BritLit Early Modern

• The skull is a reminder of death, but it is also an insertion of the painter's individuality
• The end of the 15th century marks a language change from Middle English to early modern English, a version of English spoken and written between 1485 and 1660.
• The Chantry Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread around 1470, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England.
• William Caxton brought the printing press to England in the late 1470s, a moment that slowed down language change and consolidated the language that was being used at the time.
• The Elizabethan period is a relative neglect of the periods that come before and after it, focusing on the court as the center of development.
• Early Middle English and Middle English are recognizably English, but markedly different.
• The early modern period is the beginning of British literature history, usually marked as the 16th century.
• The skull in Holbein's painting represents the ambiguity that is captured in the Renaissance.
• The end of the 16th century can be marked by the end of the reign of King James in 1625 or the Thirty Years' War that raged from 1618 to 1648.
• William Caxton brought the printing press to England in the late 1470s, a moment that slowed down language change and consolidated the language that was being used at the time.
• The end of the 15th century marks a language change from Middle English to early modern English, a version of English spoken and written between 1485 and 1660.
• The Chantry Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread around 1470, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England.
• The Elizabethan period is a relative neglect of the periods that come before and after it, focusing on the court as the center of development.
• The Wars of the Roses periodized around the conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York, represented by the white and red roses respectively.
• The House of Tudor started in 1485 with Henry VII and the Tudor rose, which combines the red and the white of the Lancaster and York Roses.
• The final victory in the Wars of the Roses went to a relatively remote Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, who defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, and then married Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth of York, unifying the two houses.
• There were five Tudor monarchs that ruled their domain for a little bit over a century: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.
• The periodization of the Tudor period is also related to a political reason, with 1485 marking the end of the Wars of the Roses and the start of the House of Tudor.
• Hobine's painting "The Merchants" features a silver crucifix hidden behind the drapery, symbolizing the religious discord and debate of the Renaissance.
• the expansion of trade and finance as a defining feature of the Renaissance, which is also a period of exploration and colonialization.
• the seven liberal arts are the basis of a Renaissance education, the Trivium and the Quadrivium.
• The Renaissance is a cultural movement that spans the period from the 14th to the 17th century.
• The Renaissance starts in Italy and then moves to the rest of Europe in three centuries.
• The Middle Ages are often seen as the Dark Ages.
• In the Middle Ages, history is seen as a linear development from the birth of Christ to the Apocalypse.
• The Renaissance can be understood as a reawakening of art, education, and science after a religiously dominated Middle Ages.
• 14th and 15th century Italian humanism was an attempt to reintroduce classical standards of Latin composition and was closely connected to the idea of the Renaissance as a reemergence of interest in classical antiquity.
• Humanism had a large impact on its time, turning into a dynamic cultural program, influencing almost every facet of Renaissance intellectual life.
• Humanism was an important intellectual motive force for the Italian Renaissance.
• In the later 15th century, some Englishmen like other Northern Europeans traveled to Italy to acquire the new humanist learning.
• Thomas More, whose most famous work, Utopia, was composed originally in a witty neoclassical Latin, was the most internationally famous English humanist.
• Humanism brought the foundation of schools like St. Paul's School in 1509 and Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1517, marking the beginning of a new form of education.
• Before the advent of humanism, education was mainly reserved for the upper classes and was done in private.
• Thomas More was intricately tied to the religious and political turmoil of the 16th century in England.
• There were two options for education before humanism: courtly education, which was private education for upper class aristocratic people, and monastic education, which was controlled by the church and limited in focus.
• Thomas More's text Utopia, often considered the most famous document of humanism in England, is a novel that gives its name to the whole genre.
• One aspect of the curriculum was rhetoric, which taught people to become public speakers and to wield influence, both political and others.
• Humanist education was seen as a requirement for political influence, both at the national and local level.
• The schools that were lost with the dissolution of the monasteries, once we have the Reformation going on also in England, were replaced by newly established town grammar schools, which were teaching Latin grammar and given a humanist curriculum.
• Shakespeare attended one of these town grammar schools.