Liberal Arts

European universities in the Renaissance inherited from preceding generations the medieval organization of the curriculum into two parts: the trivium and the quadrivium. Taken together the subjects in this curriculum made up the liberal Educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School in London and later at Trinity College at Oxford University, Lodge,rift gold, whose father had briefly been Lord Mayor of London, became a student of law at Lincoln’s Inn in 1578 and soon was attracted to the London theatrical scene.

When Stephen Gosson wrote a tract attacking the theater, his School of Abuse (1579), Lodge replied with A Defense of Plays (1580). For about a decade and a half, Lodge pursued a career in literature— one that he interrupted briefly to join an expedition to South America led by the English Explorer and circumnavigator of the world, Thomas Cavendish (1560–1592).

Although Lodge seemingly tried his hand at writing for the theater, drama did not prove to be his forte.He turned his attention, therefore, to writing lyric poems, verse SATIRE, prose fiction in the style of EUPHUES, and PASTORAL romance in prose and verse.While on Cavendish’s expedition, Lodge wrote a pastoral romance, Rosalynde (1590). This work achieved notable success and had appeared in four editions when SHAKESPEARE borrowed its plot for As You Like It. Rosalynde went through seven more editions between 1600 and 1640. In 1590 he published a narrative,mythological poem, Scilla’s Metamorphosis, together with some lesser pieces including a satire and some lyrics. He also authored a cycle of SONNETs, Phillis (1593), and a successful verse satire, A Fig for Momus (1595),rift gold which became a model for later authors. Finally tiring of the uncertainties surrounding the literary life and having found the law uncongenial, Lodge turned to the study of medicine, taking M.D. degrees at Avignon (1600) and Oxford (1602). He practiced in London for a quarter century. During that time he limited his literary activities to translation. Lodge had already done a translation (1602) from the work of the first century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. A little more than a decade later, he published translations from the Roman philosopher and tragedian, SENECA (1614). arts. The study of grammar, rhetoric, and logic constituted the trivium, and that of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry,rift gold and music the quadrivium. Along with that curriculum the universities inherited a highly structured method of disputation called scholasticism that, at its worst, enabled interminable arguments on totally banal subjects such as the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin—an infinite number since angels have no corporeal essence and can intermingle their spiritual essences.

Renaissance HUMANISTS developed highly successful methods of instruction that emphasized the early study of classical languages,rift gold especially Latin, but also Greek and Hebrew so that a pan-European, largely male elite of readers and speakers of classical Latin began to emphasize the study of the subjects included in the trivium, though not necessarily to the total neglect of the quadrivium. A tendency did develop, however, to view the quadrivium as more practical and mechanical than the trivium and thus of less use to gentlemen than to the working classes.