Links with the Past

The literature of the first Tudor king, Henry VII (1485-1509), was in its main interests retrospective, not forward-looking. Except only in the interlude—where, as we shall see, new viewpoints were being opened up—the writers of this reign offer little promise of the spacious days to come. Instead, their attitude is habitually skeptical of the future and nostalgic toward the past. Satisfactory reasons for this trend of mind are more easily found than is always the case in literary movements. The chief reasons are the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) and the establishment of the printing-press in England in 1476.