SOURCE: "The Speaker in Wyatt's Lyric Poetry," in The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. XLI, No. 1, November, 1977, pp. 1-18.

In the following essay, the speaker in Wyatt's poems is seen as a vehicle for his unique aesthetic sensibility.

The lyrics of Sir Thomas Wyatt have prompted comment about their role in the development of Tudor poetry ever since 1557. Richard Tottel's appreciation of the "depe witted" Wyatt extended more to Wyatt's demonstration that the English "tong is able … to do as praiseworthely as ye rest" than to his "weightinesse" of style.¹ As for poetry, Tottel preferred Surrey. By now, the obligatory comparison between Wyatt and Surrey has faded away, and Wyatt's reputation as a poet is considerably higher than Surrey's, for all the latter's "honouable stile"; but Wyatt's reputation still rests more on his place in the development of English lyric than on the distinctive quality of his poetry. Various...