Caxton

The beginning of the revival of learning was one important feature of Renaissance of Europe and England. After the fall of Constantinople, the monks who possessed the manuscripts of Greek literature and philosophy, took shelter in Mylam, Venice and Florence. Quite naturally there was a need for printing new books on new literature. It was Caxton who bore the entire responsibility for publishing books for spreading the message of humanism. In 1476 Caxton established his printing press in England and promoted 'New Learning' by printing Lydgate's Temple of Glass. It is the first printed book in Europe. In 1485 Caxton published Malory's Morte d' Arthur which was a manifestation of the Renaissance spirit. Caxton himself translated some of the books from latin and printed them with the zeal of reformer. Caxton was more than a mere printer of books. He embodied Renaissance ideals through his publications.

Renaissance

Renaissance in the words of Michelet, the French historian means, 'the discovery of the world and the discovery of man by man'. In the 16th century, Renaissance in Europe means the liberation of the human mind from the authority of the church and the new spirit of enquiry and challanges. Renaissance means the freedom from all blind faith in conventions and dogmas. The Middle age which was dominated by religion, suppressed freedom of thought and freedom of action. But after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the revival of learning occurred when the  greek and the roman writings were studied with great zeal and eagerness. In England, 'New Learning' got a new impetus from the publication of two books- Thomas More's Utopia and The Praise of Fooly by Erasmus. The scholars like Elyot, Wilson and Aschan played their parts in the revival of humanism. Humanistic spirit of the Renaissance was supported by the Reformation which made Protestantism of Martin Luther Triumphant. Also in England, Shakespeare, Marlowe , Kyd and Spenser promoted humanism in their writings and the legacy of the classical literature is upheld.

THE DIDACTIC NOVEL

The Didactic Novel

The didactic novel is best represented by Dr. Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). In it Johnson uses the framework of exotic tale. Rasselas grows weary of the happy valley of Abyssinia. He tells the philosopher Imlac about his discontent. But the prince is adamant; he desires to escape and see the world outside to know the secret of content. At last the prince leaves the happy valley, accompanied by his sister and Imlac and goes to Egypt. They study the various aspects of social life in Cario. Rasselas mixes with the youth but finds that the laughter of the youths is without motives. So he recoils from their society, weary and disgusted. Then the prince turns to the teachers of morality. He is again disillusioned for he finds that "they discourse like angels, but they live like men". While the prince studies the public life, the princes mixes with the members of private families who are enchanted by her charm and beauty. She finds that imperious husbands, perverse wives, disobedient children alike contribute to domestic unhappiness. The party come to conclusion that man is nowhere happy and virtue is nowhere to be found, and return to Abyssinia.
The historical importance of Rasselas lies in the fact that it is the first example of a novel consisting of a series of philosophical essays strung on a thin thread of story. The novel is set in an oriental setting. No attempt is made to reproduce the life atmosphere, manners, customs of the Far East. The novel seems to be a warning to those who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope.

Impressionism and Expressionism in modern drama

Impressionism and Expressionism

Impressionism and expressionism are two trends thatbare equally well-markd in modern drama. Impressionism was a movement in painting, music and literature whose aim was to force the beholder, listener or the reader to participate in recreating the experience of the artist and whose method was to suggest "impression" or effect on the artist than to make precise and explicitvthe objective characteristics of things or events. In impressionism the emphasis is on the subjective reception of impressions, and the impressionist seeks to escape from the tyrannical aspects of objective reality. The impressionist does not accept objective life as it comes, but seeks to escape from the world of reality to his own imaginary land. Traces of can be found in the plays of Irish writer like W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge.

    Expressionistic movement originated in Germany as a reaction against naturalism. It attempted to express the basic reality of its subjects rather than to produce the mere appearance or surface of life. Expressionist drama was not concerned with society but man. It aimed to offer subjective psychological analysis, not so much of individual as of a type and it made use of the subconscious. For such a study established dramatic forms and methods of expression were inadequate. Hence the expressionists threw overboard conventional structure in favour of an unrestricted freedom. The dialogue of the expressionist drama were after cryptic and patterned on prose and was in every way far remote from naturalistic prose of the realist school. Sean O'Casey, C.K. Munro, Elmer Rice are those who popularised expressionism in drama.

RICHARD BAXTER

                               RICHARD BAXTER (1615-1691). 

This "busiest man of his age" strongly suggests Bunyan in his life and writings. Like Bunyan, he was poor and uneducated, a nonconformist minister, exposed continually to insult and persecution; and, like Bunyan, he threw himself heart and soul into the conflicts of his age, and became by his public speech a mighty power among the common people. Unlike Jeremy Taylor, who wrote for the learned, and whose involved sentences and classical allusions are sometimes hard to follow, Baxter went straight to his mark, appealing directly to the judgment and feeling of his readers.

The number of his works is almost incredible when one thinks of his busy life as a preacher and the slowness of manual writing. In all, he left nearly one hundred and seventy different works, which if collected would make fifty or sixty volumes. As he wrote chiefly to influence men on the immediate questions of the day, most of this work has fallen into oblivion. His two most famous books are The Saints' Everlasting Rest and A Call to the Unconverted, both of which were exceedingly popular, running through scores of successive editions, and have been widely read in our own generation.

IZAAK WALTON

                                        IZAAK WALTON (1593-1683). 

Walton was a small tradesman of London, who preferred trout brooks and good reading to the profits of business and the doubtful joys of a city life; so at fifty years, when he had saved a little money, he left the city and followed his heart out into the country. He began his literary work, or rather his recreation, by writing his famous Lives,—kindly and readable appreciations of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson, which stand at the beginning of modern biographical writing.

In 1653 appeared The Compleat Angler, which has grown steadily in appreciation, and which is probably more widely read than any other book on the subject of fishing. It begins with a conversation between a falconer, a hunter, and an angler; but the angler soon does most of the talking, as fishermen sometimes do; the hunter becomes a disciple, and learns by the easy method of hearing the fisherman discourse about his art. The conversations, it must be confessed, are often diffuse and pedantic; but they only make us feel most comfortably sleepy, as one invariably feels after a good day's fishing. So kindly is the spirit of the angler, so exquisite his appreciation of the beauty of the earth and sky, that one returns to the book, as to a favorite trout stream, with the undying expectation of catching something. Among a thousand books on angling it stands almost alone in possessing a charming style, and so it will probably be read as long as men go fishing. Best of all, it leads to a better appreciation of nature, and it drops little moral lessons into the reader's mind as gently as one casts a fly to a wary trout; so that one never suspects his better nature is being angled for. Though we have sometimes seen anglers catch more than they need, or sneak ahead of brother fishermen to the best pools, we are glad, for Walton's sake, to overlook such unaccountable exceptions, and agree with the milkmaid that "we love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men."

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

                                     SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682).


 Browne was a physician who, after much study and travel, settled down to his profession in Norwich; but even then he gave far more time to the investigation of natural phenomena than to the barbarous practices which largely constituted the "art" of medicine in his day. He was known far and wide as a learned doctor and an honest man, whose scientific studies had placed him in advance of his age, and whose religious views were liberal to the point of heresy. With this in mind, it is interesting to note, as a sign of the times, that this most scientific doctor was once called to give "expert" testimony in the case of two old women who were being tried for the capital crime of witchcraft. He testified under oath that "the fits were natural, but heightened by the devil's coöperating with the witches, at whose instance he [the alleged devil] did the villainies."

Browne's great work is the Religio Medici, i.e. The Religion of a Physician (1642), which met with most unusual success. "Hardly ever was a book published in Britain," says Oldys, a chronicler who wrote nearly a century later, "that made more noise than the Religio Medici." Its success may be due largely to the fact that, among thousands of religious works, it was one of the few which saw in nature a profound revelation, and which treated purely religious subjects in a reverent, kindly, tolerant way, without ecclesiastical bias. It is still, therefore, excellent reading; but it is not so much the matter as the manner—the charm, the gentleness, the remarkable prose style—which has established the book as one of the classics of our literature.

Two other works of Browne are Vulgar Errors (1646), a curious combination of scientific and credulous research in the matter of popular superstition, and Urn Burial, a treatise suggested by the discovery of Roman burial urns at Walsingham. It began as an inquiry into the various methods of burial, but ended in a dissertation on the vanity of earthly hope and ambitions. From a literary point of view it is Browne's best work, but is less read than the Religio Medici.