Lesson 6. Unit 4

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Jacobean literature " Actions

English literature
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
# Table of Contents
Jacobean literature, body of works written during the reign of James I of

England (1603–25). The successor to Elizabethan literature, Jacobean
literature was often dark in mood, questioning the stability of the social
order; some of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies may date from the
beginning of the period, and other dramatists, including John Webster, were
often preoccupied with the problem of evil. The era’s comedy included the
acid satire of Ben Jonson and the varied works of Francis Beaumont and
John Fletcher. Jacobean poetry included the graceful verse of Jonson and
the Cavalier poets but also the intellectual complexity of the Metaphysical
poetry of John Donne and others. In prose, writers such as Francis Bacon
and Robert Burton showed a new toughness and flexibility of style. The era’s
monumental prose achievement was the King James Version of the Bible
(1611).
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Cyril Tourneur " Actions

English dramatist
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
# Table of Contents
Cyril Tourneur, (born c. 1575—died Feb. 28, 1626, Kinsale, County Cork,
Ire.), English dramatist whose reputation rests largely upon The Atheist’s
Tragedie, which is written in verse that is rich in macabre imagery.
Born: c.1575
Died: February 28, 1626 • Kinsale • Ireland
Notable Works: “The Atheist’s Tragedy”

In 1625 Sir Edward Cecil appointed Tourneur secretary to the council of war.
This appointment was canceled by the duke of Buckingham, but Tourneur
sailed with Cecil on an expedition to Cádiz. On the return voyage, he was put
ashore at Kinsale with other sick men, and he died there. His poetical satire,
The Transformed Metamorphosis, was published in 1600.
The Atheist’s Tragedie: Or The Honest Man’s Revenge was published in

1611. The Revenger’s Tragedie, which is sometimes attributed to Tourneur,
had appeared anonymously in 1607. In 1656 the bookseller Edward Archer
entered it as by Tourneur on his list, but most recent scholarship attributes it
to Thomas Middleton. The plays differ in their attitude toward private
revenge; and The Revenger’s Tragedie, although earlier, is more mature in
its structure and sombre brilliance.
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Cornish # Table of Contents
Cornish literature " Actions

By Neil Kennedy • Edit History
# Table of Contents
Cornish literature, the body of writing in Cornish, the Celtic language of

Cornwall in southwestern Britain.
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Related Topics: literature • Western literature • Cornish language
The earliest extant records in Cornish are glosses added to Latin texts as well
as the proper names in the Bodmin Manumissions, all of which date from
about the 10th century. The 11th-century Domesday Book also includes
records in Cornish. The Vocabularium cornicum (c. 1100; Eng. trans. The
Old Cornish Vocabulary), an addition to Aelfric’s Latin–Anglo-Saxon
glossary, provides the only substantial record of Old Cornish.
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Celtic literature: Cornish
The oldest remains of Cornish are proper names in the Bodmin Gospels and in the
Domesday Book, 10th-century...
:
A 41-line poem, perhaps from a longer work, is the earliest known literary
text in Cornish. It was written on the back of a charter dated 1340 and gives
advice to a prospective bride. The poem Pascon agan Arluth (“Passion of
Our Lord”; also called in English Mount Calvary), about Christ’s suffering
and Crucifixion, was written in the 14th century. Literature in Middle
Cornish otherwise takes the form of lengthy religious plays produced for
popular audiences and performed in the open. These are in verse, typically
consisting of four- and seven-syllable lines, and are related to the miracle
plays, morality plays, and mystery plays performed throughout medieval
Europe. The main centre for the production of the Cornish plays was Glasney
College in Penryn, founded in 1265 and dissolved in the 1540s. The three
plays that constitute the Ordinalia (Eng. trans. Ordinalia) are the finest
examples of Middle Cornish literature: Origo mundi (“Origin of the World”)
addresses the Creation, the Fall, and the promise of salvation; Passio Domini
(“Passion of the Lord”) describes Christ’s temptation and his Crucifixion;
Resurrexio Domini (“Resurrection of the Lord”) covers the Resurrection and
Ascension. The Ordinalia cannot be dated with certainty but may be from
the late 14th or early 15th century. Unlike contemporary works in English,
these plays are linked by the legend of the Holy Rood and are notable for the
absence of the Nativity or details of Christ’s ministry. Other features, such as
Pontius Pilate’s death, also point to a distinct Cornish tradition that
nevertheless shows Continental influences.
:
Set in Cornwall and Brittany, the play Beunans Meriasek (from a manuscript
dated 1504; Eng. trans. Beunans Meriasek) is a life of Meriasek, the patron
saint of the Cornish town of Camborne. A pagan tyrant, identified as a
member of the House of Tudor, expels Meriasek from Cornwall and is in turn
defeated by the Duke of Cornwall, a sequence of events that has been seen as
a reference to the rebellion that followed the landing in Cornwall of Perkin
Warbeck, pretender to the English throne, in 1497. The play, which includes
scenes from the life of St. Sylvester I, has strong Marian elements, and
among its themes are salvation, the nature of evil, and the relationship of
church and state. Gwreans an bys (The Creation of the World) is the latest
surviving medieval religious play in Cornish, perhaps composed about 1550.
Some 180 of its lines also appear in Origo mundi, and its language shows
features associated with Late Cornish. John Tregear’s Homelyes XIII in
Cornysche (c. 1560; Eng. trans. The Tregear Homilies) is the longest text in
historical Cornish, the form of the language extant prior to the language’s
disappearance by the early 19th century and its revival in the 20th. This
manuscript renders into Cornish 12 sermons by Bishop Edmund Bonner of
London; appended to these sermons is “Sacrament an alter” (“Sacrament of
the Alter”), written in another hand. Tregear’s manuscript was rediscovered
in 1949 but received little attention despite its capable and idiomatic prose,
in which English words are borrowed freely.
:
Cornish literature after 1600 is fragmentary. The brief translations of the
Bible by William Rowe (c. 1690) are notable as examples of Late Cornish.
Nicholas Boson’s Nebbaz gerriau dro tho Carnoack (c. 1665; “A Few Words
About Cornish”) gives an account of the status of Cornish during the 17th
century. From about 1680 the scholar William Scawen encouraged his
contemporaries to write in Cornish. A number of them, notably Thomas
Tonkin and William Gwavas, collected words, sayings, and manuscripts.
Most 18th-century works are short poems, songs, and letters. In 1700 the
linguist and naturalist Edward Lhuyd visited Cornwall to study the language.
His Archæologia Britannica (1707) reproduces Boson’s folk tale “John of
Chyannor” in a phonetic script, the only example of a secular prose story in
historical Cornish. William Bodinar’s letter (1776), the last surviving text in
historical Cornish, describes how he learned the language as a boy by going
to sea with old men.
With the revival of the Cornish language in the early 20th century came the
creation of a new body of Cornish literature that soon surpassed in breadth
and volume that of historical Cornish. By the turn of the 21st century, this
literature had become wide-ranging in its form and subjects, although short
stories and translations remained the literature’s dominant genres.
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Jacobean literature " Actions

Jacobean literature, body of works written during the reign of James I of

Related Topics: English literature • revenge tragedy

See all related content →

Home ! Literature ! Plays ! Playwrights L-Z

Cyril Tourneur " Actions

Died: February 28, 1626 • Kinsale • Ireland

Notable Works: “The Atheist’s Tragedy”

The Atheist’s Tragedie: Or The Honest Man’s Revenge was published in

Cornish literature " Actions

Cornish literature, the body of writing in Cornish, the Celtic language of

See all related content →

READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC

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