Writers that Shaped the Renaissance

During the Italian Renaissance, boys from wealthy families were often taught by Humanists, who believed that Greece and Rome were the best examples of human thinking. A few of these pupils are now famous figures in European history! Dante Alighieri (born around 1265 and died in 1321) was one of those pupils. He was born in Florence, Italy, and, as a child, was taught about the Greek and Romans. In school, he learned Latin and read Roman writers like Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Lucan, and Cicero. s Dante did not know Greek, he only read the works of Greek writers, like Aristotle and Plato, who had been translated into Latin.

Although the Greek poet Homer had not been translated into Latin, Dante admired him because the ancient Romans did. When Dante was 25, a girl named Beatrice, who he had loved since childhood, died. Upon her death, Dante moved from studying the ancient poets to becoming a poet himself. His first book of poems was about Beatrice. He called it Vita Nuova (meaning “new life”). Although this book is one of his most famous works, it is second to a well-known poem that he wrote entitled La Divina Commedia . Today, many English-speaking people read this poem in translation and know it as The Divine Comedy . Historians believe that Dante began writing this epic poem around 1308 as a political exile from Florence. It likely took him 13 years to write! This poem is narrative, which means that it tells a story. It is composed of three parts entitled “Inferno,” “Purgatorio,” and “Paradiso” and is 14,233 lines long! Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in a kind of poetry called “terza rima” that he invented for the occasion. In the poem, the Roman poet Virgil guides Dante through the afterlife, where he meets Beatrice and the ancient thinkers that he studied when he was a boy. He writes that the great Roman poets welcome him as one of their own. Today, Dante’s fame equals that of the Greek and Roman writers who he so admired.

Geoffrey Chaucer (born in the early 1340s and died around 1400) was born in England when the world around him was changing fast. Medieval Europe, especially Italy, was moving from the Middle Ages into the earliest parts of the Renaissance. Although historians know little about Chaucer’s childhood, he grew up to be what some people would call a “Renaissance man.” This means that he was skilled in lots of different things. Chaucer spoke many languages and, throughout his life, was a member of the royal court, a customs officer, a world traveler, and a translator.

Today, however, people remember Chaucer for his work as an author. He has even been called the “father of English literature” as he was one of the first recorded authors to write popular stories in Middle English rather than French or Latin. One of his early poems, The House of Fame , reveals that Chaucer looked up to Dante. In this poem, an eagle guides Chaucer, just like Virgil guided Dante in The Divine Comedy . Like many Renaissance authors, Chaucer also wrote poems on Greek and Rome themes. In his early 40s, he wrote the love story of the warrior Troilus and his love Criseyde, a lady who abandoned him for a Greek. This epic poem, entitled Troilus and Criseyde , is set during the mythological Trojan War.

Just a few years later, Chaucer wrote the work that he is best known for today called The Canterbury Tales . In this work, he imagined a group of 31 pilgrims telling stories on their journey and portrayed characters, from a monk to a housewife, in great detail. Although the poem was never finished, it is enormously popular today and is often credited as one of the most important pieces of English literature.

At the end of his life, Chaucer lived in a house located in the garden of Westminster Abbey to escape his debts. When he died, he was buried in the garden. As his fame grew after his death, other famous English writers like Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Hardy were buried near him. Today, that part of Westminster Abbey is called “Poet’s Corner.”

William Shakespeare (born in 1564 and died in 1616) is perhaps one of the most famous European writers of all time. Yet, his life started like that of any other boy of his time. He was born near a town called Stratford-upon-Avon in England. As a child, he went to grammar school, where he learned Latin and studied Greek and Roman authors. Around 15, he finished his schooling, and by 18, he was married. As an adult, Shakespeare moved
to London, where he began his prolific career as a playwright. A year before Shakespeare wrote his famous play Romeo and Juliet, the bubonic plague struck London. The disease terrorized the city and caused all of the theatres to close. Shakespeare was a writer, though, and just because people could not watch his plays on stage didn’t mean he stopped writing! Instead, he composed a kind of poetry called sonnets. One hundred fifty-four of these sonnets were published when Shakespeare was 45. Happily, the London theatres eventually reopened, and Shakespeare, the playwright, was back in business. By the age of 31, he had joined an acting troupe called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later renamed the King’s Men). This troupe was massively popular, and some of its members opened the Globe Theatre in London when Shakespeare was just 35. While he was a part of this group, Shakespeare did many things: he was a business partner of the acting company, acted alongside the famous Richard Burbage, and wrote the many plays performed by
the company.

In all, Shakespeare wrote 38 plays! Many of these plays are still performed today and reveal the extent of Shakespeare’s talent. Rather than telling just one kind of story, Shakespeare wrote comedies, tragedies, history plays, and romances. The first collection of these plays was published in the First Folio seven years after his death. It held 36 plays, 18 of which had never been published and, likely, would probably have been lost without this publication.

Thanks to the First Folio, much of Shakespeare’s work has survived to this day, and he is often studied as one of the most influential writers in the English language.

As a young man, Milton studied at Cambridge, and when he graduated, he decided that he wanted to become a poet. To him, however, a poet needed to study even more!

For the next six years, Milton continued to study language and read everything he could find. His reading list included poetry, science, philosophy, and religion. At the age of 30, Milton finished his formal education and went on a celebratory tour of Europe, where he met Galileo, a famous astronomer. Five years later, the government started restricting the publication of certain books. This made Milton furious, and he published a speech to the English Parliament, where he argued for freedom of speech, reading, and the press. He called this speech Areopagitica after the Areopagus, a Greek court. Throughout the remainder of Milton’s life, he wrote many, many other works. One of his poems, Paradise Lost , stands out in the history books. This 12-book epic poem tells a story about God, Satan, and the biblical fall of Adam and Eve. Milton published the first edition of Paradise Lost when he was 59 years old. Scholars of literature and the English language still study this work today, paying particular attention to Milton’s portrayal of Satan. Whether these scholars agree with it or not, Paradise Lost is Milton’s most celebrated work of genius—it inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and is, perhaps, one of the best known epic poems in the world.

WRITERS THAT SHAPED THE RENAISSANCE

WRITERS THAT
SHAPED THE
RENAISSANCE