Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
Author of The Complete Poems
About the Author
Works by Sir Thomas Wyatt
The Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt (English Texts & Studies) (1963) — Author — 6 copies, 1 review
The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard Earl of Surrey - With a Memoir of Each - Two Volumes in One (1879) 3 copies
Some poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt 2 copies
They Flee from Me [poem] 2 copies
The Penitential Psalms. 1 copy
The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Vol. 1 of 2: With a Memoir of Each (Classic Reprint) (2017) 1 copy
Like to These Unmeasurable Mountains (from The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 1) 1 copy
My Lute, Awake! [poem] 1 copy
Farewell, Love [poem] 1 copy
Associated Works
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contributor — 1,464 copies, 9 reviews
The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost (2004) — Contributor — 1,242 copies, 3 reviews
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,011 copies, 7 reviews
World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time (1998) — Contributor — 496 copies, 2 reviews
English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson (1963) — Contributor — 184 copies
Tottel's Miscellany: Songs and Sonnets of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Others (Penguin Classics) (1897) — Contributor — 79 copies, 3 reviews
Edexcel Poetry Anthology for Advanced subsidiary and advanced GCE examinations in English Literature (2000) — Contributor, some editions — 6 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Wyatt the Elder, Thomas
Wiat, Thomas - Birthdate
- 1503
- Date of death
- 1542-10-11
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Cambridge (St. John's College)
- Occupations
- poet
diplomat - Awards and honors
- Knighthood (1537)
- Short biography
- Sir Thomas Wyatt, or Wyatt the elder, served King Henry VIII of England as both a poet and an ambassador. Some historians think that he was in love with the young Anne Boleyn in the early 1520s. Some consider his poem, "Whoso List to Hunt" to be about her.
He was imprisoned in the Tower during Queen Anne's arrest and trial for treason, but was later released. None of Wyatt's works were published during his lifetime — the first book to feature his verse was printed a full 15 years after his death.
His son Thomas Wyatt the younger (1521–1554) led a failed Protestant rebellion during the reign of Queen Mary I known as "Wyatt's rebellion." - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Allington Castle, Kent, UK
- Burial location
- Sherborne Abbey, Dorset, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- UK
Members
Reviews
Stunning editorial and historiographical work by Rebholz, revealing an incredibly prolific Wyatt. What that also unfortunately reveals is his repetitous and inconsistent catalogue. Thomas Wyatt led such a fascinating life and the context imbued into many of the poems gives them a very multifaceted existence; some of them being genuinely impressive as pieces of poetry isolated from the history that makes them even more interesting. A good handful of this work makes for some of the best lyrics show more in the English language but the caveat is that he wrote a hell of a lot of lyrics - and a lot of them contain repeating themes, repeating structures and even repeating language (he loved the word "hap") to the point where I think a 'Selected Poems' may have been better suited to his work, because reading this entire book is exhaustingly tedious on occasion. The "Ballades" and "Songs" segments are mostly dispensible save for a select few, given their blatant similarity to a lot of his higher quality sonnets and epigrams - yet they take up almost half of the entire content of the book. The Epistles and Epigrams and Sonnets and Psalms are all absolutely sublime - "Mine own John Poyntz" and "Me list no more to sing" (the best of the Songs) being two of my favourite poems ever - but it is hard to not see them as overshadowed by the onslaught of other mediocre poems. I still of course love Wyatt and think he was a brilliant poet when he wanted to be, but Rebholz' work on this collection is almost too good. On coming back to this I will definitely be skipping over the largely superfluous parts, which is a shame given that means skipping hundreds of pages of incredibly conducted research. show less
The best part of this volume is the introduction by W.S. Merwin. Sadly, Merwin's enthusiasm and admiration for Wyatt's poetry did not transfer. Too bad, because these poems clearly had power for him: "The wry beauty of Wyatt's poems hung in my ear when I was a student, and then and since exercised some indefinable influence upon what I heard and relished and listened for in other poetry."
I think I know what went wrong. This volume, in keeping with its titular directive, is about as paired show more down as possible. You get the poems and whatever brief 13 page context you can derive from Merwin's introduction and that's all you get. The trouble is these poems were written in the 16th Century, which means context clues are not so natural and the non-standard spelling and archaic vocabulary can be a little distracting ("I ame in hold: if pitie the meveth,/Goo bend thy bowe, that stony hertes breketh" Not impossible to understand but not immediate either). Not only that, these poems weren't even considered exceptional until three hundred years after they were written, so it isn't like they just slip right into the old meaning machine without consideration. He isn't part of our own common knowledge poetry index (at least in America Sir Thomas Wyatt doesn't ring a bell). I'll be honest, after reading his work bare even I might fall into the 300 years of "Wyatt? Meh" category as most of these poems seemed written by a whinny little man who feels sorry for himself a lot.
So this is my main criticism: why would The Ecco Press tease us with an introduction by a major poet who clearly has strong feelings for Wyatt and not give us anything more? This book would have gone so much further to enlighten/educate/deepen my engagement with Wyatt's work had its editor bothered to include even a simple gloss (I still can't figure out what the word "mowgh" means).... and if he included notes and a little commentary for context and interpretation I might have even recommended this book to other people.
If you are interested in reading Wyatt you are better off with the Penguin Classics Complete Poems. show less
I think I know what went wrong. This volume, in keeping with its titular directive, is about as paired show more down as possible. You get the poems and whatever brief 13 page context you can derive from Merwin's introduction and that's all you get. The trouble is these poems were written in the 16th Century, which means context clues are not so natural and the non-standard spelling and archaic vocabulary can be a little distracting ("I ame in hold: if pitie the meveth,/Goo bend thy bowe, that stony hertes breketh" Not impossible to understand but not immediate either). Not only that, these poems weren't even considered exceptional until three hundred years after they were written, so it isn't like they just slip right into the old meaning machine without consideration. He isn't part of our own common knowledge poetry index (at least in America Sir Thomas Wyatt doesn't ring a bell). I'll be honest, after reading his work bare even I might fall into the 300 years of "Wyatt? Meh" category as most of these poems seemed written by a whinny little man who feels sorry for himself a lot.
So this is my main criticism: why would The Ecco Press tease us with an introduction by a major poet who clearly has strong feelings for Wyatt and not give us anything more? This book would have gone so much further to enlighten/educate/deepen my engagement with Wyatt's work had its editor bothered to include even a simple gloss (I still can't figure out what the word "mowgh" means).... and if he included notes and a little commentary for context and interpretation I might have even recommended this book to other people.
If you are interested in reading Wyatt you are better off with the Penguin Classics Complete Poems. show less
The best part of this volume is the introduction by W.S. Merwin. Sadly, Merwin's enthusiasm and admiration for Wyatt's poetry did not transfer. Too bad, because these poems clearly had power for him: "The wry beauty of Wyatt's poems hung in my ear when I was a student, and then and since exercised some indefinable influence upon what I heard and relished and listened for in other poetry."
I think I know what went wrong. This volume, in keeping with its titular directive, is about as paired show more down as possible. You get the poems and whatever brief 13 page context you can derive from Merwin's introduction and that's all you get. The trouble is these poems were written in the 16th Century, which means context clues are not so natural and the non-standard spelling and archaic vocabulary can be a little distracting ("I ame in hold: if pitie the meveth,/Goo bend thy bowe, that stony hertes breketh" Not impossible to understand but not immediate either). Not only that, these poems weren't even considered exceptional until three hundred years after they were written, so it isn't like they just slip right into the old meaning machine without consideration. He isn't part of our own common knowledge poetry index (at least in America Sir Thomas Wyatt doesn't ring a bell). I'll be honest, after reading his work bare even I might fall into the 300 years of "Wyatt? Meh" category as most of these poems seemed written by a whinny little man who feels sorry for himself a lot.
So this is my main criticism: why would The Ecco Press tease us with an introduction by a major poet who clearly has strong feelings for Wyatt and not give us anything more? This book would have gone so much further to enlighten/educate/deepen my engagement with Wyatt's work had its editor bothered to include even a simple gloss (I still can't figure out what the word "mowgh" means).... and if he included notes and a little commentary for context and interpretation I might have even recommended this book to other people.
If you are interested in reading Wyatt you are better off with the Penguin Classics Complete Poems. show less
I think I know what went wrong. This volume, in keeping with its titular directive, is about as paired show more down as possible. You get the poems and whatever brief 13 page context you can derive from Merwin's introduction and that's all you get. The trouble is these poems were written in the 16th Century, which means context clues are not so natural and the non-standard spelling and archaic vocabulary can be a little distracting ("I ame in hold: if pitie the meveth,/Goo bend thy bowe, that stony hertes breketh" Not impossible to understand but not immediate either). Not only that, these poems weren't even considered exceptional until three hundred years after they were written, so it isn't like they just slip right into the old meaning machine without consideration. He isn't part of our own common knowledge poetry index (at least in America Sir Thomas Wyatt doesn't ring a bell). I'll be honest, after reading his work bare even I might fall into the 300 years of "Wyatt? Meh" category as most of these poems seemed written by a whinny little man who feels sorry for himself a lot.
So this is my main criticism: why would The Ecco Press tease us with an introduction by a major poet who clearly has strong feelings for Wyatt and not give us anything more? This book would have gone so much further to enlighten/educate/deepen my engagement with Wyatt's work had its editor bothered to include even a simple gloss (I still can't figure out what the word "mowgh" means).... and if he included notes and a little commentary for context and interpretation I might have even recommended this book to other people.
If you are interested in reading Wyatt you are better off with the Penguin Classics Complete Poems. show less
My honors thesis at Amherst College included Wyatt, "The Uses of Prosody in Reading Wyatt, Donne, Spenser and Milton." My advisor Richard Cody had undergrad degree from London University, and his Ph.D. from U. Minn, where I would proceed for my graduate study, my doctoral thesis advised by Donne expert Leonard Unger, Saul Bellow's best friend there.
My senior chapter on Wyatt begins with W.E. Simonds' on Wyatt's best sonnet, "Whoso list to hunt," that "the versification [is] often rough and show more faulty." I add, that's true throughout Wyatt, in his failures as well as his best. Some critics say Wyatt mainly achieved as a translator and innovator of Italian and French verse.
His best sonnet follows the convention of "deer"/ "dear," loving like hunting, of which he is wearied,
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, helas, I may no more,
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of the last that come behind....
I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
And ends with a reference to Caesar's Latin and his private deer:
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."
This last line is brilliant, and characteristic of Wyatt's prosody, with its medial
caesura: " hold [] though," both stressed; and its anapaest, "for to hold," and the spondaic
end rhyme, "seem [] tame," imaginative rhyme for "I am."
Wyatt's prosodic devices, monorhymes and medial casuras, produce linear parallelism, or less forward movement to the poem as a whole, hence less pointed ness in the climax, always at the end in sonnets, though not in Donne, where "The Apparition" climaxes in the middle. show less
My senior chapter on Wyatt begins with W.E. Simonds' on Wyatt's best sonnet, "Whoso list to hunt," that "the versification [is] often rough and show more faulty." I add, that's true throughout Wyatt, in his failures as well as his best. Some critics say Wyatt mainly achieved as a translator and innovator of Italian and French verse.
His best sonnet follows the convention of "deer"/ "dear," loving like hunting, of which he is wearied,
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, helas, I may no more,
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of the last that come behind....
I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
And ends with a reference to Caesar's Latin and his private deer:
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."
This last line is brilliant, and characteristic of Wyatt's prosody, with its medial
caesura: " hold [] though," both stressed; and its anapaest, "for to hold," and the spondaic
end rhyme, "seem [] tame," imaginative rhyme for "I am."
Wyatt's prosodic devices, monorhymes and medial casuras, produce linear parallelism, or less forward movement to the poem as a whole, hence less pointed ness in the climax, always at the end in sonnets, though not in Donne, where "The Apparition" climaxes in the middle. show less
Lists
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 32
- Also by
- 25
- Members
- 483
- Popularity
- #51,117
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 7
- ISBNs
- 26
- Favorited
- 2