WYATT AND SURREY

WYATT AND SURREY

 Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is often called the pioneer of the new English poetry.  He introduced the sonnet form  in English. His father was well established in the Court of King Henry VII. His famous sonnet is Whose List to Hunt. Wyatt was knighted in 1535, but in 1536, he was imprisoned for querrelling with the Duke of Suffolk.  He was sent to prison many times for various reasons. In 1542, Wyatt traveled in ill-health on a diplomatic mission the imperial ambassador to London. On his way, he caught a fever and died on the road, at Sherborne, on 11^th October.

            Wyatt travels to Italy made him acquainted with the sonnets of Petrarch. The ideas drawn from Italy  rejuvenated English Poetry. Wyatt translated Petrarch’s sonnets and brought the Petrarch sonnet form into English. Petrarch’s sonnets consisted of Octave, rhyming abba abba, followed, after a turn by a sestet with various schemes. However, his poems never ended in a rhyming couplet. Wyatt employed the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme was cddc ee.  Wyatt’s sonnets depict his love for his lady love. Wyatt’s lyrics depicts the psychological realism of his inner tension. Totally, Wyatt composed 30 sonnets of which 25 sonnets follow Petrarchan style in English. Earl of Surrey was the disciple of Wyatt, but writes better petrarchan lyrics.

Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard (1516-1547) was the eldest son of Lord Thomas Howard, Henry took the courtesy title of Earl of Surrey in 1524, when his father succeeded as 3^rd Duke of Norfolk.

The year 1536 was a significant one in Surrey’s life. His cousin Anne Boleyn was executed on charges of adultery. The same year, Surrey served with his father in quelling the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion, which protested against the King’s dissolution of the monasteries. Later, he was beheaded for treason on 19^th January, 1547. Most of the Surrey’s poetry was published after his death. Surrey was the first to develop the sonnet form used by William Shakespeare and also translated two books of Virgil’s Aeneid, marking the first use in English of Blank Verse.  Surrey improved the versification of Wyatt’s sonnets.  Though, Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey, who gave them the rhyming meter and the division into quatrains. Surrey was also the first English poet to publish in Blank Verse, in his translation of Books 2 and 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid. He showed the interest on Poulter’s Measure.  Wyatt and Surrey’s poems were first published posthumously in Tottel’s Miscellany 1557.  Surrey’s sonnets are entirely imaginative love for Gerladine or Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Surrey modernized English poetry with introduction to Blank Verse  in his poetry.