Notes on Elizabethan Prose

PMLA ◽  
1889 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
James M. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Making

The progress of English prose is a subject of great interest, and one that has not as yet been thoroughly treated from the historical point of view. Here, as elsewhere in literary, as well as scientific subjects, the inductive method must be employed, and by selection and comparison the advance made from century to century may be indicated. Any treatment of the subject making the smallest pretension to fullness should begin at least as early as the second half of the fourteenth century, with the prose of Wyclif and his contemporaries, after the native and foreign elements of the language had become so blended into one that what was once foreign was no longer felt to be so. The progress should be traced through the fifteenth century, marked by the names of Mandeville—whose so-called ‘Travels’ has at last found its true historical position,—Pecock, Malory and Caxton, to the first half of the sixteenth century, when prose-writers become more numerous, and the language becomes more flexible and better suited to the purposes of prose, as seen in the writings of Sir Thomas More and his controversial opponent, William Tyndale, Sir Thomas Elyot, whose “Boke called the Governour” is a real land-mark of English prose, Bishop Hugh Latimer, the most forcible and witty preacher of his time, and Roger Ascham, who connects the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, and who deliberately uses English for his works, although it would have been “more easier” for him to write in Latin.

scholarly journals Sir Thomas More, Utopia, and the Representation of Henry VIII, 1529-1533

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Warner
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Open Debate ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lord Chancellor

This essay examines Sir Thomas More's Utopia in the context of Henry VIII's divorce crisis. During this period tracts from the royal press publicized an image of Henry VIII as a disinterested philosopher-king who welcomed open debate and advice at his court. Reading Morus and Hythlodaeus's dialogue on the subject of court counsel in light of this campaign helps us to perceive the manner in which More's appointment as lord chancellor served the purposes of the king's propaganda.

Fictional Remembrances of Sir Thomas More: Part I - The Sixteenth Century

Moreana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (Number 203- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-204
Author(s):  
Régis Augustus Bar Closel
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
John Fletcher ◽  
Thomas Nashe ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Morality Play ◽  
Sir Thomas More

This article focuses on how literary works such as plays in 16th–17th century England dealt with the fictional presence of Sir Thomas More. Among Tudor statesmen, Thomas More had a special appeal as a topic of thought during the Elizabethan–Jacobean period, quite apart from his opposition to the marriage which led to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Marian, Elizabethan and Jacobean periods cover the range of the selected works. They compose a heterogeneous and intriguing group in which every piece has its own particular way of remembering Thomas More. Six works are presented here: the dialogue Il Moro (1556), by Ellis Heywood; a late morality play, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (1569), by William Wager; a novel, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), by Thomas Nashe; and three plays, Cromwell (1602), by an unknown dramatist, Sir Thomas More (1600–1603/4), by five different dramatists, and Henry VIII (1613), by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Due to the scope of this research, the article is written in two parts. This part explores the first three sixteenth century fictional works by Wager, Heywood and Nashe.

Thomas More in the Subtext of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 163) (3) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Dominant Theme ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Since the dominant theme of the play is that of “The King’s Great Matter” (his divorce of Katherine and marriage to Anne) it would be difficult for a viewer or reader not to think of Thomas More as the play unfolds, so much was he involved in this event. But Sir Thomas More—which also had Shakespeare among its authors—was not approved by the Master of the Revels, and the playwrights no doubt wished to avoid a similar rejection. A solution for them was to suggest More in the subtext, particularly since his cult was by then well established. This article studies the relationship of the absent More to several of the characters present on stage.

IV. John Lingard and the Simancas Archives

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Edwin Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
English History ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Source Materials

John Lingard (1771–1851) was the first English historian to attempt to look at the history of England in the sixteenth century from an international point of view. He was unconvinced by the story of the Reformation in England as found in the works of previous historians such as Burnet and Hume, and believed that new light needed to be thrown on the subject. One way of doing this was to look at English history from the outside, so to speak, and Lingard held it to be a duty of the historian ‘to contrast foreign with native authorities, to hold the balance between them with an equal hand, and, forgetting that he is an Englishman, to judge impartially as a citizen of the world’. In pursuit of this ideal Lingard can be said to have given a new dimension to the source materials for English history. As parish priest in the small village of Hornby, near Lancaster, Lingard had few opportunities for travel. But he made good use of his various friends and former pupils at Douai and Ushaw colleges who were settled now in various parts of Europe. It was with the help of these friends that Lingard made contacts with and gained valuable information from archives in France, Italy and Spain. We shall concern ourselves here only with the story of Lingard's contacts with the great Spanish State Archives at Simancas.

“Still more things to forget, in the wiping of Henry Patenson’s bottom in the Exchequer”

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 195- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-43
Author(s):  
Roger Schofield
Keyword(s):  
High Rank ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The One ◽  
Very High

The final piece of parchment of the roll kept by the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer for 16 Henry VIII, or 1524–5, contains a very strange case. Written partly in Latin and partly in English, as was the normal practice of the Court of the Exchequer, it contains a pretended report on the dispute between John Hone, a citizen and maker of candles, on the one hand, and Henry Patenson, more familiarly known as Harry Patenson, because of his physical likeness to king Henry VIII. The defendant in the Exchequer case was described as the ‘Simperyng fole of london’. This case in the Exchequer court had some exceptionally well known participants, including the Second and Third Barons of the Exchequer, who were of very high rank. This article sheds new light on Sir Thomas More.

Tunstal—Trimmer or Martyr?

1973 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morley Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Close Friend ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The World ◽  
Sir Thomas More

Was Cuthbert Tunstal a ‘trimmer’—that is, one primarily concerned with his own advantage—rather than a partisan in the religious revolution initiated by Henry VIII? We might have expected the latter contingency after reading the glowing tribute paid to him by Sir Thomas More: ‘… the incomparable Cuthbert Tunstal, who, to everyone's satisfaction, has recently been appointed Master of the Rolls. I will not try to praise him, not simply because the world would discount such praise from a close friend, but because his fine qualities and learning defy description. His fame is so widespread, that praising him would be, as they say, like lighting up the sun with a candle’. Yet the historiographical neglect of Tunstal seems to indicate that historians have preferred the pejorative judgement of Foxe, who says that he ‘dissembled’ in taking the Oath of Supremacy to Henry VIII. All the conservative bishops who took the oath ‘turned cat-in-the-pan’ in Mary's reign, but when they took it in 1535 they were, according to Foxe, ‘right Lutherans’. He, unquestionably, thought Tunstal was a ‘trimmer’.

A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif's Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela K. Perett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Real Presence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
John Wyclif ◽  
Full Century

The renewed interest in John Wyclif (d. 1384) has brought this late medieval figure back into the spotlight of historians, giving rise to numerous studies evaluating his thought and its implications in the context of late fourteenth century England. However, it is not possible fully to appreciate Wyclif's importance in late medieval European culture without understanding the legacy of his ideas on the continent. According to the accepted narrative, John Wyclif's thought was mediated to the continent through the scholarly contacts between the universities in Oxford and in Prague, and re-emerged in the Latin writings of Jan Hus. This article argues that John Wyclif's thought, especially his critique of the church's doctrine of transubstantiation, found a larger audience among the rural clerics and laity in Bohemia, whom it reached through Peter Payne, who simplified and disseminated the works of the Oxford master. Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation sparked a nationwide debate about the nature of the Eucharist, generating numerous treatises, both in Latin and in the vernacular, on the subject of Christ's presence in the sacrament of the mass. This debate anticipated, a full century earlier, the famous debate between Luther and Zwingli and the Eucharistic debates of the sixteenth century Reformation more generally. The proliferation of vernacular Eucharistic tractates in Bohemia shows that Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation could be answered in a number of different ways that included both real presence (however defined) and figurative theologies—a fact, which, in turn, explains the doctrinal diversity among the Lollards in England.

scholarly journals Trigonometry in Two Sixteenth Century Works; The de Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and the Sidra Al-Muntahā

1987 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 209-214
Author(s):  
Sevim Tekeli
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The West ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
The Subject

In Greece, Autolycos (4th cent. B.C.), Aristarchos of Samos (3rd cent.B.C.), Hipparchos (2nd cent.B.C.), Menelaos (1st cent. A.D.), and Ptolemaos (2nd cent. A.D.) are the forerunners of trigonometry. The Greeks used chords and prepared a table of chords.Later, the Hindus produced Siddhāntas (4th cent.A.D.). The most important feature of these works is the use of jyā instead of chords, and utkramajyā (versed sine).In Islam, al-Battānī al-Ṣābī (858-929) used the sine, cosine, tangent, and cotangent with clear consciousness of their individual characteristics.As is known, trigonometry developed as a branch of astronomy. Although in the thirteenth century Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (in the Islamic world) and in the fifteenth century Regiomontanus (in the West) established trigonometry as a science independent of astronomy, the essential situation did not change, and the subject went on developing as before.

scholarly journals X.—A Fifteenth Century Treatise on Gardening

Archaeologia ◽  
1894 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
John Gardener ◽  
Alicia M. Tyssen Amherst
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

We have few writings on the subject of English gardening before the sixteenth century, when Turner, Tusser, Hill, Fitzherbert, and Gerard gave their well-known works to the world, and were quickly followed by numerous other writers on the same subject.

The Monetary Thought of Two Sixteenth-Century Muslim Scholars

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-60
Author(s):  
Abdul Azim Islahi
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Background Information ◽  
European Monetary ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Islamic Economic ◽  
Muslim Scholars

Muslim scholars of the sixteenth century continued the tradition of writing on economic issues. Their work, however, is characterized by the period’s overall feature of imitation and repetition and thus reflects hardly any advancement of monetary thought since the works of earlier Muslim scholars. This is clearly reflected in the two representative treatises on money: those of al-Suyuti (d. 1506), written at the beginning of the century, and of al-Tumurtashi (d. 1598), written at its end. The history of Islamic economic thought is a well-researched area of Islamic economics. To the best of our knowledge, however, all such research stopped at the end of the fifteenth century, the age of Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi. The present paper seeks to advance this research and intends to investigate the monetary thought of Muslim scholars during the sixteenth century (corresponding to the hijr¥ years of 906 to 1009.) Beginning with an overview of earlier monetary thought in Islam to provide the necessary background information, it then goes on to note that particular century’s monetary problems in order to provide a perspective for the discussion of monetary thought among Muslim scholars. For the purpose of comparison, European monetary thought of the same period is also analyzed. Due to limitations of time and space, this paper concentrates on the relevant treatises and does not deal with the piecemeal opinions scattered throughout the voluminous corpus of Islamic literature. Thus, it focuses on al-Suyuti and al-Tumurtashi, as I could locate only their two exclusively monetary works. Hopefully this modest initiative will spur others to conduct more extensive research on the subject.

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