Cultural History of Britain
Lecture 6
Timeline
 1485- Modern History of Britain
 1485-1603: The Tudor Age
 1509-47: Henry VIII
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1534: Act of Supremacy
1535: execution of Thomas More (canonised in 1935)
1536-40: dissolution of monasteries
 1558-1603: Elizabeth I (Elizabethan Age)
 Elizabethan Settlement
 1588: Defeat of the Spanish Armada
 1564-1616: William Shakespeare
 1603-25: Jacobean Period
 1625-42: Caroline Era
 1640-49 : Civil War
 1642-60: theatrical performances suspended, theatres closed
 1649-60: Commonwealth Interregnum
General feature: overlap/mixture of medieval (Gothic) and modern phenomena (belated
Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Humanism and Reformation, early
Enlightenment and Neo-Classicism) in culture
Characteristic Features of Renaissance on the Continent
Historical and Intellectual Context
• general economical, social and political changes and cultural
revival (Blamires 44-5)
• Renaissance: rebirth or rediscovery of the values, ethics and
styles of classical Greece and Rome
• transition: medieval humanism (Habib 215)
• general tendencies:
 this-worldly orientation (secularisation)
 development of secular political philosophy
 systematic examination of the world of nature, the human
body and mind→rapid development of sciences
 growth of Humanism (Protestant Reformation)
Renaissance Humanism (14-16th centuries)
 representatives: Erasmus (1466-1536), Rabelais (14941553), Thomas More (1478-1535) (influence on literature:
Chaucer, Marlow, Ben Johnson, Shakespeare)
 relation to scholasticism (Habib 215)
 man in the centre of the universe (Blamires 45)
 secular worldview and scientific inquiry (Habib 216)
 individualism (Habib 216)
Renaissance worldview↔medieval worldview (Blamires 45)
Reformation (16th century)
 Continent:
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Lutheranism (1517, Martin Luther, Wittenberg)
Calvinism (1536, John Calvin, The Institutes of the Protestant Religion)
 Great Britain
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1534: Church of England (Anglo-Catholic)
Scottish Kirk (Presbyterian), Calvinist, formulated 1560-92
Elizabethan Age: Puritans
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Originally: 800 Protestants fleeing to the continent during Mary I’s reign
Elements of Lutheranism: salvation in faith only, absolute primacy of the Bible,
personal relationship with God, individualism
Calvinist elements: belief in predestination, success in business as a sign of
salvation, diligence, ascetism
1620: Mayflower
• Influences – secularisation of arts
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In general: Counter-Reformation and concomitant Baroque art precluded
Architecture: only indirect connections with the Italian Renaissance and Baroque
models
Painting: complete break with medieval religious painting (whitewashed church
interiors)
Theatre: religious genres become redundant, Puritan ban on theatrical shows
Fine Arts
 Architecture: return to classical
(Greek and Roman) ideals
 Harmonious forms
 Clarity, simplicity
 Sculpture: dynamic, often
monumental, focus on the (naked
and perfect) human body
 Painting: introduction of
Renaissance perspective
 Raphael, School of Athens,c. 1510
Literary Renaissance
 rediscovery of the ancient classics - influx of scholarship
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from Byzantium←1453: capture of Constantinople
(Blamires 44)
knowledge of classical languages and original texts (Habib
232)
vernacular and secular culture and literature (Leitch 10)
court patronage (Habib 231)
discovery of printing →change of dissemination and public
(Habib 238)
started in Italy: Dante (c. 1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-74),
Boccaccio (1313-75)
• Trecento
• Quatrocento
• Cinquecento
Architecture: Tudor Gothic
 After the Reformation: Gothic survives until 1600 – secular buildings
(country houses – glorification and stabilisation of the Queen’s power)
 Perpendicular Gothic in secular buildings = Tudor Gothic
 Often mixed with Renaissance elements (hidden Tudor arches)
Hampton Court (from 1514) and Longleat House (1559-80)
Architecture:
Renaissance
Kirby Hall (1570-75)
Painting
 Beginning of the history of
English painting
 Secular patronage → focus on
portraiture
 Demand for accurate likeness
 Demand for detailed justice of
finery and clothing
 No specific demand for beauty
for its own sake
 Humanism → realistic
depictions
 “Imported” masters trained in a
more realistic school
(craftsmen of secondary order
apart from Holbein,
Mannerism)
 Native painters: “cult portraits”
of the Queen, almost Byzantine
formality
Hans Holbein, the Younger
Sir Thomas More
Imported Renaissance Painting: Hans Holbein (1532-43)
 Official court painter
 Linear tradition
 Introduced the miniature
Mrs Pemberton (miniature)
“Limning”: The Typically English Genre of Miniature Painting
 Developed from manuscript illumination
 Personal, private genre – meant for personal keeping or a present
 Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619)
 Originally a goldsmith
 Precision
 No “smutting”
 Lively colours
 Minute details
 Often jewelled
frameworks
Portrait of an
Unknown Man
(flames of love)
Nicholas Hilliard, self-portrait
(1577)
The Golden Age of English Music
 Domestic music-making started
 Tallis and Byrd: monopoly of music printing
 Apart from the virginal: instruments available for middleclass people even
 Secular music
 Madrigal: polyphonic vocal musical composition, partsong,
parts varying between 2 and 8
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William Byrd, Thomas Morley
 Church music
 Motet: sacred madrigal, polyphonic musical setting for
choir, short
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John Taverner, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, John Bull
16th-century Musical Instruments
flutes
viols
recorders
virginal
Literature: Renaissance Authors
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Sir Thomas More, Utopia
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Philip Sidney
Edmund Spenser
University Wits:
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John Lyly
Robert Greene
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Kyd
Christopher Marlowe
 William Shakespeare
 Ben Jonson
Elizabethan Theatre, or “Mass
Culture”: the Globe (1599)
Works Cited
Blamires, Harry. A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1991.
Gaunt, William. English Painting – A Concise History. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1991.
Gelfert, Hans-Dieter: Nagy-Britannia rövid kultúrtörténete. Corvina,
Budapest, 2005.
Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory from Plato to the
Present. London: Blackwell, 2008.
Halliday, F. E. An Illustrated Cultural History of England. London: Thames
and Hudson, 1981.
Jenner, Michael. The Architectural Heritage of Britain and Ireland. Penguin:
London, 1993.
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New
York, London: W. W. Norton, 2001.
Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1984.
Watkin, David. English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992.