'"Imitating very naturally and studiously their Maister Francis Petrarcha": the Englishing of the Canzoniere in the early Tudor period'

This discussion concentrates on the mechanisms employed by both Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey to have ‘their maister Francis Petrarcha’ firmly embedded for generations to come in the practice of the Tudor and Stuart ‘makers’. In 1589, the critic George Puttenham looked back to the earlier Henrician generation of poets and drew particular attention to the figures of these poets for their commitment to renew the legacy of Petrarchan poetics for early Tudor audiences. There had been some acquaintance amongst English writers with the European traditions of sonneteering since the time of Chaucer. However, both Wyatt and Surrey self-consciously introduced the erotic and poetic discourses of Petrarchan composition to the manuscript culture of the early Tudor elite. Two decades later, Tottel’s Miscellany (1557) would definitively set their lyrics in the public domain from the reign of Mary I onwards.