Prose writing

Question 1

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What are some genres of 16th century prose writing?

Answer 1

• Political writing: Utopia
• Educational treatises: Courtesy books on education, conduct, .. e.g. The Scholemaster
• Travel Reports: New found land of Virginia, Discovery of Guiana
• Satire Novel: The Unfortunate Traveller
• Fables
• Pamphlets

Question 2

What is important to know about Sir Walter Raleigh?

Answer 2

• Explorer, soldier
• Coloniser USA
• 1580s Queen’s fav
• Virginia in honor of Virgin Queen
• explored Venezuela (Guiana)
• executed under James I

1553-1618, explored Guiana in 1595

Question 3

What does Utopia represent?

Answer 3

idealized setting & happy place

(Utopia = in Greek means no place, Eutopia means happy place)

Question 4

What’s the capital of Utopia?

Answer 4

Amaurote

Question 5

What is the first letter before Utopia about?

Answer 5

More writes Peter that he finished the manuscript and that he should read and analyse it, then send it to Raphael for his perspective
- More wants the exact location of the island
- if he should publish these books
- length of the bridge in Amaurote

Question 6

What is Book 1 in Utopia about?

Answer 6

convenient part = dialogue -> different viewpoints, examining an approach from competing views, can stimulate awareness, reader is exposed to three voices, clever device by More because you get to connect to the character and relate as well as the characters criticized England -> hiding its sharp criticism beneath a comic mask

Wit and irony: serial comic mode of writing, serious on one hand -> what’s wrong in Europe & comic about the way it is conveyed; literature is meant to instruct and delight

Question 7

What is Book 2 in Utopia about?

Answer 7

Raphaels account of Utopia;
- personal freedom shrinks
- all cities are identical
- all clothing is the same
- lack of individuality, devoiced in the arts, foreign policies (generous, detest wars)
- single elected governor acts as King
- patriarchal
- gender relationship is the same
- women go to war with their husbands
- no difference in the field of education (liberal studies)
- no individual pride

The books’ similarity: What is wrong with Europe & right with Utopia
Relation between Book 1 and Book 2 is also that 1 would be the question and 2 the answer

Question 8

What does the banished Earl at the end of Thomas Nashe’s Unfortunate Travellar represent?

Answer 8

Jack Wilton was rich once but was banished into exile and stripped of wealth, influence and respect
-> stands for satirical view on aristocracy, suggesting that wealth and power often come at a moral cost and can be fleeting

tour of Europe in it and xenophobic with exagger. ‘syphilis in France’

precariousness of status and the consequences of unchecked ambition, emphasizing the instability of social and moral hierarchies in Renaissance Europe