SOURCE: "Wyatt, Petrarch, and the Uses of Mistranslation," in College Literature, Vol. XI, No. 3, 1984, pp. 214-22.

In the following essay, Glaser argues that Wyatt's choice of Petrarchan sonnets realistically reflects the moral beliefs of the late Renaissance period.

Every student of English literature knows one thing about Sir Thomas Wyatt—he introduced the sonnet into England. Informed of this service, most of us nod approval and move on—but it does not do to move on too quickly. Serious problems surround Wyatt's sonnets, especially in light of their Italian originals. It is hard not to wonder why it was the sonnet Wyatt chose to introduce and why he chose to deal mainly with the sonnets of Petrarch. The answer to such questions are not simple. The more one thinks about Wyatt's sonnets, the more they open the way to considerations of what translation meant to Wyatt and how...