Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'the greatest poet of his age', Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542), who brought the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the English Tudor world, especially the sonnet, so preparing the way for Shakespeare and Donne. As an ambassador to Henry VIII and, allegedly, too close to Anne Boleyn, he experienced great privilege under intense scrutiny. Some of Wyatt's poems, such as They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek, are astonishingly fresh and conversational and yet he wrote them under the tightest constraints, when a syllable out of place could have condemned him to the Tower.
With
Brian Cummings 50th Anniversary Professor of English at the University of York
Susan Brigden Retired Fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford
And
Laura Ashe Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds.), Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Routledge, 2016)
Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest (Faber, 2012)
Nicola Shulman, Graven with Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy (Short Books, 2011)
Chris Stamatakis, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Patricia Thomson (ed.), Thomas Wyatt: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1995)
Greg Walker, Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Thomas Wyatt (ed. R. A. Rebholz), The Complete Poems (Penguin, 1978)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:07.4 | and this is one of more than a thousand episodes |
| 0:10.0 | you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this |
| 0:14.6 | edition you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:19.8 | Hello Thomas Wyatt, 1503 to 1542, who's been called the greatest poet of his age, and he brought |
| 0:26.4 | the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the English Tudor world, especially the sonnet. |
| 0:32.2 | He was an ambassador for Henry VIII when being close to the king |
| 0:35.6 | was the best protection and also the greatest danger especially as why it was |
| 0:40.4 | allegedly too close to Anne Berlin And some of this poems such as They |
| 0:45.6 | Flea from me that sometime did me seek are astonishingly fresh, conversational and |
| 0:50.9 | intimate 500 years after he wrote them. |
| 0:54.6 | We need to discuss Thomas White, ambassador and poet |
| 0:57.8 | are Brian Cummings, 50th anniversary professor of English |
| 1:01.0 | at the University of York, Susan Brigden, retired fellow at |
| 1:04.7 | Lincoln College University of Oxford and Laura Ash, Professor of English |
| 1:08.9 | at the University of Oxford Laura. What was Thomas Wdd's background and what was his roof to the Tudor court? |
| 1:16.0 | Well, Thomas's father, Henry Wyatt, was from Yorkshire originally and from quite humble beginnings, seems but he canally backed the right |
| 1:25.2 | horse during the Wars of the Roses in that he supported Henry Tudor and was imprisoned |
| 1:30.6 | by Richard III as a result apparently and Wyatt later wrote |
| 1:35.4 | and alerted to his son that he had been tortured under imprisonment and there was |
| 1:40.2 | also a family legend in fact that during this harsh imprisonment he'd been |
... |
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