Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Edmund Spenser: "Amoretti"

Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet to english poetry. His poems are perfect models of what makes a sonnet a sonnet. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with complex rhyming. His work focused on the wanting of a woman in a misogynist way. While his poems all feel a bit cynical, we would no have the typical sonnets we know of without his work to start it all.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey writes "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought". This poem is about a man who loves a woman so much he begins to blush. When she sees this blushing she begins to get angry at him which makes him hide the love instead. This poem is about the battles love brings in the debate to hide it or display it. He writes that even though he will hide his love for her, it will never go away in his heart. This is a typical sonnet where a woman is unavailable in some way and the protagonist can not do anything about it but instead is stuck with his feelings alone.

These kinds of poems always remind me of all the sappy modern romance movies where the boy wants to pretty girl but can't have her.

The Amoretti sonnets, by Edmund Spenser, were very for its time. They broke major traditions for poetry. Sonnets typically were typically about the desire a man has for a woman that is not available because she is either married or dead. In Amoretti, the woman the man desires is completely available and in the end they even get married. The poem also has a happy ending where both the man and the woman find peace in marriage.