Key Themes
He represents himself as a plain speaking steadfast man who is betrayed by the doubleness of a fickle mistress or the instability of fortune
For the lover in Petrarchan poets love is a transcendent experience, for the lover in Wyatt’s poems it is obsessive and embittering
Wyatt’s poems are much more realistic and personal than Petrach’s. Loves presence as a mediating force is sharply reduced or disappears altogether
Complaint is a central theme in Wyatt’s poetry and we can see Wyatt transforming other Prearch poems in which a lady is not so much as mentioned into similar poems of complaint
Wyatt’s poems characteristically move towards a complaint for which someone specific is to blame
For Wyatt poet self-concealment rather than poetic self representation becomes the defining feature of his work
Classified more as a manuscript poet writing to a coterie audience with his significance lying in the persona that emerges from his poems
Langauge Features
Who list his wealth and ease retain
- The bell tower in the tower of London is where high status prisoners we held captive e.g Thomas Moore and Wyatt
- Henry is not mentioned explicitly in any of Wyatt’s poets e.g alluded to as Ceaser or in ‘circa regna tomat’ with regna meaning rule
- It is dangerous knowledge and meaning in a time of unsafety in the court under Henry VIII (‘these bloody days’)
- Refrain lines - ‘circa regna tomat’ - the gaps between stanzas are movements of thoughts
- The last stanza focuses on the moral of the story - your reason doesn’t help you in these circumstances, the best you can do is go unnoticed
- The first and the last refrain lines are identical - helps formally close the poem
They flee from me
Rhyme royal stanza - ABABBCC
Form
He introduced the sonnet into English - he uses the Petrarchan octave but his most common sestet scheme is cddc ee
Wyatt was not primarily concerned with regularity of accent and smoothness of rhythm
Imitsation is the transformation of a model which establishes a relation to that past model yet allows the later writer creative freedom
Verse writing was accounted a central grave of courting - the most usual Tudor term for courtly verses was ‘balet’
Wyatt - Petrarchan lyrics, Horatian satires and Davidic psalms - might have composed the three groups sequentially
Context
Poetry was often written for a household, at the specific request of a lord or lady
Poets needed patrons for income
The court was divided into two sphere - The household (servants, etc.) and the king’s chamber - where he slept and also entertained visitors
There wasn’t really a private sphere
Wyatt was a gentleman of the privy chamber - the private sphere gets separated out from the ceremonial sphere
The king has servants that attend to his every need
The king was though to have two bodies - a physical one and one embodying the realm itself - Wyatt was envoy of the kings personal body
Thomas More - writes Utopia - he has a vision of an ideal world
1534 - Henry VIII declares himself as the head of the new Anglican church and asks all members of his council to approve this
Wyatt is rumoured to have had an affair with Anne Boleyn when she was married to Henry
Clerk of the crown jewels under Henry VII
Accused of committing adultery with Anne Boleyn
His years abroad as a diplomat had a significant impact upon his writing most oblivious in his imitations of Italian writers
Wyatt began translating Petrarch in a respectful and faithful fashion but then repudiating Petrarch values he thereafter began to handle his Petrarchan originals in a cynical and rebellious fashion
A central notion in Renaissance humanism, stemming largely from Petrarch himself was that one forms an identity, a personal voice, precisely through the imitation of models
Critical comments
The degree of freedom of a Wyatt translation is a function not of Wyatt’s degree of independence or rebelliousness but of the distance the poem must travel to become a poem by Wyatt
