humanism

The article analyzes the so-called “Annales Regni Henrici Septimi” (records of the twentieth and twenty-third years of the reign of the founder of the Tudor dynasty), written by the court poet and royal historiographer Bernard André. Created after the completion of “De Vita atque Gestis Henrici Septimi Historia”, it may have been intended by the author as a draft for a future similar historical work and contain many important details, although due to circumstances it never took the form of a completed work.

In the article, based on the material of “A Description of Elizabethan England” by W. Harrison and «Britain» by W. Camden, an attempt to explore ways of reflection of the historical past of the early English Antiquaries, which set the foundation of the «secularization of historiography» and a rational interpretation of historical experience, is made.

Geoffrey Chaucer is a representative of an early English humanistic literature, who in his «The Canterbury tales» managed to show the whole panorama of social life in England of the XIV century. His short stories reflect the epochal change, the formation of new values and a new elite. Chaucer notes the degradation of the secular and spiritual aristocracy, welcomes the enrichment and strengthening of the third estate, connects it with the future of their country, admires workers-peasants that preserved the moral purity of the «corrupt age» of the poet.