Mavzu: British literature

Poetry[edit]

Shakespeare also popularised the English sonnet, which made significant changes to Petrarch's model. A collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto.

Francis Bacon

Besides Shakespeare the major poets of the early 17th century included the metaphysical poets John Donne (1572–1631) and George Herbert (1593–1633). Influenced by continental Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism, Donne's metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to achieve surprise effects.

George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who is remembered chiefly for his translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. This was the first ever complete translation of either poem into the English language and it had a profound influence on English literature.