Renaissance Illuminated Texts (excluding Shakespeare)

   This presentation places Drayton's sonnet directly in the context of its words: love as money, loss, and debt. Once you start having your students create Illuminated Texts you should quickly discover that they are seeing a side of the poems or other texts that you hope for when they do a detailed (and well done) essay.  It is similar to performing a scene from Shakespeare - in order to Illuminate the Text - they must first understand it. 

   This coooperative exercise has students compare the e e cummings' modern poem, "i carry your heart" with an Elizabethan poem by Philip Sidney.  This discussion is paralleled by an architectural discussion of form following function (specifically with Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture vs gothic structures).  An illuminated text version of cummings' poem has also been created by the teacher.  There is a slightly revised edition of the group work attached with a reference to the street artist, Bansky.

A presentation that I created to use in introducing students to the Illluminated Text concept during their studies of Renaissance Poetry.  Though the poem is modern (and American), it is taught in conjunction with a poem by Sidney. After viewing the presentation, I ask that  you either comment on the presentation (below) or leave a message on the Guest Book (above).  There is also a Flash Version of this same poem that I created a few years after I made this Power Point version.

An illuminated text (animated) version of Spenser's poem -- it shows the name he writes being constantly washed away by the waves-- until it is finally, and appropriately, immortalized.  One of my first illuminated texts -- I wrote it to illustrate Spenser's poem -- and had no thought of turning it into a student project -- that came later. 

An Illuminated Text on Thomas Nashe's ode to Spring done by M. Muis and A. Hren.  The presentation wonderfully relies entirely on the words to convey the meaning of the poem (there are no pictures): Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king; / Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, / Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing...   One great thing about this project (Poetry in Motion) is that it exposes me to a number of poems that I was not even aware of.

An illluminated text by Frank Travato and T. Rosado  on Breton's poem that combines many images with detailed and thoughtful textual animation to explicated the meaning of the poem: Who can live in heart so glad/ As the merry country lad?/ Who upon a fair green balk/ May at pleasure sit and walk,/ And amid the azure skies/ See the morning sun arise

This Illuminated Text, by Elilzabeth Mucha (who has other presentations on this site as well) and Renee Leber, does a great job of painting pictures with words (a forest made up of the word forest repeated) and a simple woodland backdrop to explicate Sir Walter Raleigh's poem.  As with all good Illuminated Text, the movement of the words and even the musical background do not simply "paint a pretty picture," but instead give the viewer an explanation of what is taking place in the poem.