Early Tudor (1500-1558) Flashcards
Monarchs of the Early Tudor period
Henry 7 Henry 8 Edward 6 Mary 1500-1558
John Skelton
Early Tudor (1500-1558)
Known for “Skeltonics,” short-lined rhyming poetry, exhausting the rhymes. Rejected elaborate poetic structures of the time.
“Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale”
John Skelton (Early Tudor)
A clerk tries to seduce mild maid (Margery). She gives in and has sex with him, and asks him to marry her. “Gup, Christian Clout, gup, Jack of the Vale/ With Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale.”
“Lullay, lullay, like a child”
John Skelton (Early Tudor)
drunkard’s wife lulls him off to sleep (presumably after sex) so that she can go off and find her other lover.
“The Tunning of Elinour Rumming”
John Skelton (Early Tudor)
like a rap providing instructions on how to make beer with chicken excrement as a thickener.
Thomas More
Early Tudor
Was a humanist, fellow of Voltaire and Erasmus, who wrote Praise of Folly in honor of More: Moriae Encomium. More wrote in Latin. We have his English translation. A Catholic and beheaded for treason because he wouldn’t support Henry VIII in his conflict with the Pope.
Utopia
Thomas More (Early Tudor)
About an island where everything is darn near perfect. People live in agrarian communes and then rotate to live in the city. Gold is stigmatized as the stuff of prisoners. People see their potential spouse naked before marrying them. Utopia mean “no place”—Samuel Butler (not the one that wrote Hudibras) wrote a book called Erewhon (nowhere) on this same subject. Nathaniel Hawthorne also deals with utopia in his Blithedale Romance, which takes place at Brookfarms.
“History of King Richard III”
Thomas More (Early Tudor)
This is a history of King Richard III, and it is a source for Shakespeare’s Richard III.
Wyatt & Surrey
Early Tudor (1500-1558)
Courtly poets that traveled to Italy to bring back the metrical and rhyming styles of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch. These came to replace old and middle English verse a la Chaucer and Beowulf
