Editing Thomas Wyatt (poet) (section)

== Wyatt's poetry and influence ==
Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English language, to civilise it, to raise its powers to equal those of other European languages.{{sfn|Tillyard|1929}} His poetry may be considered as a part of the [[Petrarch#Petrarchism|Petrarchism]] movement within [[Renaissance literature]].<ref name="Minta">{{cite book |surname=Minta |given=Stephen |year=1980 |title=Petrarch and Petrarchism: the English and French Traditions |place=Manchester; New York |publisher=Manchester University Press; Barnes & Noble |isbn=0-719-00745-3}}</ref><ref name="Greene">{{cite encyclopedia |editor-surname=Greene |editor-given=Roland |editor-link=Roland Greene |display-editors=etal |entry=Petrarchism |entry-url= |title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics |edition=4th rev. |year=2012 |url={{Google books|id=uKiC6IeFR2UC|plainurl=y|page=|keywords=|text=}} |place=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-15491-6}}</ref> A significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by Italian poet [[Petrarch]]; he also wrote sonnets of his own. He took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes are significantly different. Petrarch's sonnets consist of an "[[Petrarchan sonnet|octave]]" rhyming ''abba abba'', followed by a "sestet" with various rhyme schemes. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is ''cddc ee''. Wyatt experimented in stanza forms including the [[rondeau (forme fixe)|rondeau]], [[epigrams]], [[terza rima]], [[ottava rima]] songs, and satires, as well as with monorime, triplets with refrains, quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrains with codas, and the French forms of douzaine and treizaine.{{sfn|Berdan|1931}} He introduced the ''poulter's measure'' form, rhyming couplets composed of a 12-syllable iambic line ([[Alexandrine]]) followed by a 14-syllable iambic line ([[Fourteener (poetry)|fourteener]]),{{sfn|Schmidt|1999|p=133}} and he is considered a master of the [[iambic tetrameter]].{{sfn|Rebholz|1978|p=45}}

Wyatt's poetry reflects classical and Italian models, but he also admired the work of [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], and his vocabulary reflects that of Chaucer; for example, he uses Chaucer's word ''newfangleness'', meaning fickleness, in ''[[They Flee from Me]]''. Many of his poems deal with the trials of romantic love and the devotion of the suitor to an unavailable or cruel mistress.{{sfn|Child|2000}} Other poems are scathing, satirical indictments of the hypocrisies and pandering required of courtiers who are ambitious to advance at the Tudor court.

Wyatt's poems are short but fairly numerous. His 96 love poems appeared posthumously (1557) in a compendium called ''[[Tottel's Miscellany]]''. Most noteworthy are 31 sonnets, the first in English. Ten of them were translations from Petrarch, while all were written in the Petrarchan form, apart from the couplet ending which Wyatt introduced. Serious and reflective in tone, the sonnets show some stiffness of construction and a metrical uncertainty indicative of the difficulty Wyatt found in the new form. Yet their conciseness represents a great advance on the prolixity and uncouthness of much earlier poetry. Wyatt was also responsible for the important introduction of the personal note into English poetry, for although he followed his models closely, he wrote of his own experiences. His epigrams, songs, and rondeaux are lighter than the sonnets, and they reveal the care and the elegance typical of the new romanticism. His satires are composed in the Italian terza rima, again showing the direction of the innovating tendencies.

=== Attribution ===
The [[Egerton Collection|Egerton Manuscript]]<ref>[[British Library]] Egerton MS 2711</ref> is an album containing Wyatt's personal selection of his poems and translations which preserves 123 texts, partly in his handwriting. Tottel's Miscellany (1557) is the Elizabethan anthology which created Wyatt's posthumous reputation; it ascribes 96 poems to him,{{sfn|Parker|1939|p=669–677}} 33 not in the Egerton Manuscript. These 156 poems can be ascribed to Wyatt with certainty on the basis of objective evidence. Another 129 poems have been ascribed to him purely on the basis of subjective editorial judgment. They are mostly derived from the Devonshire Manuscript Collection<ref>The Devonshire Manuscript Collection of Early Tudor poetry 1532–41, British Museum</ref> and the Blage manuscript.<ref>Blage MS, Trinity College, Dublin</ref> Rebholz comments in his preface to ''Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Complete Poems'', "The problem of determining which poems Wyatt wrote is as yet unsolved".{{sfn|Rebholz|1978|p=9}} However, a solution was already at hand and is now in place. Rebholz adopted the canon of 285 poems ascribed to Wyatt in his edition wholesale from the 1969 edition by Kenneth Muir and Patricia Thomson. This was the third edition of Wyatt issued by Muir (the first in 1949, the second in 1963), to each of which he added scores of poems derived principally from the several hundred anonymous poems included in the Devonshire Manuscript and then the newly discovered Blage Manuscript – poems ascribed to Wyatt on no other basis than Muir’s own judgment or whim. Already in the early 1970s Joost Daalder produced an edition (Oxford 1975) which attempts and partly succeeds in renovating the Wyatt canon to accord with documentary facts, and also in that year Richard Harrier published his magisterial philological study of the manuscript evidence, ''The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Poetry'' (Harvard University Press 1975). On the basis of a meticulous scientific study of the documentary evidence Harrier establishes a fact-based canon of Wyatt’s poems. Later studies by other scholars (Helen Baron, 1989 and 1994, and Jason Powell, 2009) confirm the outlines and tenor of Harrier’s analysis. On the basis of Harrier’s analysis, 101 of the 285 poems included in Rebholz’s edition are demonstrated to be not Wyatt’s work. Harrier's researches establish that another 33 poems from other sources (besides The Egerton Manuscript and Tottel's) can be ascribed to Wyatt on the basis of solid documentary evidence and plausible editorial judgment. A new edition of Wyatt’s poetry reflecting these established facts is needed.

=== Assessment ===
Critical opinions have varied widely regarding Wyatt's work.{{sfn|Thomson|1974}} Eighteenth-century critic [[Thomas Warton]] considered Wyatt "confessedly an inferior" to his contemporary [[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey|Henry Howard]], and felt that Wyatt's "genius was of the moral and didactic species" but deemed him "the first polished English satirist".{{sfn|Warton|1840|pp=41–51}} The 20th century saw an awakening in his popularity and a surge in critical attention. His poems were found praiseworthy by numerous poets, including [[Ezra Pound]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[John Berryman]], [[Yvor Winters]], [[Basil Bunting]], [[Louis Zukofsky]] and [[George Oppen]]. [[C. S. Lewis]] called him "the father of the Drab Age" (i.e. the unornate), from what he calls the "golden" age of the 16th century.{{sfn|Lewis|1954}} [[Patricia Thompson (writer)|Patricia Thomson]] describes Wyatt as "the Father of English Poetry".{{sfn|Thomson|1974}}