 Hi friends, welcome to my channel and welcome to the fourth video in the History of British Literature series. Till now, we have covered Old English period, we have also covered two parts of the Middle English period. As I have told you that Middle English period is divided into three sections. The first section, it talks about the Middle English period before Chaucer, then we have Age of Chaucer and then we have Middle English period after Chaucer that is also known as Age of Revival. In this video, we are going to specifically look at Age of Revival, the major historic events and the main works written in this period. Why is it called Age of Revival is the first question that we must answer. Age of Revival basically means that revival of old literature is happening. So this was a time when people started looking back and started reading the ancient Greek and Roman texts. So a lot of Roman and Greek text was circulated because of Crusades. I have explained Crusades in the previous video, make sure you watch it if you haven't watched it so far. So what happened? Because of Crusades, all these ancient Greek and Roman literature was spread across Europe. People started reading and appreciating what fantastic works these old writers have written. And because all these writers started imitating or at least reading those ancient texts, we know it as a period of Renaissance. Renaissance means rebirth. When something which has died again starts to come up is rebirth. So all the Greek and Roman architecture, music, literature, everything died because Roman civilization collapsed somewhere around 400 AD. After 400 AD, it was in somewhere around 1400 AD that people started going back and looking at those works. So this is the reason why it is called as Renaissance. Now Renaissance, there are amazing stuff that you must know. There are some important factual details that you must not skip which we cover in our online course because of time crunch, we cannot put that in this lecture. So I would just give you a brief outline of Renaissance. Another important historic event that happened here is the Protestant Revolution. Now Protestant Revolution cannot be explained in just a 10 minutes video because there is a long history that you must understand before you start understanding Protestant Revolution. I have covered this topic in detail in my course in module number 4, European Literature. So all those who are enrolled in my course right now, if you haven't listened to my lectures on Christianity, how Christianity spread across world and how it developed into Protestant Revolution, make sure you go to module number 4 and listen to my lectures on Christianity, its birth and how it spread in number 2 on Greek and Roman mythology. I have discussed each and every character that you must know in Greek and Roman mythology so that you can understand all the references that you find so easily in the books of T.S. Lirt and Jane Austen or for that matter all the important Elizabethan writers. So we have discussed Renaissance and we have discussed Reformation, the Protestant Movement but is it the only two important historic movement that impacted the Age of Revival? No, there were a lot of other important historic events that were going all across Europe at that time. One of the major ones was the War of Roses. We have already discussed Hundred Year War in the last video. In that I told you that there was a war that was going between England and France. Now we get to see another important historic event that was War of Roses. It was not just an external battle that England was fighting. England was also fighting an internal battle where two political groups, two houses of parliament were fighting against each other. One house was known as House of York, another was known as House of Winchester and both of them were fighting and their fight was about who is going to get the throne, who is going to become the king. That was War of Roses. Another important historic event that happened was that printing press came to Europe. It was during the Age of Revival that printing press was set up all across Europe and William Caxton brought printing press to London. Earlier there were woodblock printings that were happening. So woodblock printing is basically there was a wooden piece in which the entire paper was carved and when you put that as a stamp on another sheet of paper, the page, you find that a copy of page has been created. That was a kind of wooden block printing that was happening. Not only this, England during this period saw a ruler known as Henry VIII. Now this ruler was extremely cruel and he was a phenomenal ruler, phenomenal in an ironic sense. He was a ruler who married six times. Why? Because he was not getting a kid, a male child. For them females were of no use. So he wanted a male child. He was not getting it. So he killed each of his wife and he married. He kept on marrying again and again and it was Henry VIII who started Anglican Church. Now you would ask me what is Anglican Church? Let me tell you friends, Protestant, Catholic, Puritans, Anglican, these are all different sects who are following Christianity in different manner. Now I have a complete lecture on this part in my audio course but then I cannot deliver it here since we are having a time crunch. So I would just like you to understand the fact that it was Henry VIII who brought Anglicanism in England. Apart from that a lot of other important historic changes were happening. All across Europe there were countries who were sending people on voyages and in one such voyage was America discovered and who discovered America? It was Columbus. So Columbus discovered America in 1492 and then Vasco de Gama discovered India in 1497. So different would-be colonies were discovered and people started to realize that the world is not that short, world is not that small. We were only thinking that it's just Europe that is what world is. But now they started discovering that there were some Eastern countries, there were some countries in America and that is how they started creating a altogether different notion of the world. I think I've spoken enough about the Age of Revival, I've tried to give you as much information as I could in the limited time we had but now it's time to discuss some major writers. I'm only going to talk about one major writer and then I'm going to look at the female writers because after looking at what Henry VIII did, I think we should show some sympathy to the female com. So let us first talk about the major writer who is Thomas Mallory. Thomas Mallory was the one who wrote Le Morte d'Earthur, I've already discussed Arthurian legends in detail in the previous video. So Le Morte d'Earthur was also based on all the Arthurian legend and it was a book where he discussed the entire life of King Arthur and all the quest of the Arthurian knights. Now let's look at the female writers. So my favorite one from this period is Christine de Pizan. Christine de Pizan is said to be the first female writer who took writing as her career. Look at it, 15th century a writer, a female writer decides that I'm not going to just look after my house, I'm going to write some amazing works. She was the pioneer of that. Then we have another important female writer, Mary Kemp. Now Mary Kemp is basically a writer who had 14 children. So you can understand how busy her life would have been and amidst all of this, she started talking about her life in form of prose work. So she started writing down what she's going through, what it is to be a woman in that century, what it feels like to take care of so many household responsibilities. So it was an amazing work that was written by Marguerite Kemp and it is known as the book of Marguerite Kemp. And last but not the least, we have Julian of Norwich. She was a woman who dedicated her life to God and she wrote a beautiful book called 16 Revelations of Divine and in this book there's a beautiful line. The line says all is well and all is well and all matter of things are well. And this was a line which was later in 20th century used by the great writer T. S. Eliot. So this was about age of revival and all the major works written in this period. There is a lot more that I would have covered if I would have got some more time. But I wanted to keep this video short. So I've only talked about the major details. I've not spoken a lot about some really important stuff like Henry VIII and his six wife. A lot of questions have been asked from that particular portion. So I would request you to kindly go to my website and check out the writers and start preparing notes. If you want, you can also take the help of our online course. So with that note, I take your leave. That's it for this video lecture. We'll meet very soon in the next video lecture. Till the time we meet next, happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitakarwa.com.