The Impact of Renaissance Literature on Aphra Behn

The 13th century revolution in the Italian camp set the commencement for renaissance. Before the Renaissance, the Italian language was nowhere to anything close to being called the language of the Italians. It was during the 13th century that the authors in Italy began jotting down their native language rather than the then predominant French, Latin and Provencal. The year 1250s came with major changes and shakeups especially in Italian poetry as people like Dolce Stil Novo, came into the scene after receiving support from people like Guido Guinizelli and Guittone d’Arezzo. They made major strides and changes in poetry, as other major changes had been happening in the previous decades even before Renaissance.

When the process of books printing began in Venice, there were increasing books that were published through the Italian language plus the Greek and Latin texts that formed part of the Italian Renaissance. These developments continued beyond theology to the eras of times before Christianity became predominant, the times of Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome. This does not mean that less religious works and writings were printed and published during these times. In one of the writings by Dante Alighieri reflects the pre-Christian view. Christianity consistently remained a great and central influence for the authors and artists, with the other classic issues coming in as another second and different primary influence. Therefore, religion is one of the central factors that contributed significantly to the Renaissance Literature.

Bunyan’s contribution to Renaissance

It is during this same period that great people like John Bunyan wrote literary pieces like the Pilgrim’s Progress. The whole narrative takes place in the dream of the narrator from a cell. The narrator begins the story in the City of Destruction (Bunyan, p.9). It is from here that the narrator becomes convinced that city will live up to its name and or gets destroyed because of its wickedness, pilgrim Christians, flee the city by the help of the Evangelist. In the dream, the Christians continue in their road shown by the Evangelist towards the Celestial City. However, they are met by diverse obstacles and challenges. Certain individuals convince him not carry on with the journey. With the burden on his back, the Slough of Despond tries to tries to make him drown and the Mr. Worldly convinces him to perhaps take a route that is easier to heaven and the unfortunately the route only leads him astray.

Bunyan presents a scenario where the Christian does not enter the wicket date, where Good-Will assists him through and then gives him directly towards the Interpreter’s House (Bunyan, p.11). The Christian takes time in teachings and mirrors the allegorical story. From there, the Christian then comes to the cross where they realize Christ’s sacrifice for sins of humanity, and thereafter the burden they have carried for long is released. In his present, Bunyan represents a situation and times that come with the influence of Christianity where there he sees a scroll that means a copy of the scripture together with a certain certificate for use at the Celestial City. The narrator presents a situation where the Shinning ones are clothed looking like angels and approaching him after the rolling away of the burdens. Also, the narrator presents a Christian situation where they remain on the narrow path up the hill as opposed to the others who are not yet Christians.

Bunyan further presents a situation of tough times for the Christian in his journey towards the celestial city. After going through the Valley of Humiliation, the Christian runs to Apollyon, a place with real Satan manifestation who then tries to tempt them away from Christ. The two fight and fortunately the Christian wins the battle as he proclaims allegiance to Christ with thanksgiving to God Almighty. Bunyan presents a situation where the Christian further goes through other tough times and temptations and this comes as he goes through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The Christian in this setting walks through darkness where he is hounded and chased by demons, across the edge of a chasm and then past the door to hell and it is through faith that the Christian makes it out.

Bunyan writes the literary to depict the life of Christian and how a Christian is but an alien on a voyage towards what he calls the Celestial City. John writes this literary to the Christian community at a time when Christianity was facing numerous persecutions and challenges. The literary comes forth as an encouragement to continue on this difficult journey full of temptation and even Satan himself. He contributes significantly together with other Christian authors to the renaissance literature. The author ends the books with the image of Ignorance, as the narrator claims to have seen him on a ferry called Vain-hope crossing the river. However, after crossing, he does not have the requisite certificate to hand over, this represents the certificates handed over to them when Christ was revealed to their personal souls. For this case, Ignorance is bound and then straight taken to Hell (Bunyan, p.201).

Aphra Behn and the Renaissance

Other authors also contribute largely to the Renaissance literature. This period cannot be mentioned as making appropriate attributes to Aphra Behn in coming up with the masterpiece, The Rover. The Rover indicates a play written to pay tribute to the exiled cavalier and also to the newly reinstated Charles II, who was king. The author sets the play in Naples in Italy during the Carnival. The play surrounds two sisters, Florinda and Hellena. The earlier is one of the sisters in the predicament of a forceful marriage to an old rich man called Don and also another potential suitor, a friend to his brother, Antonio. To her, Florinda, neither of these two seem good suitors.

Behn writes to present the issue of love affair among the women with respect to young people and even older people. Behn expresses the issue of marriage in the short stories to the audience. Hellena is presented to be in a form of a fix, similar to her sister’s. She is under a covenant that is very unusual. It is usually the case for the firstborn to be married off to a person who owns land in order to possibly secure a fortune and then the second sister is normally just sent to a convent. However, Helena is not the type to go to a convent. She has a view and conviction of the desire to experience both love and life in its fullness. The two sisters in their quest to test life in its fullness are dressed up to go to Carnivale without the knowledge of the brother.

The narrator presents a play where he presents the issue of love, marriage and societal vices in the community through this one family. Florinda is convinced that Belville would choose him above all the other men to become her husband. At the same time, Hellena meets up with Willmore and she falls in love with him. Ironically, Willmore meets up with Angellica, a very beautiful and highly priced prostitute. They end up in bed together where he believes the woman would be in love with her and then remain with her forever. The Christian value systems and involvement in the Renaissance influenced Behn condemning the issue of harlotry in the short stories. The rise of Christianity influenced the then culture to present such a thing that had been happening as a bad habit not befitting the status of a woman born in the current culture (Behn, p.22).

The play brings for the themes of unhappy marriages and loveless together marriages. The marriages, the forced marriages happen and is presented in Behn’s work. She presents her work with much concern about the state of women in the society. She presents through her play the life of a woman, a 17th-century woman struggling through her life and existence in her patriarchal society. Furthermore, in the play, she writes and contributes to the spread of Renaissance and contribution of the Christian literature in despising how sexes and presented in the society with regards to love life, roles and responsibilities and the place of the woman in the society (Behn, p.25). In this play, she presents three kinds of women, a married woman, the prostitutes and the women in convents. The story does not only attack the women’s roles in the society but also represents an anti-semetic inference with the recognition of the inquisition period. In the narration, the influence of Christianity and religion is so visible especially through the aforementioned inquisition period, where the supposed apostates were humiliated, persecuted and made to go through suffering for their misdeeds.

Renaissance Literature

According to Daem (2006, p.1), the century implied a distinct starting, middle and perhaps the end. More than the other centuries, the 17th-century culture and literature represented a continuity including the great writers like John Donne, Benson Jonson, and William Shakespeare. The earliest Renaissance for the first appeared on 14th century through Petrarch, Dante, and Machiavelli as some of the first writers Italy had then. The influence of the Renaissance spread over different countries and states and continued to spread across Europe through to 17th century. The Renaissance in Scotland and the English Renaissance can be dated from the 15th

century to the early periods of the 17th century. In some of the writings of Erasmus and also in Northern Europe, other Renaissance period writers included Shakespeare and the other poets like Edmund Spenser. Sir Philip Sidney also considered the writings of Renaissance in his character writings.

According to Braunmuller and Michael (2003, p.17), the Renaissance literature was written with the movement of the Renaissance that kicked off in Italy in the 13th

century. The process and spread of the Renaissance spread to the 16the century into the other western world. This period was characterized by adoption and birth of a humanist philosophy and classical antiquity literature recovery and further benefited from the growth and spreading of printing materials in the later parts of the 15th century. The use of Greco-Roman was at the center of the themes of these writings and the other literary forms that were in use during the period of renaissance. The writers and the society, in general, considered the world in an anthropocentric perspective. The platonic ideas were deeply revived and rejuvenated and all put to the Christianity service.

Consequently, the search for pleasures and hedonism, rationality, humanity, reasoning were deeply thought about and they completed the panorama that came with these ideological issues at the time. More so, it is during this time that new literary genres such as the use of essays in literary senses and other new metrical forms like the use of sonnet and the stanzas in poems and other writings appeared in the writings. During the same period, there was the creation of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the year of 1450 that gave the authors the encouragement to do their writing in local languages rather than in Latin and Greek. The invention of the printing press helped in widening and increasing the audience that can access the reading materials and also promoted the increase and spread of Renaissance ideas. These same printing materials were widely used by Christians to publish writing materials.

The Renaissance impact spread across the continent and countries especially those that were predominantly Protestant and catholic of which they experienced the renaissance differently. The places where Orthodox churches were dominant in their culture, together with the areas that were predominantly under Islamic rule, remain more or even less outside the influence of Renaissance. The times and periods of the Renaissance focused more on self-actualization and the ability of an individual to take it upon themselves to accept whatever is going on in their own lives. The influence of Christianity during this time was humongous on the Renaissance as it fast-tracked its spread and increase in different parts of the country and even the universe.

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni was one of the Patriarch’s disciples who later on became one of the major authors. He authored the Decameron, a series of a hundred stories who fled the outskirts of Florence in eluding the black plague that was experienced over the 10 nights. The works of Boccaccio together with the Decameron that acted as major inspiration sources for the many other authors during the Renaissance including William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer. The various love tales pinned down in Decameron’s story range from erotic to the tragic ones (Hopkins and Steggle, p.12). Others include practical jokes, Tales of wit and other life lessons contributed significantly to the mosaic. Additionally, the widespread influence and the literary value of the materials provided a document of life during the period. The Decameron, written in vernacular Florentine language, is perhaps a masterpiece of the early Italian prose.

Boccaccio did the imaginative literature in Italian dialect and also in other languages in Latin. He is known greatly for the way he presents his ideas that are always realistic and in contrast to the other ideas of the other contemporaries, mostly the medieval writers who mostly followed the models of formula for the purposes of their plots and characters.

Giovanni, who was a believer himself, was also influenced immensely by the Patriarch. Their discussions were instrumental in his writing of the Genealogia gentilium, as the first edition as it continued a critical reference for the classical mythology for a period of over 400 years. It was an extended defense for the ancient literature and studies and thoughts. He remained critical of the clerical intellectual arguments who were out to limit the access to classical sources in their quest to prevent moral harm and destruction of value systems of the Christian readers. The classical antiquity revival was at the center of the foundational pillars of renaissance and the defense of the importance and critical nature of the ancient literature remained an essential requirement and necessity for the development of the literature and period.

Dante Alighieri

Dante set the stage for Renaissance even before the Boccaccio and Petrarch generation. The came up with the Divine Comedy. The literary work was originally called the Comedia and later given the name Divina. It is considered one of the greatest work written in the Italian language as also regarded as a masterpiece of the literature that ever existed. Dante played a very critical role in coming up and the establishment of the national language of Italy. His significance, especially on his writings, extend past the jurisdiction of his country in his depictions of purgatory, hell, heaven and other biblical illusions provided inspiration to the large and expansive body of western art and literature. These works and materials have been cited as major influencers to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and Lord Alfred Tennyson.

According to Hopkins and Steggle (2006, p.309) he presents a short story on pastoral influence in Renaissance history and times. Just like Dante makes a critical analysis of the work of clerics and the pastors of the time, the Christian influence, expansion and the risk from the ‘dark days’ cannot be underestimated. The church together with the general population of the Christians played a central role both in writings, printing presses, standing amidst oppression from the civil authorities for being apostates together with the Roman Inquisition. The religion stood a big influence on the spread of Renaissance.

However, Dante and most of the Florentines were deeply embroiled in the Guelph-Ghibelline fight and conflict. He was involved in the fight against Campaldino together with the Florentine and them against Arrezzo. They defeated the Guelphs and then divided themselves into two factions, the White Guelphs, that was Dante’s party led by Vueri and the other Black Guelphs that was under the leadership of Corso Donati. Although at first the split was made along the lines of family belonging, the differences in terms of ideology were based on their different views of the role of the papacy in the affairs of the Florentines. In this debacle, the blacks supported the Pope and on the other hand, the whites demanded more freedom from Rome. The fiasco made Dante to be accused of financial misappropriation and corruption by the Black Guelphs while serving as the city prior. He was later on condemned unto perpetual exile and if he dared return to Florence before paying the fine due to him, he would be burned alive.

During his time in exile, he convinced Divine Comedy but the date remained uncertain. The assurance of the work he had done was existing on a larger scale than anything he had before in Florence. It was indeed likely that he had engaged such a task only after coming to the realization of his political ambitions in life. He mixed both religion and private affairs of his writings, and this led him to invoke the worst of God’s anger upon his city and made him suggest several other targets and ambitions that were his personal rivals and enemies.

Conclusion

Therefore, when Renaissance is mentioned, there cannot lack the voice of religion in the spread of the times of renaissance. The different authors wrote hugely on religion especially on Christianity. John Bunyan is at the center of the writing and he allegorizes in a dream on the journey of Christian on this earth. There are other authors like Dante who are critical of the views and arguments of the clerics and their influence on the culture. Religion was the driving force of Renaissance and its spread beyond Italy.

References

Behn, A. (2004). The rover, or, The banished cavaliers. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Pub.

Bunyan, J. (2005). The pilgrim’s progress: And other select works. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

Braunmuller, A R and Michael Hattaway. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama 2nd Edition. London: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Daems, Jim. Seventeenth Century Literature and Culture. Chicago: Continuum, 2006.

Lisa, Hopkins and Mathew Steggle. Renaissance Literature and Culture. Cambridge University Press: Continuum, 2006.