Sir Thomas Wyatt The Elder and his Sonnets...

Sir Thomas Wyatt was born in 1503 during the height of the Renaissance in Europe. Wyatt served Henry VIII as protector of the jewels and was a diplomat representing the court in France and Spain. While he was abroad, he was affected by the Italian Renaissance, which transformed his writing. When he returned to England, he eventually found himself imprisoned in the Tower of London, about the same time Anne Boleyn was accused of committing adultery. Wyatt would succumb to fever in 1542. Wyatt brought a new rhyme scheme that was different from the traditional Petrarchan form.

We observed some of Wyatt's sonnets in our text books. We mainly focused two particular sonnets, Whoso list to hunt and My gallery, also we discussed The long love that in my thought doth harbor. We begin to understand that his poems are full of conceit. Wyatt's sonnets are filled with symbols that describe emotion. For example, in Whoso list to hunt, the female deer may represent Anne and Wyatt is hunting or chasing this deer. Wyatt talks about the object of love and physiological events in the minds of character's he writes.

I think it would be good to point out that, humanism grew in the Renaissance. Francesco Petrarch is considered to be the "father of the humanist". Humanism was a rediscovery of the past. Old philosophical thought, Latin (spoken by Cicero and Plato), and traditional ancient art forms were revived by the humanist. Emotion was brought out into view to the public through writing and art. A lot of these Renaissance poets are connected to the humanist train of thought.