Note: These are taken from the following website, which is a group of article abstracts or summaries completed by University course participants.
English 362: Reading Summaries / Abstracts Malaspina University-College. Accessed Nov 15,05.
I have pasted some quotes (complete with spelling errors…)that I think are appropriate in approaching Wyatt and his times. Feel free to check out the site yourself, but it is quite heady stuff!
You may want to check out the first entry on the site, as it is a short description of the life and times at court. This one is pretty interesting if you want to see what they were up to for fun (just a teaser, apparently they liked bowling!).
Some interesting quotes:
3 Waller, Gary. “Reading the Poetry of the Sixteenth Century.” 1-33 in English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century. London: Longman, 1986. [Completed by Group 3.]
In the sixteenth century, poets wrote within and for the court, often as a mean for courtiers to gain access to the monarch. Due to political uncertainty, much of the poetry silenced real events, and the lyrics seldom captured the era’s ambiance.
Robert Sidney, for instance, wrote most of his poetry while in exile trying to get back into the King’s favour. Clearly, poetry was not merely a way to describe their lives, but was a means of social stabilization and control. To remain in favour, poets could not state any opposing opinions, and thus imaginative readers must search for these muffled voices in the poems’ “dislocations” and “disruptions.” (pars. 1 and 2 of week 4)
With a few exeptions, the English poetry prior to the sixteenth century produced mainly court doggerel [...] Today few critics view these as great poets,[...] Sir Thomas Wyatt, however, rose above this literary mediocracy, and he was the most compelling renaissance poet prior to the 1580s. While on the surface his lyrics seem to honour the regime, they are suffused with dark undercurrents, revealing the difficulty court poets had in finding a language in which to express dissatisfaction. (Par. 7 of week 4)
1 Spearing, A.C. “Wyatt as Petrarchan Translator.” 300-6 in Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985. [Completed by Group 1.]
Many of Wyatt’s most successful poems are translations from Petrarch. Petrarch was a great Italian poet who had an active cult following during Wyatt’s lifetime. Petrarch was considered to be a “modern classic” and Spearing says he was a far superior poet to Wyatt. In translating Petrarch, Wyatt was not trying to be fashionable as much as he was using Petrarch’s original material and adapting it for his own needs. (Par. 1 of week 5)
The first English sonnets are Wyatt’s translations of Petrarch. [...]Wyatt added a Medieval or Renaissance tone to his translations. Spearing says Wyatt “tends to reduce philosophical generalization to individual experience”(Par 3 of week 5)
Wyatt’s translations reflect “the coexistence of two conflicting tendencies” often associated with the Renaissance: “imitation and individualism.” Wyatt imitated the Petrarch style to exercise his own lyrics. Spearing goes so far as to label Wyatt a predator, implying that Wyatt would use Petrarch’s poems to foster his own poetry. “He is determined to seize the Italian source and force it to his own purpose – as it were, to ravish it.”[...] Therefore, Wyatt’s translations leave the reader with a sense of ambiguity that in itself can offer an element of intrigue. (Par. 4 of week 5)
3 Thomson, Patricia. “Wyatt and Surrey.” 1-20 in Christopher Ricks, ed. English Poetry and Prose, 1540-1674. London: Sphere, 1970. [Completed by Group 3.]
Poetry during this era has many similarities with the past, but also it differs as it changes with the future. Time honored forms are not longer adhered to as evidenced by Wyatt’s emergence as the first English lyricist with distinctive personality and mannerisms. He is not a visual poet, but produces good effects with sense and emotional tone. (Par. 4)
It is apparent from the readings that both Wyatt and Surrey were extremely popular during the sixteenth century, a popularity which grew after their deaths largely due to the ability to print their works. (Par 7)
Spearing, A.C. “Wyatt’s Poetic Role [and] Wyatt as Courtly Lyricist.” 278-300 in Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985. [Completed by Group 1.]
In “Wyatt’s Poetic Role” Spearing identifies Wyatt as a gentleman poet because his poems were not written for material gain or prestige. Unlike Skelton, Wyatt did not write poems to honour people or celebrate public occasions. Wyatt was not so much a servant of the court as he was an actual participant in the courtly life. He did write occasional poems regarding public events such as the fall of Thomas Cromwell and the execution of those alleged to have had adulterous relations with Anne Boleyn, but the responses they record are essentially private.[...] Wyatt’s poems circulated in manuscript collections among a small circle of friends within his social class and were not published until after his death.
Wyatt’s poems were the beginning of secular poetry expressing “isolated moments of personal emotional experience.” Although he did translate from Latin, French, and Italian, Spearing says Wyatt was not trying to attract attention with his poetry. “There is no Chaucerian name-dropping, no Lydgatean moralizing, no Skelton bandying of quotations and technical terms, no scholasticism, no encyclopaedism, no informativeness, little classical mythology, no sustained allegory, almost no personification, no elevated diction, no amplification.” Wyatt’s poetry was very different from his forerunners and Puttenham says Wyatt belonged to a new company of courtly makers in the latter part of Henry VIII’s reign. Wyatt’s poems have no muses (except the homely Kentish muses of his first satire), no appeals to Apollo, no apostrophic prologues, and seemingly no connection to literary traditions (aside from translations).
Wyatt’s poems are fairly serious and somber. Spearing says his source of understanding lies in what he actually experienced and he did not idealize of imagine beyond his own private reality. Wyatt does not claim or seek inspiration from outside of himself, and does not indicate cosmological beliefs or practices. In many of his lyrics he does characterize himself as a lutanist, but the lute, like the lady, does not inspire the poet (see “Blame not my lute” [MT CCV]). (Par 1-3).
