theatre. His company had very powerful patrons including the Earl of Leicester, and later Lord Hunsdon. Although the Puritan authorities were so hostile, regarding actors as little more than disturbers of the peace, the life of the average player had to be extremely disciplined. No less than six different plays could be performed in one week and up to thirty in a period of six months. Every play had to be learnt, actors having to double up with more than one part, then rehearsed, all of which demanded high powers of energy and concentration. Each production called for detailed direction, for costumes to be made, and music to be supervised. By the time that Shakespeare was .in London he had already been acting and indeed writing plays. He proved himself capable of doing it. In one of them he presented a panorama of the reign of the ill-fated Henry VI. Through the decade a whole succession of plays followed and company's success was such that in 1595 they were called upon to perform before the Queen at Christmas. Those performances at court must have been a success, for they were summoned back the next year, the traditional occasion upon which Elizabeth was so delighted with the character of Sir John Falstaff that bade Shakespeare write a play about him in love. "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was the result.
UNIT 19
SHAKESPEARE
In literature men of genius will produce great work even in the worst of times. We can form a better notion of the quality of a civilization from writers of the second rank: a great civilization will be hospitable to many lesser talents and will encourage them. By this measure, England in the century from about 1550 to about 1650 had attained a very high level of civilization indeed. The nation was small and undeveloped by any modern standard. Among the many dramatic writers of the English Renaissance there were few who produced a substantial body of notable work. Each of these playwrights spoke in a distinctive voice and wrote one or more plays of the highest quality. Yet none was so consistently outstanding as William Shakespeare in so many plays, in all forms and in verse and prose.
Shakespeare was working in London by 1588, the year of the Armada — the great fleet of the Spanish ships meant to conquer England but defeated by English seamanship and autumn storms. The threat had been answered with a great outpouring of courage, and from this grew a new sense of national identity and pride. What the play-going public wanted was work that expressed the greatness of England. With three plays about England's fifteenth-century King Henry VI, Shakespeare began to provide it. Before he could continue plague closed the London theatres, and for a time Shakespeare channelled his poetic gifts into nondramatic forms. Having demonstrated his power as a poet, Shakespeare abandoned the form, but he continued to write sonnets, and in 1609, when they totalled 154, they were published, after years of circulating in manuscript among the poet's friends.
UNIT 18
A NEW SOCIETY
Elizabeth I was twenty-six when she came to the throne, a tall young woman of commanding presence with auburn hair and piercing grey-black eyes. She was to reign longer than any other Tudor, forty-five years in all. That lay in the future. In 1558 what the people saw was an inexperienced unmarried woman assume control of the vanquished fortune of England. Elizabeth's childhood had been fraught with danger when she had been suspected of involvement in plots. All of this made her cautious and evasive. The new queen always left room to manoeuvre herself out of tightest political corner.. But her judgement was sound, supremely so in the case of people. Her selection of officials could rarely be faulted and, as a consequence, there gradually emerged a cohesive group of educated and highly intelligent officials who gave the kingdom a sustained stability. Most of them were chosen from the ramifications of her mother's family or that of her principle minister, William Cecil. On her accession Elizabeth appointed him her Principle Secretary and over a decade later he became Lord Treasurer. The history of her reign is the story of this alliance. It was a great partnership which lasted forty years and whose main purpose was no longer revolution but consolidation, to bring peace to the country by building on the foundations laid by Elizabeth's father in the 1530s. There was no doubt that England would revert to being Protestant. Initially she had hoped to embark on religious changes piecemeal but after peace was made with France in the spring of 1559, the government was able to proceed with a religious settlement.
UNIT 17
CARDINAL WOLSEY
After Henry VIII, Wolsey was the most powerful individual in England. As Lord Chancellor he controlled the whole bureaucratic machinery of government. Wolsey's power extended over the council and the courts. As cardinal Wolsey exercised all the powers of the pope in England. No wonder contemporaries believed he had greater powers than the king, since he combined both secular and ecclesiastical powers in his person. Perhaps this unique position was a lesson to Henry VIII of how successful a combination of church and state under royal supremacy could be. And yet the speed and finality of Wolsey's fall in 1529, at the king's will, is a measure of the reality of royal power in the hands of Henry VIII.
For 15 years, the focus for Wolsey's administration was the council. Wolsey treated parliament with contempt, but then expected it to finance his foreign affairs. He called it twice but had to rely on non-parliamentary taxation. Between 1514 and 1529, Wolsey was master of the realm, and the richest man of his time. Hampton Court Palace was built for him and his household of about 500, but he gave it to Henry in a fruitless effort to regain his favour. Both the king and his Chancellor were alike in that they were active, ambitious and ostentatious, but different in that Wolsey worked harder than Henry. The volume of work performed during his chancellorship, especially in the judiciary, was phenomenal. Under him, justice was swift, fines heavy and none could afford to insult the Star Chamber. By means of these courts, he sought to reduce exploitation of the poor by the rich.
UNIT 16
ENGLISH EXPANSION
England's internal condition delayed its entrance into the competition for empire. England was torn apart by the Wars of the Roses. In 1485 a new dynasty under Henry Tudor restored order and made the monarch master of England. By the time of Henry VIII the Tudors had stabilized their rule. Eager to continue the dynasty, Henry VIII sought a male heir whose succession would not stir opposition. The king hoped that a new wife would produce a male heir but the pope refused to grant him a divorce. He rejected Rome as the authentic voice of Christianity The English Reformation gave the crown influence of the Roman Church. By confiscating the monasteries and granting their lands to supporters, the Tudors encouraged the rise of wealthy new families. English political and economic systems underwent change. Most Englishmen lived on the land and laboured to satisfy their own wants. But now production for markets became very important. Population enlarged from three to four million inhabitants. This growth depended on wealth which came from more efficient methods of agriculture. The landowners found it profitable to consolidate the lands of poorer grain fanners. On the enclosed, larger holdings they raised sheep and marketed their wool abroad where it was manufactured into cloth. The en closure movement increased in tempo in the sixteenth century pushing farmers off their lands without providing them alternative employment. As a result, "sturdy beggars" roamed the English countryside. Unemployment led some to believe that England was overpopulated and could employ surplus labour in overseas colonies.
UNIT 15
CATHEDRAL ARCHITECTURE
Cathedrals were originally monastic churches, containing the bishop's throne. Most English cathedrals were built in a form of cross. The idea that a church was and is planned in the shape of a cross to remind us of Christ's crucifixion is now rejected by many scholars. Although the Christian Church in the British Isles was established in the 4th century, it was almost destroyed by the pagan Anglo-Saxons. Hardly any actual part of an English cathedral exists today that is earlier than the Norman Conquest of 1066. Norman architecture, a convenient term for Post-Romanesque in Britain, is usually considered to have run its course just before 1200. The war-like people who gave it this familiar name were called Northmen in their own day; and though they invaded from Normandy across the Channel, they were descended from Scandinavian Vikings (or Norsemen) who settled in Northern France in 911. Norman architecture has been described as powerful and masculine.
The second stage in English Gothic architecture is widely known as Decorated and takes name after the window that came into fashion at that time. Nowadays, some scholars divide this period into Early Decorated and Late Decorated. Examples of Decorated architecture are to be found at Lincoln and York. The third and last Gothic stage of English architecture is the Perpendicular period, it has been termed 'the architecture of vertical lines'. It is interesting to note that after the Black Death, with population being possibly as much as halved within a short time, the richly-carved detail of the Decorated period became almost plain by comparison in the Perpendicular period. However, in spite of the plague, English architects and craftsmen became more skilful and daring.
In Scotland Norman architecture had been succeeded by Early English, but instead of the Perpendicular phase, a more florid development of the Decorated style replaced it under French influence, which was very strong there at that time. The results were beautiful and fanciful forms. The later phases of the Perpendicular Gothic architecture in England are sometimes called Tudor, but the term is usually applied to domestic buildings rather than to cathedrals or parish churches.
UNIT 14
VENETIAN ARTIST
Tintoretto was the founder and the principal advocate of Venetian Mannerism. It was through his work that Mannerism became established in Venice from 1550 onwards. Tintoretto's motto written over the door to his studio was "the draughtsmanship of Michelangelo and the colours of Titian", thus acknowledging the two formative influences on his own new style. The combination of space and figures, of movements and light, together with the Florentine-Roman sense of form and the Venetian palette led in his mature years to highly original solutions and gave his late pictures intellectual intensity and depth.
The largest of the canvases, more than forty feet long, is the "Crucifixion", painted in 1565, a work of such power that no reproduction can do it justice. It stretches from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, with the foreground figures more than life-size. "St Jeremy", about 1575, is an example of Tintoretto's effective distortion of form which appears in many of his pictures. The monumental figure of the saint appears life-size right in the foreground.
Tintoretto was an official state artist of the Venetian Republic from 1550. Portraits of the Venetian dignitaries make up a considerable portion of his work. Even in this field he went his own original way, away from the idealised concepts of presentation of the High Renaissance and moved towards a more individual, subjective standpoint.
Tintoretto became more radical in his late "Portrait of a Man with a White Beard", around 1570, where he ignored any sense of space or narrative detail. Tintoretto was able to develop a new type of portraiture. For some official commissions Tintoretto put some outward signs of rank into the foreground, such as those we see in the portrait of the "Man in Gilded Armour" and that of "Sebastiano Venier" (after 1570). However, even these ceremonial portraits display Tintoretto's Mannerist tastes with their play of contrasts.
UNIT 13
SIXTUS Ws FAVOURITE PAINTER
Perugino was recorded in the Florentine Guild in 1472. In 1481 he was commissioned to paint the key frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican. This was the most important commission of the late fifteenth century, for it involved a complete cycle of frescoes on a most ambitious scale and on it were employed all the major painters of the day. For so grand a work it was necessary to rely entirely on artists temporarily brought in Rome for the purpose. Perugino — who seems to have been Sixtus IV's favourite painter — executed the pair of frescoes on the altar wall flanking an altarpiece of the "Assumption" (which were all destroyed to make way for Michelangelo's "Last Judgement") and "The Charge to Peter". This fresco stands out from all others in the chapel in the clarity of its composition and also in the way in which the architectural elements are made to play an important part in the composition as a whole and are not decorative additions. The church in the background is not merely symbolical; it is the centre of the composition. The picture is so organised that the concentration of the spectator is fixed on the single event- the perspective of the paving, the alteration of light and dark masses the placing of secondary figures and groups, and the triumphal arches m the background, all contribute to the focusing on the central point. The same qualities of calm and order can be seen in his "Vision of St Bernard", and in the superb fresco of the "Crucifixion" which is treated not as an event to be represented realistically, but as a subject of contemplation, a mystery to be gazed at in. The cycle painted in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia between about 1496 and 1500 has most of Perugino's virtues as well as his shortcomings; it is almost a vitally important work in the history of art, since it is almost certain that it was here that the seventeen-year-old Raphael gained his first experience as a fresco painter on a large scale. Without Perugino's use of decoration, the Vatican Stanze would never have received the kind of decoration they did.
UNIT
12
PRINCES IN THE TOWER
The fate of Edward IV's sons was a mystery at the time and has remained so ever since. They disappeared without explanation while under their uncle Richard's protection and in his power. Most historians have therefore followed the lead of his enemies in convicting him of the crime of murdering them, and this conviction has served to establish his eligibility as the murderer of his wife, his brother and the last Lancastrian king and prince. Yet there is no real evidence that the princes in the Tower were murdered by Richard or indeed by anyone else. To repeat Professor Jacob: "it is unlikely that the circumstances of their death will be known". According to "The Great Chronicle of London" (c.1512), they were seen shooting and playing in the garden of the Tower on various occasions during the mayoralty of Sir Edward Shaw, which ran from 29 October 1482 to 28 October 1483. A quiet winter followed, but after Easter 1484 there was "much whispering among the people" that the princes were dead and that Richard had poisoned his wife so that he could marry their sister, Elizabeth. New rumours came later that year. The princes were said to have been smothered, poisoned or drowned in malmsey wine. By whatever means, they were certainly dead, the chronicler believed, and either Sir James Tyrell or an old servant of King Richard (name left blank in the manuscript) was reported to have done the deed. In his "History of King Richard III" (1513, possibly later) Thomas More confirms that differing versions of the manner of the princes' death were circulating at the time.
UNIT 11
ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Richard was born on October 2, 1452, at Fotheringhay Castle. He was the twelfth of thirteen children born to Richard, Duke of York, and his wife, Cicely Neville, and the youngest of the seven who survived infancy. In this family of large, fair, healthy children the dark, undersized, sickly Richard must have seemed like a changeling. During the seven years he lived at Fotheringhay Richard had the company only of his brother George, who was three years his senior, and his sister Margaret, who was six years older than he. Richard grew up in unstable and dangerous period in English history.
The old feudal system of loyalty based on land tenure was crumbling and a new power, based on the system of "livery and maintenance" was taking its place. In return for the "good-lordship" of a powerful magnate, a retainer promised his services in peace and war. Thus, the lord had armed men when he needed them and the retainer received protection against his enemies, wages in some cases, and, all too frequently, immunity from punishment by law. It was common practice during the fifteenth century for powerful lords to threaten or bribe juries to find lawsuits in their favour. It was the duty of the monarch to see that justice was done, but during the reign of Henry VI this oath had little meaning. Henry had frequent periods of madness and the court was dominated by his beautiful and high-spirited wife, Margaret of Anjou. She protected her partisans and persecuted those whom she» believed to be against her. She treated Richard's father, the Duke of York, as her chief enemy and so turned him into one.
UNIT 10
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND ITS EXTERNAL POLICY
England of the later Middle Ages, the most highly organized of the largest states of Europe, lay alongside of Wales and Ireland, each a collection of Celtic tribes, and bordered on Scotland, a poor and thinly inhabited Kingdom, racially divided between Celt and Saxon, but already becoming Anglo-Norman in language and institutions. In such circumstances it was inevitable that attempts should be made to round off the island empire on the basis of conquest by England. The Romans in Britain had been faced by precisely the same geographic problem. Their good genius prompted them to leave Ireland alone. They tried repeatedly and vainly to conquer Scotland; but they quickly subdued Wales by their system of military forts and roads. Medieval England had much the same measure of success as Roman Britain. More slowly indeed than the legions, English feudal chivalry with its network of castles made a military conquest of Wales, but the full adjustment of Welsh to Saxon civilization was left over till Tudor times. The attempt to subdue Scotland was a complete failure. Till the loss of Normandy in John's reign, the energies of the Norman and Angevin Kings of England had been occupied in the recovery of provinces in France. During the century that followed the final loss of Normandy and preceded the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War there was only one great King, Edward I. In his reign the power of medieval England in Wales, Ireland and Scotland reached its high-water mark. But after his death English rule in all Scotland and in nearly all Ireland was destroyed. It was weakened even in Wales.