What part do the conditions of Court life play in the poetry of Wyatt, Surrey or any other Sixteenth century poet? Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder's life revolved around King Henry VIII's court from his early age. The son of a gentleman who very soon linked his future to that of the Tudor dynasty, Wyatt became a diplomat soon enough, and what with being a favourite at court, he was a prominent figure both politically and socially. It is quite impossible to name the many poets who wrote at that time, but one thing is for sure: skill in music, dancing and poetry was expected of every gentleman. In Wyatt's case, the political and social parts were very much linked together since, as a diplomat he travelled a lot, and the years he spent abroad had a significant impact upon his writing, which is especially obvious in his translations and imitations of poems by Ronsard, Aretino, Sannazaro, Alamanni, and above all, Petrarch. But court life for Wyatt is not Arthurian Romance or Fairy tale; far from it, and this plays a major role in his poetry, although the extent to which it is so is sometimes debated by some critics.
Indeed, according to the Norton Anthology of English literature Vol. 1,
'Thomas Wyatt made his career in the shifting, dangerous currents of Renaissance courts, and court culture, with its power struggles, sexual intrigues, and sophisticated tastes, shaped his remarkable achievements as a poet'
Very succinct, very clear and sums up an entire essay on the conditions of Court life's influence on Wyatt one could say, because history proves Henry the VIII to be a despot who sends spies in every household, and though Wyatt is a favourite at court, he is accused of treason on a few occasions,...
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...y or at times in clear and at time to express himself in veiled double-meaning words so appreciative of the fact that as a courtier and diplomat, such "qualities" were expected of him,and this, in a way, is his irony towards court life and the people for whom he wrote.
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-Sergio Baldi, Writers and their World: Sir Thomas Wyatt, translated by F. T. Prince. Published for the British Council by Longman Group LTD (1971)
Sargent, Michael G. “Mystical Writings and Dramatic Texts in Late Medieval England.” Religion & Literature , Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 77-98
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Literature of the English Restoration offers the example of a number of writers who wrote for a courtly audience: literary production, particularly in learned imitation of classical models, was part of the court culture of King Charles II. The fact of a shared model explains the remarkable similarities between “The Imperfect Enjoyment” by the Earl of Rochester and “The Disappointment” by Aphra Behn—remarkable only because readers are surprised to read one poem about male sexual impotence from the late seventeenth century, let alone two examples of this genre by well-known courtly writers. In fact, Richard Quaintance presents ten more examples by lesser-known poets as he defines the literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem,” written in imitation of Roman poems on the same subject, which is shared by Rochester and Behn (Quaintance 190). Since Rochester and Behn are working along such closely similar lines in terms of the artistic models that their own poems aim to imitate, it is therefore fair to ask the question: what are the main differences in their compositional technique within this tightly-defined literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem”? By examining features of each poem in turn—including form (including this sub-genre they share), but also narrative voice and tone—with some examination of the secondary critical literature on both Rochester and Behn, I hope to demonstrate that there are distinct differences in compositional technique which involve the difference in sex between these two writers. But my conclusion will attempt to problematize the very notion of an authorial sex difference by raising the concept of gender, and in particular the aspect of “performativity”—...
Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
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When readers reflect on the poetry of the seventeenth century, poets such as John Donne and the
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Robert Burns, a poet and lyricist in the Romantic Age, was born in Alloway, Scotland on 25 January, 1759. “The son of a hard-working and intelligent farmer, Burns was the oldest of seven children, all of whom had to help in the work on the farm” (The Columbia Encyclopedia). His first poem was written when he was fifteen; which was written for Jean Armour, whom he would later marry. “Burns fathered fourteen children with Jean Armour. They settled in Ellisland on a leased farm, forty-five miles from Mauchline, where Burns began his duties as a tax inspector, which was his profession until the end of his days” (Encyclopedia of World Biography).
Poetry by William King, Martyn Lowery, Andrew Marvell, Liz Lochhead, John Cooper Clarke and Elizabeth Jennings
Thomas Wyatt, "They Flee From Me" Set of Multiple-choice Questions Analyzing a Poem. Sir Thomas Wyatt's sixteenth-century lyric "They flee from me" is an enigmatic poem that pleases, at least partly because it provides no final certainty about the situation it describes. Yet the poem, while in some respects indefinite and puzzling, is nevertheless quite specific in its presentation of a situation, particularly in the second stanza, and it treats a recognizable human experience—that of having been forsaken by a lover—in an original and intriguing fashion. They flee from me, that sometimes did me seek. with naked foot stalking in a jay chamber.
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Marshall, William H., ed. The Major English Romantic Poets. New York: Washington Square, Inc., 1966. Print.