PETRARCHISM IN EARLY TUDOR ENGLAND

Abstract

For historians of English literature, Petrarchism in early Tudor England is associated with the court of Henry VIII, and is represented by those poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, which, owing their origin to a source in the Canzoniere of Petrarch, had introduced the sonnet form into English verse. It is well-known that Petrarchism in Italy had extended beyond the realms of literature into those of music, in which the sonnets are predominant; and the arts, where the Trionji hold pride of place. At the many small courts, such as that of Isabella d'Este at Mantua, where Petrarchism flourished, music had been specially composed for some of Petrarch's canzoni, and to this music original poems, written in the same style, were either sung by a group of voices, or were adapted to a solo voice with lute accompaniment. Manuscript copies and printed editions of the Trionji were extensively illustrated, the narrative and dramatic elements of these poems being particularly suited to pictorial representation, and their themes having affinities with those of other Triumph subjects. In course of time, the visual representation of the themes of Petrarch's Trionji had acquired such vitality, that they had escaped from the limits imposed on them by the small compass of even the largest book, and had been put to such varied uses as decorations for a part of the theatre at Mantua; or for the wooden panels of cassoni. In an entirely different medium, they had been adapted to the extensive scale required by tapestries used as mural decoration.