Elizabethan literature

Elizabethan literature
Body of works written during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603).

Probably the most illustrious age in the history of English literature, the Elizabethan era saw a flowering of poetry, produced a golden age of drama, and inspired a wide variety of splendid prose. The period encompasses the work of Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and others. Though some patterns and themes persisted, the tone of most forms of literary expression, especially drama, darkened rather suddenly around the start of the 17th century. See also Jacobean literature.

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 body of works written during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603), probably the most splendid age in the history of English literature, during which such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (Sidney, Sir Philip), Edmund Spenser (Spenser, Edmund), Roger Ascham (Ascham, Roger), Richard Hooker (Hooker, Richard), Christopher Marlowe (Marlowe, Christopher), and William Shakespeare (Shakespeare, William) flourished. The epithet Elizabethan is merely a chronological reference and does not describe any special characteristic of the writing.

      The Elizabethan age saw the flowering of poetry (the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, dramatic blank verse), was a golden age of drama (especially for the plays of Shakespeare), and inspired a wide variety of splendid prose (from historical chronicles (chronicle), versions of the Holy Scriptures, pamphlets, and literary criticism to the first English novels). From about the beginning of the 17th century a sudden darkening of tone became noticeable in most forms of literary expression, especially in drama, and the change more or less coincided with the death of Elizabeth. English literature from 1603 to 1625 is properly called Jacobean, after the new monarch, James I. But, insofar as 16th-century themes and patterns were carried over into the 17th century, the writing from the earlier part of his reign, at least, is sometimes referred to by the amalgam “Jacobethan.”

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Universalium. 2010.

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