This is fascinating, I had no idea of the connection between Petrarch ( who I read many years ago and promptly forgot) and the English sonnet. Lovely poems, but Tudor politics were brutal, weren't they?
I love Thomas Wyatt . He was lucky he didn’t get the hatchet when Thomas Cromwell and the King plotted the downfall of Ann Boleyn . Wyatt may have been the only one who actually did have a affair with her . Of the black listed ones . Thomas Smeaton etc
What amazes me is what "active" lives they all led. I'm just not that organised - the plotting and scheming alone would seriously cut into my eating and sleeping time. These chaps also ran a war in France. As for importing poetic forms, that's just not happening.
This is fascinating, I had no idea of the connection between Petrarch ( who I read many years ago and promptly forgot) and the English sonnet. Lovely poems, but Tudor politics were brutal, weren't they?
Oh yes. Mere cruelty will not do. Nothing if not robust those Tudors.
I love Thomas Wyatt . He was lucky he didn’t get the hatchet when Thomas Cromwell and the King plotted the downfall of Ann Boleyn . Wyatt may have been the only one who actually did have a affair with her . Of the black listed ones . Thomas Smeaton etc
What amazes me is what "active" lives they all led. I'm just not that organised - the plotting and scheming alone would seriously cut into my eating and sleeping time. These chaps also ran a war in France. As for importing poetic forms, that's just not happening.
Heart-wrenching poems, Peregrinus!