Analysis of Petrach's Poetry

Literary works have certain meanings displayed throughout their entirety. A single literary work however can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Petrarch whose poetry was about the idealistic approach to love, caused for several Renaissance writers to revisit them and translate them to represent different meanings. Basically, Sir Thomas Wyatt in his poem "The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbour" and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his poem "Love That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought," both explored the varying view of the original poem created by Petrarch. Their views on the aspect of love helped to be shaped by the Renaissance ideas, help to display the changing times as created by this period of rebirth and also help to reflect the views of each author on love. The poem "The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbour" by Wyatt essentially depicts one view on love while the poem "Love That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought" by Surrey, depicts an almost contrasting view. Although they both hold Petrarch's poem as the origin, they show the difference in the effects of the Neo-Platonism during the Renaissance. The notion that the need for love still existed, but the idea that perfect love could never exist was what basically what drove the entirety of their ideas, and what made them stream from the Petrarchan idea of idealistic love. Both authors while focusing on the idea that love can not be idealized show in their own depictions two different views of that love. They portray the means of keeping love or holding onto love with two different mind sets and basically help to back up the notion idealized love can not truly exist and can not be a product of only perfection. The poem by Wyatt refers to the heart as the means of a place in which the love ultimately hides because it is like a forest. Wyatt is pretty much debating whether he should side with love or lust in this case, and ultimately the idea prevails that most likely the speaker chooses to hide away that love and continue with lust. He does not seem to grab hold of the idea of keeping the love, but more so hiding away from the feeling because he was dominated by it in the past. Furthermore, the speaker seems to be stronger than the girl who has caused him all this pain by teaching him the idea of love. Contrastingly to this, Surrey's poem shows the speaker as being weaker in a sense than the girl and choosing to be dominated by love in the end rather than shrouding away from it to continue with the lust. Surrey's use of words such as prison, creates a sense of that this speaker is much more trapped in love rather than desiring to be in it primarily. The ending especially of the poem shows that the speaker is willing to let everything in his life go but love. The poem contrast greatly because of this idea that Wyatt's poem shows the speaker as being strong enough to stand up to love, while the speaker in Surrey's poem is subdued by it. However, despite their differences the poems are also quite similar in that they both portray the idea that love is a feeling which can not be escaped. Similarly to the notion that Petrarch at first attempted to capture of idealistic love, these two Renaissance authors, helped to show that the pursuit of love was completely necessary even at this time. The structure of the poems is the same being that they are both written in the petrarchan tradition of being a sonnet with one octave and one sestet. Both poems helped to illustrate the shift in the mindset of people to shroud away from the past view of love as an idealistic notion to a more realistic form in which love can hurt, and can cause people to be dominated by it. By both poems expressing love as almost humanlike they were able to capture the idea that love has humanistic qualities of being able to hurt others. Both Wyatt's and Surrey's poems although deriving from Petrarch's poem are different in overall meaning but similar in the beliefs that are lying under the surface. Both poems help to show the difference in the Renaissance ideas in comparison to other times and help to show the aspects of love within that period of time. Generally, a poem can be depicted in a variety of ways and these two authors were able to use their ideas of love in collaboration with the words of the poem in Latin to create a truly detailed view on the aspect of love. Basically, something can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and it those interpretations that truly give a view of society and of individuals ideas.