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THE INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LOVE POEM WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO WYATT, SIDNEY, GREVILLE AND DONNE Michael Jeffrey Atherton M.A. (Hons.) 1977 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis represents entirely my own work and that it has never been submitted in part or whole to any other institution. Michael Jeffrey Atherton 18 May 1977. ABBREVIATIONS AUMLA Australian Universities Modern Language Association CR Critical Review DA Dissertation Abstracts EC Essays in Criticism ELH English Literary History EM Essays in Music ELR English Literary Renaissance HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology ML Music and Letters Modern Language Quarterly MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology PMLA Publication of the Modern Language Association PQ Philological Quarterly RES Review of English Studies SEL Studies in English Literature SP Studies in Philology SR Southern Review S Ren Studies in the Renaissance TLS Times Literary Supplement TSLL Texas Studies in Language and Literature CONTENTS 1. Summary 2. Introduction 3. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) 4. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) 5. Sir Fulke Greville (1554-1628) 6. John Donne (1572-1631) 7. Bibliography SUMMARY 2. This thesis suggests that the critical terms used to group sixteenth-century English love poets on the basis of style alone, have led to misleading and partisan conclusions. It argues that a more illuminating way of mapping sixteenth-century love poetry is to describe under the heading "intellectualization" the effect of the major poets' concern to make the love poem a more dramatic, personal and analytical genre. To demonstrate this, the following four major poets are chosen: Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42); Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86); Sir Fulke Greville (1554-1628) and John Donne (1572-1631). The love poetry of each is examined separately, taking into account previous criticism; and where-it is available, the poet's expressed attitude to the place and function of poetry is also considered. INTRODUCTION 4. Despite the continuing scholarly attention given to English Renaissance poetry, no-one, in my view, has presented an adequate account of the development of the sixteenth-century love poem. Studies of this genre are incomplete: they are either intentionally limited in scope, often omitting important poets; or they over­ estimate the significance of style as the basis for finding categories with which to group the poets. J.W. Lever1 has made an important contribution to our knowledge and appreciation of some of the best Renaissance love poetry, but his study is restricted . 2 to a particular genre, the sonnet. Maurice Evans, on the other hand, covers a greater variety of love poetry, but although extending his argument from Skelton to Donne, he omits any consideration of Fulke Greville. The need for inclusiveness, however, is not the main problem with accounts of the sixteenth-century love poem. Several critics have taken style to be the sole criterion for differentiating the poets. There is, I believe, a critical issue here. C .S • L ewis,. 3 f or 1. J.W. Lever,-The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (London, 1956) • 2. M. Evans, English Poetry in the Sixteenth Century ( London , 19 6 7 ) . 3. C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954). 5. example, divided sixteenth-century poets into two categories - the Golden and the Drab - with Sidney an exemplar of the former and Wyatt an exemplar of the latter. While his discussion of lyric styles is illuminating, the division Golden-Drab has proved to be too simple, since Wyatt and Sidney, like Shakespeare, Donne, Greville and Jonson, reveal a varied use of style and genre which cannot be accounted for by such terms. Yvor Winters4 also separated sixteenth-century poets into stylistic categories: the Native and the Petrarchan. He maintained that Petrarchan verse ought to be seen as a diversion from the unbroken Native English tradition. Winters presented this view in an argument that was intended to be polemical, to remap sixteenth-century verse by bringing neglected poets such as Gascoigne or Greville to the attention of readers of the Renaissance lyric. Unfortunately Winters' argument proceeded less by demonstration than.by assertion, and in my view contained a rather low estimate of Sidney's achievement. (Consider, in particular, his paraphrase and criticism of "Highway since you my chief Parnassus be" AS 84, pp.31-2). It appears that a rigid adherence to the Native-Petrarchan dichotomy has led him into a rather literal-minded approach to lyric poetry. Never- theless, Winters' essay was a timely reminder that certain 4. Y. Winters, Forms of Discovery, (Denver, 1967). 6. important poets had been overlooked, and its argument influenced, among others, D.L. Peterson5 whose book is the most comprehensive account of sixteenth-century love poetry to date. Peterson, however, substituted Plain and Eloquent for Native and Petrarchan and set out to demonstrate the existence of two distinct traditions of lyric poetry. While his contribution to the study of this medium is considerable, his alternative terms - Plain and Eloquent - still cannot account for the multiplicity of genres and styles found in the major poets of the century. Such categories are clearly misleading. My purpose is to illustrate the thesis that in the love poetry of the sixteenth century there is a tendency, habit or process of "intellectualizing". By the term "intellectualize" I do not necessarily imply a value judgement. Rather, I offer the word as a convenient way of referring to specific develop­ ments in the love poetry of the period, such as the need to transcend the neat formulae of the courtly compliment, and to question the inherited precepts of romantic love often through its most fashionable vehicle, the Petrarchan sonnet. The domestication of this and other continental models is evident in most English poets of the period and it is in part responsible for 5. D.L. Peterson, The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne (Princeton, 1967). 7. a certain amount of tension in their poetry in so far as Petrarchism became simultaneously a model for emulation and a source for parody. This resulted, indeed, in a noticeable clash of styles; but the domestication of Petrarchism is only one instance of the "intellectual­ izing" process. Equally significant were the sudden increase in discourses on the style, place and function of poetry in the light of classical precepts, and no less, what might be construed as an excited re- discovery of poetic structure, irony and the power of paradox. The preference for the sonnet, a more argumentative and challenging form than the lyric, may be symptomatic. More important, however, is that the lyric itself often became a personal and argumentative medium, where the poet was ready to speak in the first person, to vary stanza structure and rhythm to produce a poetry which strained the concept of lyric as a genre primarily for musical setting. To illustrate this thesis I will re-examine the love poetry of Wyatt, Sidney, Greville and Donne. I make no pretence at being inclusive and have selected these poets for the following reasons: first, to support my argument from the love poems of Wyatt and Sidney, poets usually separated by Lewis's and Winters' categories; secondly,to consider the lyrics of Fulke Greville, whose verse has been neglected and misunder­ stood until quite recently; thirdly1 to show that 8. Donne's love poems, even more dramatically than those of the other poets to be discussed, support this thesis. Further, I believe that a study of this process of "intellectualization" in the love poems of Wyatt, Sidney, Greville and Donne, rather than looking at stylistic categories, provides a more illuminating way of looking at the poets as a group. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) 10. Until the second quarter of our century the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt was usually overlooked. Recent scholarship, however, has changed this and led to a considerable rise in Wyatt's status as a poet, although critics differ sharply about what is his best poetry. Some cite the lyrics or sonnets, others prefer his satires or psalms. However, there are now two collected editions1 of Wyatt's verse and an illuminating critical biography2 to aid the reader's appreciation. My purpose in this chapter is to demonstrate how Wyatt "intellectualized" the love poem. This "intellectualization" is apparent in his imitations of foreign poetic models, his critical handling of the socio-literary conventions of courtly love and his tendency to use the lyric for introspection and rational argument. By observing his conscious pre- occupation with rhythm and the tension between the 1. K. Muir and P. Thomson {eds.), The Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt (Liverpool, 1969); J. Daalder, Sir Thomas Wyatt: Collected Poems (London, 1975). These two editions differ considerably on editorial policy. Daalder maintains in his preface that his edition is as accurate as possible at the present time and avoids the errors he finds in Muir and Thomson's Poems. Daalder's is a modernized spelling version and clearly separates the ascribed from the unascribed poems in the Wyatt canon. On the other hand, Muir and Thomson's notes to individual poems are invaluable. However, all quotations will be made from Daalder. (See his "Editing Wyatt", Essays in Criticism, XXIII (1973), 399-413.) 2. P. Thomson, Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Background (London, 1964). 11. content of his poems and their formal structure, we see, especially in the lyrics, the creation of a more dramatically poised verse medium. Wyatt's "intellectual" approach to love poetry leads to the transformation of a "trivial lyric tradition into something more vital 11 • 3 The critics have often sensed this but never emphasised it enough in their evaluation of Wyatt's achievements.

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