Elizabethan Prose – Literature | Major English

Elizabethan Prose major english literature

Elizabethan Prose – Literature | Major English | Hseb | Meropaper

The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene is Spenser’s masterpiece and the supreme pride of England. He works at this long epic for twenty years and left if unfinished at his death. The Faerie Queene, Gloriana, kept her animal feast for twelve days according to custom. On the first day, a young man came to her court and he to go in any adventure. Soon of fairy lady come to the Queene and asked for help. She said that her parents were capture by a huge dragon. The young man became ready to go for her parent’s rescue.

It was planned in twelve books. But Spenser completed only six of them. There are twelve knights representing different virtues and king Arthur was gentle manliness Spenser used of special matter for this work. This verse is called Spenserian stanza. This book present a struggle between good and evil.

Elizabethan Prose

Ben Johnson’s timber or Discoveries is a collection of notes and ideas on various subjects. He was very talented in criticism. Francis Bacon was one of great prose writers of the age. His essays contain civil and moral lesson. He has expressed a sound knowledge of human nature. The essays are in the form of short and witty sayings. Most of the sayings are taken from his essay. Bacon wrote a history of ‘Henry VII’.

In this period several translations of the Bible brought a new life and phase even in the movement of British politics. Sir Thomas north translated plutarch’s. lives of the noble Gracians and Roman’s. it is written in fine and standard English similarly. Richard Haklyt collected and published. The principal navigations voyages and discoveries of the English nation. It is about the travel and adventure on sea. John Lyly brought out a love story Euphus. This is a satire on women and written in tricky style.

Old English Prose

Most of the prose works were written in Latin until the 800’s. Alfred the great translated or other translated from Latin in to old. English. The most important book was “Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (731)” by a monk. This work is the first history of the English people and life. Aelfric wrote a series, homilies in old essays. Old English can not easily read in the original. But all the major works have been translated in modern English.

 

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