ABSTRACT
Literature can serve a number o f functions. It can, in forms ranging from the courtly masque to the jests o f the village storyteller, entertain. It can educate, passing on a culture’s skills, attitudes and moral values, and it can attempt to persuade, to urge men and women to action or meditation. It can, depending on its presentation, heighten social tensions or purge and soothe them. In the sixteenth century literature served all these purposes in very im portant ways. Literature could not, o f course, have remained free o f the period’s turmoils in church, society and state; indeed, the literary world saw much upheaval itself. This was a century when old literary forms and conventions were challenged by new preoccupations and themes; popular cultures clashed with elite cultures. This was also a time when languages themselves arose, stagnated or declined. Central to an understanding o f all these changes is an appreciation o f the influence o f the printing press.
