Sir Thomas Wyatt

Jonathan Gibson (The Open University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Dates

Born 1503
Died 11 Oct 1542
Activity 1527-1542

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Poet

Resources

Bitterness, verbal ambiguity and the insecurity of life at Henry VIII’s Court strike sparks off each other in Wyatt’s writing, creating poetry unparalleled for subtlety and power in the early Tudor period. Yoking English medieval tradition to the flashy imagery and paradoxes of continental Petrarchists (several of whose verse forms he introduced to English literature), Wyatt’s poems harp on failure, agony and betrayal. Erotic love, though, is not their sole subject matter. Throughout Wyatt’s writing runs a corrosive sense of instability and anxiety, a heightened awareness of the fragility not just of fortune and love but also of what we might call personal “identity”. In many of his texts, meanwhile, Wyatt bitterly dissects t…

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2735 words

Citation: Gibson, Jonathan. "Sir Thomas Wyatt". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4817, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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