1. English 6105: The Tudors DAY ONE INTRO

2. A quick grammatical sidebar  If you’re naming the century, no hyphen:  The sixteenth century was a time of upheaval in England.  If you’re describing the period, hyphen:  Sixteenth-century literature can be hard to describe.  Do not capitalize centuries, per MLA, and do spell them out if you’re writing formally.

3. Periodization How do we categorize literature?  By movement (The Romantics)  By monarch (The Elizabethan Age)  By history (WWI Poets)  By theory (Modernists)  And, by arbitrary chunks of time.

4. What is the sixteenth century?  The Protestant Reformation  The emergence of England as an international power  The eruption of humanism  Simultaneous fear of and fascination with art and writing  Enormous exchanges of ideas  International trade expansion  Religious wars  Scandalous coups, executions, and machinations

5. SO WHY DO WE ONLY TALK ABOUT ELIZABETH I? A number of reasons! She did have the pleasure of reigning during an enormous explosion of English literary talent (Shakespeare et al), but her brother, sister, father, and even grandfather have their stories to tell as well.

6. Sadly, it’s not as sexy as HBO… Their Henry VIIIOur Henry VIII

7. But it is as violent! Mary IGame of Thrones

8. Highlights of the Tudors Who handily span the entire century of the 1500s.

9. A journey through dates

10. 1485 Defeat of King Richard III at Bosworth and the accession of Henry VII

11. 1509 Accession of Henry VIII

12. Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More  1515: Cardinal Wolsey appointed Lord Chancellor  1529: Fall of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More succeeds as LC  1532: More resigns  1535: More is executed

13. 1527- 1533 The Divorce Crisis, as Henry VIII attempts to extricate himself from his 20+ year marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, which he does in 1533. Elizabeth is born that same year.

14. 1536: Backlash  Dissolution of the Monasteries  Pilgrimage of Grace

15. 1547 Succession of Edward VI at age 9.

16. 1553 Edward VI dies, Warwick attempts to place Jane Grey on the throne, Mary I escapes from her confinement and takes the throne.

17. 1554-1555: Rome and Persecution Pope Julius III

18. 1558 Accession of Elizabeth I

19. 1568 Mary Stuart flees to England; her plotting gets her killed in 1587. (See Eliz I poem, “Doubt of Future Foes”)

20. 1570 Excommunicated and Deposed The “Phoenix portrait,” ca. 1575

21. 1588: The Spanish Armada

22. Decline and Death 1590s: Bad Harvests1601: Essex rebels