1. The Renaissance

2. Index Introduction Elizabeth I Discoveries Uncertainty
Religion and new beliefs
Literature
The Sonnet

3. Introduction
The Renaissance introduced new beliefs, a new approach of learning and a rediscovering of Latin and Greek culture. This is also a period of restlessness and uncertainty because old certainties are denied.

4. Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I was a monarch that succeed in Tudor dinasty. She became the reign in a period where England needed political stability and the role of the woman was limited.
Besides Elizabethan England was a divided nation of Catholics, Protestants and Puritans.

5. Discoveries
This period also includes discoveries that will have influenced all the Renaissance: the discovery of America by Columbus, Copernicus denied that Earth was on the centre of the universeand the circumnavigation of the world, and also confirming that heart is round.

6. Uncertainty
But these new discoveries give people a period of uncertainty and restlessness, because the old order of ideas was weakened. For these reasons this period is also called age of questions because people asked themselves what man, love and so on are, revaluating the position of man at the centre of existance.

7. Religion and new beliefs
During this period people there was also a reformation, after the refuse of the Pope to let the King to divorce, that let King Henry VIII in 1533 become the Head of Church in England, and as a result it becomes independent from the Pope and protestant.

8. Literature
In 1474 William Caxton printed his first English text and so the Renaissance literature started. This was also the age of drama and theatre. Poetry was also important but was more personal.

9. The Sonnet
The Sonnet is a lirycal form of poetry that expresses private feelings. In England these texts followed the Petrarch’s model and then they will be called Shakespeare’s or Elizabethan sonnets. It is organized into 3 quatrines and a couplet, where in the quatrines the problem is posed in 3 different ways and in the couplet the author tries to give a solution or an answer.