British Literature - From The Renaissance To A United Kingdom in 1707

From The Renaissance To A United Kingdom in 1707

The English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. Italian literary influences arrived in Britain: the sonnet form was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century, and developed by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, (1516/1517 – 1547), who also introduced blank verse into England, with his translation of Virgil's Aeneid in c.1540. Chaucerian, classical and French literary language continued to influence Scots literature up until the Reformation. The Complaynt of Scotland shows the interplay of language and ideas between the kingdoms of Scotland and England in the years leading up to the 1603 Union of the Crowns.

The spread of printing affected the transmission of literature across the isles. The first book printed in English, William Caxton's own translation of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, was printed abroad in 1473, to be followed by the establishment of the first printing press in England in 1474. The establishment of a printing press in Scotland under royal patent from James IV in 1507 made it easier to disseminate Scottish literature. The first printing press in Ireland followed later in 1551. Although the first book in Welsh to be printed was produced by John Prise in 1546, restrictions on printing meant that only clandestine presses, such as that of Robert Gwyn who published Y Drych Cristionogawl in 1586/1587, could operate in Wales until 1695. The first legal printing press to be set up in Wales was in 1718 by Isaac Carter. The first printed work in Manx dates from 1707: a translation of a Prayer Book catechism in English by Bishop Thomas Wilson. Printing arrived even later in other parts of the isles: the first printing press in Jersey was set up by Mathieu Alexandre in 1784. The earliest datable text in Manx (preserved in 18th century manuscripts), a poetic history of the Isle of Man from the introduction of Christianity, dates to the 16th century at the latest.

Sir Thomas More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to the ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in Utopia, written in Latin and published in 1516.

In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose began to develop as a genre and to demonstrate classical and humanist influences as the Renaissance reached Scotland. The first complete surviving work includes John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490). There were also prose translations of French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s, including The Book of the Law of Armys and the Order of Knychthode and the treatise Secreta Secetorum, an Arabic work believed to be Aristotle's advice to Alexander the Great.

The landmark work in the reign of James IV of Scotland was Gavin Douglas's Eneados, the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglian language, finished in 1513. Its reception however was overshadowed by the Flodden defeat that same year, and the political instability that followed in the kingdom. Another major work, David Lyndsay's Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, later in the century, is a surviving example of a dramatic tradition in the period that has otherwise largely been lost.