CORYLLU DYLETANT

Czy istnieją granice intelektualnej hochsztaplerki?

Dla większości normalnych ludzi tak! Jeden z najwybitniejszych polskich myślicieli pierwszej połowy XX wieku, opisując ich zasięg twierdził, że z jednej strony wyznacza je poziom wykształcenia, z drugiej wstyd przed kompromitacją.

Czytając  teksty Coryllusa można niestety odnieśc wrażenie, że akurat jego ta definicja nie obowiązuje. Oto dziś w felietonie „Polski patriotyzm to Pewex” Gabryel Maciejewski pisząc o pamięci narodowej bardzo autorytatywnym tonem stwierdził:

 

„My się nie możemy nasładzać klasą architektury zbudowanej na kredyt i opisanej jako renesans, a nie możemy z tego choćby powodu, że w Wielkiej Brytanii nikt o żadnym renesansie nie słyszał, o baroku zresztą także nie, ruch budowlany zaś, jeśli istniał, to rozwijał się wskutek prywatnych inwestycji finansowanych z prywatnych zasobów czyli z rabunku.”

 

 

 

English Renaissance

Literature

England had a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, which gradually increased as English use of the printing press became common by the mid 16th century. By the time of Elizabethan literature a vigorous literary culture in both drama and poetry included poets such as Edmund Spenser, whose verse epic The Faerie Queene did not become a dominating influence on English literature in the way that some foreign equivalents did for their countries. Instead the lyrics of William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt and others, typically circulating in manuscript form for some time before they were published, and above all the plays of English Renaissance theatre, were the outstanding legacy of the period.

The English theatre scene, which performed both for the court and nobility in private performances, and a very wide public in the theatres, was the most crowded in Europe, with a host of other playwrights as well as the giant figures of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, and wrote occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure at critical moments of her life. Philosophers and intellectuals included Thomas More and Francis Bacon. All the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated, as was much of the nobility, and Italian literature had a considerable following, providing the sources for many of Shakespeare's plays. English thought advanced towards modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method. The language of the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, and at the end of the period the Authorised Version ("King James Version" to Americans) of the Bible (1611) had enduring impacts on the English consciousness.

Visual arts

England was very slow to produce visual arts in Renaissance styles, and the artists of the Tudor court were mainly imported foreigners until after the end of the Renaissance; Hans Holbein was the outstanding figure. The English Reformation produced a huge programme of iconoclasm that destroyed almost all medieval religious art, and all but ended the skill of painting in England; English art was to be dominated by portraiture, and then later landscape art, for centuries to come. The significant English invention was the portrait miniature, which essentially took the techniques of the dying art of the illuminated manuscript and transferred them to small portraits worn in lockets. Though the form was developed in England by foreign artists, mostly Flemish like Lucas Horenbout, the somewhat undistinguished founder of the tradition, by the late 16th century natives such as Nicolas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver produced the finest work, even as the best producers of larger portraits in oil were still foreigners. The portrait miniature had spread all over Europe by the 18th century. The portraiture of Elizabeth I was carefully controlled, and developed into an elaborate and wholly un-realist iconic style, that has succeeded in creating enduring images.

Music

English Renaissance music kept in touch with continental developments far more than visual art, and managed to survive the Reformation relatively successfully, though William Byrd and other major figures were Catholic. The Elizabethan madrigal was distinct from, but related to the Italian tradition. Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, and John Dowland were other leading English composers.

The colossal polychoral productions of the Venetian School had been anticipated in the works of Thomas Tallis, and the Palestrina style from the Roman School had already been absorbed prior to the publication of Musical transalpina, in the music of masters such as William Byrd.

The Italian and English Renaissances were similar in sharing a specific musical aesthetic. In the late 16th century Italy was the musical center of Europe, and one of the principal forms which emerged from that singular explosion of musical creativity was the madrigal. In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published in England the Musica transalpina—a collection of Italian madrigals that had been Anglicized—an event which began a vogue of madrigal in England which was almost unmatched in the Renaissance in being an instantaneous adoption of an idea, from another country, adapted to local aesthetics. English poetry was exactly at the right stage of development for this transplantation to occur, since forms such as the sonnet were uniquely adapted to setting as madrigals: indeed, the sonnet was already well developed in Italy. Composers such as Thomas Morley, the only contemporary composer to set Shakespeare, and whose work survives, published collections of their own, roughly in the Italian manner but yet with a unique Englishness; interest in the compositions of the English Madrigal School have enjoyed a considerable revival in recent decades.

Architecture

Despite some buildings in a partly Renaissance style from the reign of Henry VIII, notably Hampton Court Palace, the vanished Nonsuch Palace, Sutton Place and Layer Marney Tower, it was not until the Elizabethan architecture of the end of the century that a true Renaissance style emerged, influenced far more by northern Europe than Italy. The most famous buildings are large show houses constructed for courtiers, and characterised by lavish use of glass, as at "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", Wollaton Hall and Hatfield House and Burghley House, the style continuing into the early 17th century before developing into Jacobean architecture. Lesser, but still large, houses like Little Moreton Hall continued to be constructed and expanded in essentially medieval half-timbered styles until the late 16th century. Church architecture essentially continued in a late Gothic style until the Reformation, and then stopped almost completely, although church monuments, screens and other fittings often had classical styles from about the mid-century. The few new church buildings were usually still Gothic in style, as in Langley Chapel of 1601.^[1]

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Renaissance