Sir Thomas Wyatt

Jonathan Gibson (The Open University)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

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 the duplicity and calculation that seem to have been…

2735 words

Citation: Gibson, Jonathan. "Sir Thomas Wyatt". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4817, accessed 28 March 2024.]

4817 Sir Thomas Wyatt 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.