What is the main context of Sir Thomas Wyatt's "The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour"?
The response below suggests that Wyatt is writing a parody of Petrarch's Sonnet 140. This may not be the correct term, since parody involves a critical distancing from, or even mockery of, the original. That does not seem to characterize Wyatt's use of the Italian sonnet tradition. Wyatt is more invested in using his native English as a fitting vehicle for the fashionable work occurring on the continent. Just as we point to Chaucer as an early poet in the vernacular, we can point to Wyatt as one who translated the Renaissance ideals to England.
Wyatt, like Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was a notable humanist gentleman in the English court. Traveling to Italy, men such as Wyatt would have seen signs of a new humanist aesthetic, which they brought back with them to the English court.
From early writers such as Wyatt, we can trace the English poetic tradition...
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in Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare. In these latter poets, we find a debt to Wyatt and Surrey, even while the younger poets engaged in more original subject matter.
Petrarch's sonnets were one of the more fortunate items to be so translated north. While many English poets experimented with the sonnet conventions, Wyatt had early success not in merely translating the Italian poems into his native English but in recognizing the expressive power of these short lyric poems if properly adapted to the idiosyncrasies of a non-Romance language such as English.
The web site linked below contains both Wyatt's and Surrey's imitations, as well as Petrarch's original. One can see here the flexibility that comes from playing with form and content in these sonnets.
References
He is writing a parody of Petrarch's Rime 140. The basic context is that he is keeping a secret deep in his heart regarding the person whom he truly loves. By reading the poem, it seems to be a "he" whom he loves, and the "she" whom he has learned to love (probably from peer pressure of society) is due to reason which has "reined" in the true desire of his heart. The desire of his heart is hardy, and his hidden himself from the speaker's view...and the speaker is questioning his ability to go on living the way he presently lives or to "live faithfully". I assume this last has two meanings--faithful to his heart (which means he will pursue a love with another man (which is disdained and considered forbidden) or faithful to the accepted way of life as approved by man and his "master".
Analyze Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem "The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour."
Let's take a close look at “The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour” by Sir Thomas Wyatt, which is all about the movements of love and its seeming rejection by the beloved.
The poem begins with the speaker's identification of his long love. He has thus far kept his love within his thought and his heart. It lives tucked away and out of sight. But now the speaker's love is showing up on his face. It has become bold, spreading its banner across his features, camping there like an army ready to attack.
But the speaker's beloved is not pleased by this show of love. She is the one who has been teaching the speaker to “love and suffer,” but she wants him to govern his love, and especially his lust, by “reason, shame, and reverence.” In other words, she expects the speaker to exercise self-control, and she is not pleased with this sudden open show of love from the speaker.
When the speaker sees his beloved's displeasure, his love flees back into the “forest,” the wilderness, of the speaker's heart, abandoning his offensive “with pain and cry.” The speaker's open love is defeated by his beloved's displeasure, and it hides itself again.
The speaker is now trapped. His “master,” which is his love, fears to express itself again, and now the speaker must stay in the wilderness with his love, living and dying there. Yet he will remain faithful to his love and to his beloved even to the end of his life.
In this sonnet, the feeling of Love is personified and portrayed as staying in the speaker's thoughts as a ship does in a harbor (line 1), residing in his heart (line 2), pressing boldly close to his face (line 3), and setting up camp within him, spreading a banner to stake his claim (line 4).
In the second half of the octave, the speaker says that the woman he loves, who wants his lust to be restrained by reason, shame, and respect for her (line 7), is displeased by this resilience and boldness displayed by Love (line 8).
In the sestet, the speaker says that this attitude on the part of his beloved causes Love to flee into the forest of the heart (there is a pun here on the word "hart," meaning deer). Love abandons his pursuit, hiding in the forest in pain (line 11).
The speaker then asks what he can do when Love, who is his master, is afraid, except to live and die with him in the field, which suggests the field of battle (line 13). He concludes by saying that it is good to end life faithfully, suggesting that, if he cannot win the love of his beloved, he will not pursue any other woman.
What is the major theme in Sir Thomas Wyatt's poetry?
Love is a very powerful emotion that can bring great joy and fulfillment to people's lives. It can also, however, bring considerable grief, suffering, and emotional pain. It can drive people crazy and make them do all kinds of things that they ought not to do and otherwise wouldn't do.
The downside of love forms a running theme throughout the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt. As someone whose passionate love for Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, was never requited, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
In the supremely ungallant and ungracious "Ye Olde Mule," Wyatt paints a decidedly unflattering portrait of his would-be lover. He accuses her of powdering her grey hairs to make herself look more beautiful. It is likely, if not absolutely certain, that Wyatt is referring to Anne Boleyn here. But even if he isn't, there's no doubt that the poem is motivated by anger and churlishness at being rebuffed.
In "They Flee From Me," the speaker is a man who once loved many women yet now loves no one. This is because the speaker seems to have been hurt by an unfaithful woman who shamelessly took advantage of his good nature.
Elsewhere in his work, Wyatt writes of the joy that love can bring. But it is more common to see him deal with the emotional pain, the suffering, and the utter disillusionment that love in all its terrible power so often leaves in its wake.