dr mohit k ray

oparative Study of the Indian Poetics and the Western Poetics . New Delhi : Sarup & Sons, 2008.

E.M.W.Tillyard's Elizabethan World Picture.

In The Elizabethan World Picture Tillyard offers a lucid exposition of the mindset of the Elizabethans and tries to acquaint the reader with the beliefs prevalent in the Elizabethan age about the construction of the world or the world as the Elizabethans pictured it When Tillyard talks about the Elizabethan Age he means, however, the English Renaissance and not just the Elizabethan period of the British history. An important aspect of the cosmic order was a belief in the vast chain of being. The chain starts at the foot of God and systematically goes down to the lowest and the meanest of the inanimate objects. In this chain, again a definite hierarchy was maintained so that within every class there was a figure head; dolphin among the fishes, lion among animals etc. Man stood between angel and beast and, therefore, had in him the qualities both of the angel and the beast.In addition to the vertical line of creation there was also a horizontal picture of the world: the mind and the ocean: God, the sun, the prince, reason and justice etc.

The Elizabethans believed that the entire cosmic world is orchestrated in dance and music, corresponding to motion and harmony respectively. They also believed that it was creative love which prompted the warring atoms to move in order. The sun expresses its love for the earth in a dance. The stars had their own dances; the longest was that of the Great Year which was believed to last for six thousand years of the sun. In fact, dancing was believed to be the very foundation of human civilization.

Tillyard shows that the Elizabethan world view is a tradition that was handed down to the Elizabethans as a legacy of the Middle Age but the Elizabethans tried to modernize the conventional cosmic order by using metaphors and symbols

The word, “Elizabethan” in the title is, however, loosely used to encompass the English Renaissance.