The Elizabethan Age (1558-1603): Literary Works

Elizabethan Prose Writers

2. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552/54-1618) 

• A true Renaissance man
• Renaissance man means who is educated, creative, curious, accomplished in many fields, and who has a thirst for knowledge etc.

• He was a poet, politician, explorer, courtier etc.

• He is famously known for creating the legend of “El Dorado’
• ‘El Dorado’ means ‘City of Gold’

• He made 2 expeditions in South America to find this city of gold

• He is one of the men who popularised tobacco in England

• He was very close to Queen Elizabeth I

• He worked hard to increase the Protestant Church in Ireland

• He was awarded by Queen Elizabeth in different times

• He also got the permission to colonise America

• He married secretly to a woman who was in Queen’s ladies-in-waiting
• After the revelation of such relationship, Raleigh was imprisoned

• He won back Queen’s grace after a short period

• After Queen’s death, Raleigh failed to win King James I’s favour

• Raleigh was executed in 1618

Works

i) The Discovery of Guiana

• Travel literature

• Talks about New World

ii) History of the World (1614)

• Written in 5 books

• It was written during his imprisonment

• It covers the history from creation to 146BC

• It was written as an educational tool

iii) Collection of Poems

• His poems are unique because of the use of simple vocabularies and plain images

• Major themes of his poems are mutability and the transitory nature of existence

3. Richard Hooker (1554-1600)

• Priest in the Church of England

• Studied at Oxford

• He is believed to be the greatest prose writer of Elizabethan age, next to Francis Bacon

• He is believed to be the originator of Anglican wave

• But few Scholars disagree this fact

• The word ‘Anglican’ is not there in his works

• He opposed the extreme point of views of the Puritans

• He sought a middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism

• Izaak Walton has written a biography of Richard Hooker

Works

a) Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594)

• Written in 8 volumes

• It is written in dignified prose

• This writing is considered as “probably the first great work of philosophy and theology to be written in English”

• Hooker emphasized on 3 things which probably had influenced the development of Anglicanism

          i) Scripture

          ii) Reason

          iii) Tradition

• It is manly a reply against the principles of Puritanism

• This work talks about intellectual liberty, broad outlook
• King James I had praised the book as it has “clear manifestation of reason”