Evolution of Petrarchism in English 
Literature
Mariana Markova, Switłana Hajduk
Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University, Ivan Franko Street, 24, Drohobych, Lviv 
Region, Ukraine
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3161-5476
markmar29@gmail.com
University of Siedlce, Konarskiego Street, 2, Siedlce, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1012-6091
switlana.hajduk@uws.edu.pl
This article discusses the development of Petrarchism in English literature. Its 
aim is to analyze the emergence, development and main trends of the Petrarchan 
poetic movement in England. The research methodology is determined by a 
complex combination of biographical, historical-literary and comparative-
historical methods of literary analysis. It was established that the beginning of 
English Petrarchism can be seen in G. Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Cressida. Its first 
victorious steps date from the 1530s and are associated with the names of  
T. Wyatt and H. Howard. It has been noted that, at first glance, there appears to 
be an almost fifty-year break in tradition in English Petrarchism after the 1540s. 
However, this impression proves to be misleading, as in the 1590s the first English 
Petrarchan texts published in the so-called Tottel’s Miscellany were reprinted again 
and again. The 1590s saw the second riseof English Petrarchism, which was 
linked to the unprecedented spread of the sonnet genre in English poetry. At the 
same time, it has been pointed out that the last Petrarchan sonnet sequences of the 
Elizabethan era lacked any originality and suffered from all sorts of shortcomings 
of undisguised superficial imitation. It is concluded that Petrarchism can be 
considered the main path of English poetry in the sixteenth century.
Keywords: English poetry / sixteenth century / literary tradition / Petrarchism / sonnet / 
Tottel’s Miscellany
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Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 47.3 (2024)
Petrarchism is a movement in European Renaissance poetry based on 
imitating Petrarch’s lyrical texts, primarily his Canzoniere. The term 
“Petrarchism” as copying the artistic features of Petrarch’s works was 
first recorded in N. Franco’s dialogue Il Petrarchista, published in 1539 
in Venice. However, it is essential to emphasize that N. Franco was not 
its author—he only, so to speak, “legitimized” words and concepts that 
had been used by Italians many years prior because, as it is known, mass 
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imitations of Petrarch in the form of using individual images, motifs, 
or even entire phrases of his texts began during the poet’s lifetime. In 
the second half of the fifteenth century, the manner of his imitating 
crossed the Italian borders and expanded on the Iberian Peninsula and 
then to France; at the end of the Cinquecento and Seicento, it was 
transferred to England, as well as to German-speaking poets, and then 
to such countries as Poland, Hungary, Sweden, and others.
The subject of this paper is Petrarchism in English literature. Its pur-
pose is to analyze the emergence, development, and main trends of the 
Petrarchan poetic movement in England. The research methodology is 
determined by a complex combination of biographical, historical-liter-
ary, and comparative-historical methods of literary analysis.
Petrarchan discourse in English literature became a research sub-
ject at the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the first works 
devoted to this issue was P. Borghesi’s book Petrarch and His Influence 
on English Literature (1906). Among the later studies of the prob-
lem, the works of R.  Jack and A.  Mortimer are worth mentioning. 
R. Dasenbrock studied the reception of Petrarchism in the works of 
T. Wyatt and E. Spenser; G. Waller and R. Young—in the poems of 
Ph. Sidney; S. Ruffo-Fiore—in the poetry of J. Donne. The influence 
of Petrarch on the English sonnet writers of the late sixteenth century 
was disclosed by T. Roche. A separate array is the scientific research of 
English anti-Petrarchism, that is, various reactions to the mass imita-
tion of Petrarch’s texts in English literature done by scholars such as 
H. Dubrow, J. Mazzaro, P. Ribes, and others.
Petrarch was well-known in England during his lifetime. The 
author may have visited the country in 1335 or later while traveling 
through Northern France and the Netherlands. It is known that the 
first Englishman who knew Petrarch personally was R. de Bury. It is 
assumed that they met in cosmopolitan Avignon in Cardinal Colonna’s 
house sometime between 1331 and 1333. Petrarch mentioned this 
meeting in one of his letters. R. de Bury was a typical representative of 
medieval scholastic philosophy, one of the most educated Englishmen 
of his time. However, he was very distant from the art, and therefore, 
he could not appreciate the full extent of the Italian writer’s innovative 
lyrics and his personality in general.
In order to understand Petrarch, one had to be a poet himself—and 
such an English poet soon appeared. It was G. Chaucer. It is docu-
mented that he visited Italy in 1372. The Italian writer was still alive 
then, but it is not known whether the two poets met. The influence of 
Petrarch on G. Chaucer is quite significant, although it is worth noting 
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83
that it concerns more Latin texts than the Canzoniere. Additionally, 
one cannot fail to mention the Petrarchan allusions in the English 
poet’s famous Troilus and Cressida. They can primarily be seen in its 
first book, where Troilus sings a song, an English translation of the son-
net CXXXII from the Canzoniere. However, during the translation, the 
genre form of the original was violated—instead of 14 lines, the song of 
Troilus has 21 and consists of three seven-line stanzas; as a result, the 
work of Petrarch “dissolves” in the text of G. Chaucer, but does not 
lose its unique Petrarchan flavor.
Like the persona in the Canzoniere, Troilus is troubled by the con-
flicting feelings he has to go through. The Italian author conveyed this 
state with the help of the well-known metaphorical juxtaposition of ice 
and fire. He ends his well-known sonnet with the following words: “I 
do not know what I wish myself, / and tremble in midsummer, burn in 
winter” (Petrarch 219). G. Chaucer somewhat modified this line, but 
at the same time preserved the very Petrarchan concept of the ambiva-
lence of the love feeling, giving both joy and torment at the same time: 
“Through heat of cold, through cold of heat I die” (Chaucer 29). In the 
song of Troilus, the English poet adheres quite closely to the seman-
tics of the original, except in certain moments. Thus, the initial four 
lines of G. Chaucer’s text reflect the first quatrain of Petrarch’s sonnet. 
However, the English author adds three lines of his own, insightfully 
depicting Troilus’s passion in a sensual, suggestive image—as a spiri-
tual thirst that cannot be tired in any way. The second stanza is the least 
changed: G. Chaucer completely preserves the theme of Petrarch’s qua-
train. In the third one, he follows the Italian, developing the protago-
nist’s arguments given in the second quatrain of the sonnet CXXXII, 
and finally focuses on Petrarch’s original sea metaphor, combining it 
with a medical one. We want to emphasize the last one because this 
metaphor unites the English poet’s text—appearing already in the first 
line, it passes through the entire poem. It completes it, creating a kind 
of framing and preparing the ground and appropriate mood for further 
plot development. To conclude, Petrarch’s sonnet was incorporated 
by G. Chaucer into his Troilus and Cressida not just as an extra-plot 
decorative passage but as a full-fledged narrative element.
The third song of Troilus (Book V) is also a variation on Petrarch’s 
sonnet CLXXXIX, containing metaphors of a ship, a storm, and the 
guiding stars compared to the eyes of a beloved. However, as in the 
previous case, the English author abandoned the sonnet form, offering 
in seven lines of his text the very essence of Petrarchan poetic imagery:
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O star of which I have lost the light,
with sore heart I truly should bewail,
that, ever dark, in torment, night by night,
towards my death with following wind I sail:
so that if on the tenth night should fail
your bright beams’ guidance for even an hour,
my ship and me Charybdis will devour. (Chaucer 382)
Thus, the Petrarchan sonnet entered the receptive field of English lit-
erature through G. Chaucer’s adaptation in Troilus and Cressida.
G. Chaucer became the first English writer who paid close attention 
to the intensive development of Italian Renaissance culture and tried 
to use its achievements in his poems. However, we must admit that his 
popularization activities could have succeeded more in England. In the 
fourteenth century, the poet’s homeland was not ready to accept the 
refined style of Petrarch’s love poems.
In the fifteenth century, Italian (including Petrarchan) influences 
in Britain remained insignificant, but the literary exchange between 
the countries certainly took place. At that time, many Italians came 
to England for trade and brought manuscripts of Petrarch’s works. 
On the other hand, the Englishmen visited the homeland of the great 
poet, and although most of them could not understand the greatness of 
Humanism there, they certainly could not fail to notice new trends in 
culture and art. In general, it can be assumed that although the Italian 
author was not famous in England in the fifteenth century, educated 
Englishmen indeed were acquainted with his works.
Noticeable changes began in the sixteenth century when a kind 
of fashion for Italy emerged in England. Its first manifestations are 
observed at the royal court. Thanks to the translation and distribu-
tion of books on etiquette, the Tudor court was undergoing an Italian-
style transformation. B. Castiglione’s work The Courtier became vital 
in this context. Although it was translated into English by T. Goby 
and printed only in 1561, it is evident that its original text was cir-
culating in English court circles much earlier, in the first half of the 
century. Henry VIII was an ardent supporter of Italian culture. During 
his reign, English aristocrats traveled en masse to Italy, borrowing not 
only arts but also habits and style of life. They brought the Renaissance 
ideas to the aristocratic masses. However, these ideas did not imme-
diately find their way to artistic and literary practice—at first, only 
some English artists and poets showed a noticeable interest in the 
Italian Renaissance. So, despite the generally favorable cultural ground, 
Petrarchism adapted slowly in England. Its language and ideological 
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85
paradigm remained strange to writers and readers for a long time. Only 
in the first quarter of the sixteenth century did Petrarch’s manner take 
root more and more firmly in English literature. To a large extent, this 
was facilitated by the distribution of book printing and the publica-
tion of Italian writers’ texts. Therefore, Petrarchism gradually gained 
momentum in England. By the end of the 1580s, every more or less 
significant poet considered it a direct duty to write something in the 
style of Petrarch.
The first serious achievements of English Petrarchism date back 
to the 1530s and are associated with the names of T.  Wyatt and 
H. Howard, Earl of Surrey. T. Wyatt became the first English poet 
who fully understood the greatness of Petrarch himself and managed 
to convey it to his compatriots. It is still being determined when the 
writer composed most of his poems. It can be assumed that for some 
time, he did not intend to collect or systematize them, as in the six-
teenth century, it was not customary among the aristocratic authors 
of England to publish their literary attempts. T. Wyatt’s poetic texts 
were first published by the successful London bookseller R. Tottel in 
the so-called Tottel’s Miscellany (full title: Songes and Sonettes Written 
by the Right Honorable Lorde Henry Haward Late Earle of Surrey, and 
Other) on June 5, 1557, already after the poet’s death (see Arber). This 
edition, which is considered to be the first printed collection of new 
English poetry, consisted of 270 poems (271 in the second edition), 97 
of which belonged to T. Wyatt, 40 to H. Howard, 40 to N. Grimald, 
and the remaining 94 to less significant authors.
T.  Wyatt’s lyrics in Tottel’s Miscellany included several sonnets, 
rondos, ballads, and satires, as well as numerous epigrams and songs 
(incidentally, it is a reasonably conventional genre, where you can 
include almost everything that does not “fit” into the classical genre 
varieties). Petrarchan texts were adjacent to more original works. In 
this regard, D.  Rees notes that two elements can be clearly distin-
guished in T. Wyatt’s poetry—original and borrowed, national and 
continental—and to underestimate the importance of any of them 
means to simplify the writer’s achievements (Rees 15). Such a view on 
the poetic works of this author has long been traditional for critical 
literature because, indeed, a significant part of his love lyrics consists 
of translations from Petrarch and Italian Petrarchan poets, as well as 
various kinds of paraphrases and imitations. Moreover, in his original 
poems, T. Wyatt uses almost the entire arsenal of Petrarchan imag-
ery. His persona complains about the impossibility of conveying the 
depth and greatness of his love in words; he mentions hot streams 
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of tears, volcanoes of sighs, and spiritual sorrow that exhausts the 
body—all this seems to be copied verbatim from the Canzoniere. We 
also come across typical Petrarchan hyperboles and metaphors: the 
lover is associated with a boat caught in a storm and circling among 
the rocks without hope of rescue; the cloud of grief closes the stars, 
which symbolize the eyes of his beloved; the forests are filled with the 
sobs of the protagonist and the rivers stop because of his complaints; 
both the earth and the sky mourn with him—only the woman is deaf 
to his pleas. All this certainly gives reason to speak of T. Wyatt as a 
typical Petrarchist.
Suppose we consider T.  Wyatt’s poems in Tottel’s Miscellany a 
continuous lyrical text. In that case, it breaks down into a series of 
repeated situations: love comes to the protagonist, and he hopes it will 
be mutual, but the woman turns out to be indifferent to his pleas every 
time. This is followed by a painful breakup and the lover’s promise 
not to love anymore, but the story begins again after some time. In 
each of these cycles, the protagonist also tries to find an answer to the 
question of the source of his failures. He understands love as a loss of 
mind. The conflict between feelings and reason is a common motif 
in T.  Wyatt’s poems; his persona constantly vacillates between the 
defined poles. The lover sometimes affirms his loyalty to Cupid and 
sometimes refuses love, but such a refusal is never final. At first glance, 
his previous experience enriches every new feeling of the persona, and 
he constructs his relationship with a new woman in a new way. So, 
previously deceived, he no longer wants to be a gullible simpleton and, 
in one of his poems, promises to be faithful to the Mistress only if she 
is faithful herself:
But you, this diuersnesse that blamen most,
Change you no more, but still after one rate
Treat you me well: and kepe you in that state.
And while with me doth dwell this weried gost,
My word nor I shall not be variable,
But alwaies one, your owne both firme and stable. (Arber 37)
However, as we can see later, any change in his outlook or behavior 
is illusory.
Each woman’s refusal prompts the lover to reflect on the already 
passed part of his life. Directing his reflection on the mechanisms of 
love, he concludes that the reason for his love failures is the inability 
to express his feelings. Thus, the focus is transferred from the intimate 
plane to the aesthetic, philosophical one, raising the problem of the 
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expressive possibilities of language and the functions of poetry in gen-
eral. It is in this context that the image of the “unkind tongue” cre-
ated by T. Wyatt should be considered—the tongue is unkind because 
it is to blame that the protagonist cannot win the reciprocity of the 
Mistress: “Vnkind tongue, to yll hast thou me rendered” (38). In the 
end, he concludes that love is, in principle, inseparable from a break: 
“But all is turnde now … / Into a bitter fashion of forsakyng” (40).
This opinion is expressed in the well-known poem of T.  Wyatt 
“They Flee from Me”:
They flee from me, that somtime did me seke 
With naked fote stalkyng within my chamber.
Once haue I seen them gentle, tame, and meke,
That now are wild, and do not once remember
That sometyme they haue put them selues in danger,
To take bread at my hand, and now they range,
Busily sekyng in continuall change. (Arber 40)
The author juxtaposes two timelines in the text: the past when he was 
happy because women gave him much love, and the present, when 
he is unhappy because they ignore him. At the same time, T. Wyatt 
strengthens the erotic element—his love experience vividly turns into 
a sexual one:
When her loose gowne did from her shoulders fall,
And she me caught in her armes long and small,
And therwithall, so swetely did me kysse,
And softly sayd: deare hart, how like you this?
It was no dreame: for I lay broade awakyng. (40)
This contradicts the Petrarchan attitude to a woman’s inaccessibility. 
Moreover, the tradition of unconditional lover’s devotion is violated 
because if the protagonist promised to be faithful in exchange for faith-
fulness earlier, it is not even about one, but several women at once now.
The author knew that his poems often repeated what he had already 
said. However, his miserable conditions forced him to write equally 
sad songs, and he could only hope that fate would one day allow him 
to write a song of a different character: “And if I haue a chance … / To 
sing some pleasant song” (Arber 51). At the same time, the impossibil-
ity of avoiding repetition adds supplementary elements to the figura-
tive system of T. Wyatt’s love lyrics. First of all, the very image of the 
Mistress is transformed, acquiring features that are not typical for the 
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Petrarchan tradition. In general, T. Wyatt’s protagonist is character-
ized by admiration for his beloved, but we never see a description of 
her appearance in all his texts. The protagonist concentrates on his 
feelings, his relationship with a woman, and the principles of love, 
but not on its object. From the complex traits, T. Wyatt chooses and 
especially emphasizes only one—his woman’s cruelty. Moreover, the 
heroine acquires almost sadistic features as she enjoys the protagonist’s 
humility and suffering, literally feeding on them. That is why, at a 
particular stage of the relationship, a woman turns from an object of 
desire into an object of hatred. T. Wyatt’s persona likes to describe 
her physical suffering, and with his poetry, he seeks not to favor the 
beloved but to hurt her: “Passe forth my wonted cryes, / Those cruell 
eares to pearce, / Which in most hatefull wyse / Doe styll my plaintes 
reuerse” (56).
Therefore, there are significant differences in many points between 
Petrarch and T. Wyatt. First of all, T. Wyatt’s lover is not the same as 
Petrarch’s lover: he is well aware of his courtly duties to a woman, but 
at the same time, he wants to have certain rights. Secondly, T. Wyatt, 
in his love lyrics, explicates erotic motifs that were completely absent 
in Petrarch’s poems. Thirdly, in each new love cycle, T. Wyatt’s per-
sona strives to get close to a new woman, and each cycle ends with a 
rejection of love, which is simply impossible to imagine in the Italian 
humanist’s texts. Moreover, fourthly, the very image of the woman 
and the model of the relationship between her and the protagonist 
has little in common with the Petrarchan canon. In general, T. Wyatt 
interprets his love experience as a relationship with a sadistic Mistress 
to whom he is forced to submit, because of which, in the end, he 
begins to hate her and seek revenge. For these reasons, we can con-
clude that T. Wyatt was not just a translator and imitator of Petrarch, 
who adopted his poetic technique, the main themes and images of his 
poetry, his style, and the sophistication of the language, but also an 
original author.
T. Wyatt’s Petrarchan experiments were supported by H. Howard, 
Earl of Surrey. Tottel’s Miscellany included 40 of his lyrical works (41 
in the second edition). Many of these texts were translated from the 
Canzoniere. However, he had mainly imitated Petrarch’s works rather 
than translated them. One way or another, Petrarchan reminiscences 
and allusions in H. Howard’s poetry are pervasive.
In the very first H. Howard’s text in Tottel’s Miscellany, a circle of 
themes and motifs is outlined, which will constantly vary in all the 
author’s poems: the woman, to whom the persona’s passionate impulse 
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89
is directed is unattainable, the lover’s sufferings are becoming more 
robust, and there is no escape from them: “In time my harm increases 
more and more” (Arber 3). Earl of Surrey also refers to the established 
rhetoric of Petrarchism, introducing traditional images of the helms-
man, the ship, and the “ice fire” (“The frosen hart that mine in flame 
hath made”; 3) and its antithetical derivatives, such as the opposition 
“life–death” (“Strange kindes of death, in life that I doe try”; 3). The 
persona of H. Howard strives to change his predicament and tries to 
find a place where he can restore his inner balance: “And in my minde 
I measure pace by pace, / To seke the place where I my self had lost” 
(4). However, defeat awaits him everywhere, and he does not manage 
to achieve the desired peace: “But neuer yet the trauail of my thought 
/ Of better state coulde catche a cause to bost” (4). Unraveling the 
tangle of mental contradictions is considered possible either through 
the rejection of love, through reunification with the Mistress, or death. 
The outlined conflict remains unresolved in the analyzed text, so its 
understanding occurs further in the following two dozen poems. At the 
same time, the hopelessness of the situation in which the persona found 
himself is constantly emphasized due to the sharp contrast between 
the inviolability of his inner longing and the dynamics of the beautiful 
world surrounding him.
In the IV and subsequent poems of H. Howard’s chapter in Tottel’s 
Miscellany, the poet’s persona tries to penetrate the causes of suffering 
from love to find their source. The meditative character of the poems 
is strengthened—the protagonist seems to rise above his situation, 
trying to analyze it from the position of an observer, not a partici-
pant, and describe it from the side. At the language level, this is clearly 
expressed—the pronoun “he” appears in the text: “I know in heat and 
colde the louer how he shakes: / In singing how he doth complain, 
in slepyng how he wakes” (Arber 6). Reflections on the character of 
one’s feelings eventually lead the lover to escape the prison of love by 
any means. He curses love and challenges it (“I curssed loue”; 8), but 
the attempt to rebel turns out to be unsuccessful because it violates the 
eternal laws of Cupid. Therefore, the persona must apologize (“Thou 
blinded god … forgeue me this offense”; 8), and this increases his tor-
ment (“My harms haue euer since increased more and more”; 8). Due 
to the inability to free himself from the power of love, the protagonist 
is forced to return to love poetry, so he continues to develop typical 
Petrarchan themes: he describes a deep wound in his chest (VII), sings 
of the beautiful Mistress and bitterly regrets the impossibility of reunit-
ing with her (VIII), reflects on the impermanence of earthly beauty (X), 
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again paints a picture of the permanence of his depressed state against 
the background of an idyllic evening landscape (X), etc. At the for-
mal level, such a return is marked by transitioning from national verse 
forms—rhyming couplets of 12 and 14 syllables—to the sonnet form 
traditional for continental Petrarchism.
The lyrical plot of H.  Howard’s sonnet “When Windsor Walles 
Susteyned My Wearied Arme” develops against the background of 
the picturesque spring nature. However, this landscape plays a func-
tion that is uncharacteristic of Petrarchism. While looking through the 
prison window at the beauty of the meadows and forests, H. Howard’s 
persona nostalgically plunges into memories of his childhood spent 
in Windsor. However, they are so depressing that he desires to throw 
himself off the tower. In this poem, the protagonist, for the first time, 
considers suicide as the only way to solve his internal problems. In 
the future, this motif will repeatedly appear in H. Howard’s poetry. 
Suicidal aspirations found expression not only in this motif but also in 
the fact that in the later H. Howard’s texts, the image of the Petrarchan 
lover occurs less and less: the author increasingly avoids the first-person 
pronoun—his persona no longer talks about his love relationship, but 
about the relationship of a woman and her friend, and in some texts, 
the persona is even the woman herself.
The culminating in the sense of experiments with the image of a 
protagonist is a poem, where, on behalf of the shepherd, Earl of Surrey 
tells us about the death of the poet—that is, the Petrarchan subject 
turns here into the object of a narrative. As R. Kuin writes, traditional 
“Petrarchan texts insisted on the obligatory identity of the lover and 
the poet” (Kuin 3). However, in this H. Howard’s poem, the story’s 
subject is neither a lover nor a poet, which allows the author to focus 
impartially on the characteristics of the object of such an analysis—the 
Petrarchan poet in love. The reason for his death is the impossibility of 
mastering his beloved, who refuses to take seriously not only the pro-
tagonist himself but also his poems. The lover chooses death voluntarily 
and thereby solves a complex set of problems formed by the desire to 
master the Mistress, the need to create love poetry, and death.
The death of the persona, however, does not mean that the poet 
ceases to generate Petrarchan text. In the following poems, a new per-
sona appears, which allows H. Howard to understand the Petrarchan 
problems from other positions. Its main characteristic is an extremely 
high degree of reflectivity. So, for example, in the poem “Geue Place Ye 
Louers, Here Before”, the poet uses the traditional method of describ-
ing the extraordinary beauty of the Mistress, which no other woman 
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can match: “My Ladies beawtie passeth more / The best of yours” (Arber 
20). However, in the text itself, there is no indication that the story’s 
subject is H. Howard’s persona. This fact can only be interpreted as a 
detached use of one of the conventions of Petrarchism. At the same 
time, the reflective, poetic consciousness of the new persona does not 
allow H. Howard to abandon the literary tradition, due to which the 
author occasionally creates absolutely ordinary Petrarchan poems, for 
example, “As Oft As I Behold and Se.”
Thus, H. Howard’s Petrarchan text goes through several stages of 
development. Initially, his persona is in acute conflict between the 
desire to master the woman and the impossibility of realizing it. An 
alternative opens before him: to conquer the beloved with the help of 
love poetry or die. The first phase of the story demonstrates the inabil-
ity to achieve the lover’s goal by the means chosen for this, as well as the 
immutability of his inner state. At the same stage, he attempts to rebel 
against the fatal dependence on the Mistress, but love wins. It turns 
out to be possible to change the situation only through suicide, which 
is the main theme of the second stage of H. Howard’s Petrarchan dis-
course. The symbolic death of his persona gives him freedom and, in 
turn, brings to life a new protagonist who interprets love problems 
from a detached position. In the reflective spirit, the third part of the 
Petrarchan story of the English poet is sustained.
After the 1540s, according to some researchers, for example, R. Jack 
or G. Parks, Petrarchism in English literature underwent a complete 
“rupture” of the tradition, restored only in the 1590s. In our opin-
ion, such a statement is not entirely correct since, during the outlined 
period, Tottel’s Miscellany did not lose its popularity. That is evidenced 
by a compelling fact—the book was reprinted 11 times (twice in 1557, 
once between 1557 and 1559, twice in 1559, twice in 1565, and also in 
1567, 1574, 1585, and 1587). Although not all the authors whose texts 
were included in it were Petrarchists, such as N. Grimald, it is evident 
that the tremendous success of the edition was due to the Petrarchan 
poems. As a result, between the 1540s and the 1580s, the main form of 
English lyrics was Petrarchan.
The Tottel’s Miscellany reprints gradually introduced English 
Petrarchism into the Elizabethan age. At this time (the 1590s), there 
was a period of the second surge of the Petrarchan poetical move-
ment, when English writers were focused not only on Petrarch and his 
Canzoniere but also on the French followers of the great Italian poet. 
Generally speaking, European Petrarchism, if we do not consider its 
Italian version, has undergone nearly the most intense development 
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92
precisely on French national grounds. The scale of the Petrarchan 
impulses here is well described by S. Lee: “There is probably no sonnet 
of Petrarch, and few of the popular sonnets of his Italian followers, 
which were not more or less exactly and more or less independently 
reproduced a dozen times or more in French verse during the later 
years of the sixteenth century” (Lee xxv–xxvi). The significant distri-
bution of lyrical texts by French authors in England became one of 
the determining factors of the so-called “sonnet boom” in the end of 
the sixteenth century. The revolution in French poetry carried out by 
the poets of La Pléiade resonated with English literature, setting new 
standards. In the context of these influences, numerous love sonnet 
sequences concentrated around the image of one woman appeared in 
England: Delia (1592) by S. Daniel, Diana (1592) by H. Constable, 
Phyllis (1593) by T.  Lodge, Ideas Mirrour (1594) by M.  Drayton, 
Cynthia (1595) by R.  Barnfield, Fidessa (1596) by B.  Griffin and 
many others, including anonymous ones, for example, Zephyria 
(1594). In these collections, the sonnet produced by generations of 
poets over two centuries, revived in France by P. de Ronsard and his 
comrades from La Pléiade and known in England since the time of 
T. Wyatt, underwent a vast “growth” of concepts, images, and tradi-
tional phraseology.
Elizabethan sonnets often bear explicit autobiographical traces, 
naturally expanding their themes and issues. However, their form and 
style always remain unchanged, and the concept of the relationship 
between the protagonist and his Mistress never goes beyond the tradi-
tional Petrarchan model: each Lady, in this sense, reminds us of Laura 
and each lover of Petrarch’s persona. The woman always appears cold, 
cruel, heartless, and indifferent to her lover but extremely beautiful 
and virtuous, and the protagonist is timid, meager, and depressed but 
very faithful and loyal. During the last decade of the sixteenth century, 
more sonnets appeared in English literature than in any other period. 
In general, the unprecedented rise of this genre in the Elizabethan era 
is relatively easy to explain. Since the sonnet at that time was, perhaps, 
the most convenient form for personal feelings and emotions, nothing 
is surprising in the fact that in the age, the defining psychological char-
acteristic of which can be called individualism, it served as the primary 
tool for authorial expression. However, such an intensive distribution 
of the sonnet in the English literature of that time was also marked by 
some negative moments. As one repeated in the works of dozens of 
well-known and hundreds of little-known authors, the genre gradually 
began to die out. Elizabethan sonnets too often appeared deprived of 
Mariana Markova, Switłana Hajduk:     Evolution of Petrarchism in English Literature
93
poetic invention, artificial and cold. In these texts, Petrarch was no 
longer translated or imitated but acted as a zeitgeist, a general emotional 
mood. In more detail, let us dwell on the most significant Petrarchists’ 
works during the Elizabethan era.
Ph. Sidney did not consider himself to be a Petrarchist, although 
he wrote poetry so Petrarchan in its manner that his contemporaries 
called him “English Petrarch.” Ph. Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil 
and Stella was the first complete Petrarchan collection in English lit-
erature. Moreover, although the author died in 1586, his works are 
traditionally analyzed in the context of the 1590s since two of his 
main books were published posthumously: Astrophil and Stella in 
1591 and 1598, and The Defence of Poesy (under two different names, 
The Defence of Poesy and An Apology for Poetry) in 1595. According 
to P. Herman, both works established a watershed in the history of 
English Renaissance literature since The Defence of Poesy had acquired 
classic status. At the same time, Astrophil and Stella was credited with 
setting the trend for writing sonnets and sonnet sequences that per-
sisted through the 1590s (Herman 33). The scientist proposes to ana-
lyze these texts by comparing them and, more specifically, to study 
the collection of sonnets in the light of the thoughts about poetry 
expressed by the author in his Defence.
Thus, in The Defence of Poesy, Ph.  Sidney claims that the key to 
creating good poetry is the ability to hide literary fiction, the dexter-
ity of the author. The overarching theme of his treatise is convincing 
the reader of the writer’s feelings of sincerity. The poet reflects that he 
would never believe in most English literature texts under the slogans 
of unrequited love if he were a woman. He mentions Petrarch, empha-
sizing that love in the works of his imitators feels rather bookish, not 
alive, and even the most ardent words turn into ice in their poetry. As 
we can see, Ph. Sidney is ironic about the basic Petrarchan trope and 
his creative method. In sonnet XV of Astrophil and Stella, this thought 
is repeated and continued in the poetic form:
You that do search for everie purhng spring
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flowes,
And everie floure, not sweet perhaps, which growes
Neare thereabouts, into your poesie wring;
Ye that do dictionarie’s methode bring
Into your rimes, running in ratling rowes; 
You that poore Petrarch’s long-deceased woes
With new-borne sighes and denisen’d wit do sing;
You take wrong waies; those far-fet helpes be such
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94
As do bewray a want of inward tuch.
And sure, at length stolne goods do come to light:
But if, both for your love and skill, your name
You seeke to nurse at fullest breasts of Fame,
Stella behold, and then begin to endite. (Sidney 15)
The author emphasizes that if a poet listens not to his heart but to an-
other poet, his lines will certainly sound false. The irony, however, is 
that the writer puts his reflections on the problems of love poetry into 
the sonnet form popularized by Petrarch. Besides, his poem is part of a 
sonnet sequence, the idea of which also belonged to the Italian human-
ist. Therefore, Ph. Sidney’s anti-Petrarchan statements remain in the 
force field of Petrarchism itself.
The first sonnet of Astrophil and Stella outlines the lyrical plot’s 
movement and the circle of central themes. The first is poetry itself (the 
sonnet I is often called “a sonnet about a sonnet”). Then, in the son-
net II, we can read about the birth of Astrophil’s love. The hero does 
not fall in love with Stella immediately—the feeling of love gradually 
matures in his soul, along with hopes for reciprocity. However, like 
any Petrarchan lover, Astrophil must soon admit that a woman’s heart 
is unassailable (XII). He thinks a lot about love, its mysterious nature, 
laws (XIV), and ways to express feelings, including through poetry. His 
moods are changeable: sometimes despair at his worthlessness (XVIII), 
then regret of the mistakes he made (XXI), then resentment at the indif-
ference of Stella (XLV), who, despite her love charms, remains quite 
an earthly woman (LI). From the sonnet LXII, it becomes clear that 
the heroine accepted the love of Astrophil but was able to offer him 
only a high platonic feeling in return, so the man, whose consciousness 
is already wholly freed from the medieval ascetic restrictions, bitterly 
refuses Stella’s pious love. The first part of the cycle ends with song 
I, which sings of love and the beloved. The second part begins with 
the sonnet LXIV, raising the same problem of the incompatibility of 
a woman’s Platonic feelings with the man’s earthly needs and desires. 
Astrophil feels pain and disappointment, and only a chaste kiss from 
Stella restores joy and hope to his world. In song VIII there is a cru-
cial conversation between Astrophil and Stella. Here, for the first time, 
we hear the heroine’s voice directly through the dialogue—the woman 
categorically refuses to give in to her moral principles and to sacri-
fice her precious honor: “Tyran honour doth thus use thee, / Stella’s 
selfe might not refuse thee” (Sidney 115). Therefore, song IX becomes 
the culmination of Astrophil’s suffering. The following texts describe 
Astrophil’s feelings when he is separated from Stella—the hero does not 
Mariana Markova, Switłana Hajduk:     Evolution of Petrarchism in English Literature
95
betray his love but constantly thinks about death. The news about the 
woman’s illness forces him to mobilize his inner strength and return to 
life. Astrophil once again glorifies the beauty and charm of his beloved, 
briefly confirming his boundless loyalty and devotion to her (CIII).
Considering his originality and poetic talent, it is impossible to 
call Philip Sidney only an imitator of Petrarch. First of all, the scale 
of the author’s efforts to form new English poetry should be noted. 
Experimenting with different poetic dimensions, the poet became the 
first writer to prove the functionality of the chorea for the English 
verse. He was also the first to return the feminine rhyme to English 
lyrics, significantly diversifying its sound. The poet defended natural, 
straightforward language and avoided unusual words, phrases, archa-
isms, or neologisms in his texts. Nevertheless, the vocabulary of his 
sonnets is highly diverse since Ph. Sidney boldly introduced military, 
legal, political, sports terms, and colloquial words into circulation; that 
is, he started the language practice that was later successfully continued 
by J. Donne and the poets of the “Metaphysical school.”
A famous contemporary of Ph.  Sidney was Edmund  Spenser. 
Turning to the problem of E. Spenser’s Petrarchism, it is worth analyz-
ing his Amoretti. In this sequence, the poet continues the development 
of the Petrarchan poetic movement in English literature. However, his 
works differ significantly from the main product of the Petrarchan tra-
dition in at least one aspect. As H. Maclean and A. Lake Prescott point 
out, Amoretti’s most distinctive feature is the redirection of desire from 
the unattainable Donna to the woman the poet can marry (Maclean 
and Lake Prescott 638).
It is well known that E. Spenser wrote his poetry for Elizabeth Boyle, 
the woman who became his second wife. This fact fundamentally dis-
tinguishes him from Petrarch, as well as from T. Wyatt, H. Howard, 
and Ph. Sidney. E. Boyle, despite the status of the poet’s bride in real 
life, in the world of Amoretti acts as a typical Petrarchan Mistress. 
She is proud and arrogant (V, VI, XXXVI, XLI, XLIX), stingy with 
manifestations of warm emotions (XIX), impregnable (XXVIII), and 
cruel (XX, XXXI, XLVIII). She is compared to beasts of prey (LVI, 
LIII), sometimes with a tyrant (LV), then with an executioner who 
mercilessly leads his victim to the stake (LVII). However, E. Spenser’s 
persona sees the purpose of his life in only one thing—to serve this 
woman as conveniently and faithfully as possible (LXXII), to make 
her immortal through the ages (LXIX, LXXV, LXXXII) because she is 
the most perfect creation of God, the earthly image of heavenly beauty 
(IX, LXI, LXXIX).
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96
The purpose of Amoretti is declared in the sonnet I: “Leaues, lines, 
and rymes, seeke her to please alone, / whom if ye please, I care for 
other none” (Spenser 69). All the attempts of E. Spenser’s protagonist 
to make his Mistress fall in love with him, of course, are fruitless, and 
it even seems that her icy heart, as if mocking all the laws of nature, 
becomes even colder from the ardent fiery passion of her lover (XXX). 
In order to please the capricious Mistress, the protagonist tries on vari-
ous masks and performs various roles; that is, he tries out all possible 
ways of behavior, but all in vain because the woman is like a stone:
Yet she beholding me with constant eye
delights not in my merth nor rues my smart:
but when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry
she laughes, and hardens euermore her hart.
What then can moue her? if nor merth, nor mone,
she is no woman, but a sencelesse stone. (90)
When the Mistress is not around, the persona of E. Spenser’s sonnets 
sheds rivers of tears (LXXXVIII), his heart is eager to fly out of his 
chest like a bird and go to the beloved (LXXIII), and separation from 
her is equated to death (LXXXVIII). Unable to be near, the lover sends 
touching letters and envies even the pages of paper that will be looked 
at by starry eyes and touched by sweet fingers (I).
In general, Amoretti covers almost the entire catalog of Petrarchan 
images, motifs, ideas, and antitheses. Here we have the thematic jux-
taposition of pain and pleasure (XXX), despair and hope (XXVI), pas-
sion and platonic love (XXI), smiles and gloom (XL), ice and flame 
(XXX, XXXII), the dying situation of the protagonist (VII, XI, XXV, 
XXVI), images of siege, war, captivity and slavery (XI, XII, XIV, XLII, 
LVII), the stereotypical beauty of the woman (XV, LXIV, LXXXI) and 
her likeness to the sun (LXXXIX), her alienated and haughty behavior 
(VIII, LXI, LVIII, LIX), the rebellion of the author’s persona against 
the power of his Mistress and capitulation (XLIII), his attacks against 
competitors (LXXXVI), the motifs of the ennobling power of love (III, 
LXXX, LXXXV), the endlessly long separation of lovers (LXXVIII, 
LXXXVI, LXXXVII, LXXXVIII), the traditional laments of the lover 
and even curses (X, LVIII, LIX). At the same time, no matter how 
pitiful the protagonist’s complaints about love and his misfortune are, 
through the tearful Petrarchan formulas in Amoretti we can see hope-
ful moods—Petrarchan poetic manner is unable to hide the author’s 
happy state of love.
Mariana Markova, Switłana Hajduk:     Evolution of Petrarchism in English Literature
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It is also worth noting that even the greatest poet of the Elizabethan 
era William  Shakespeare could not avoid the influence of Petrarch 
because, at that time, it was simply impossible to create sonnets and 
not owe at least something to the Italian author.
Having reached its peak during the reign of Henry VIII at the end 
of the sixteenth century, the trend for Italian culture and literature in 
England slowly began to fade. In the Elizabethan era, Petrarch was still 
read and imitated. However, the first attacks against Petrarchism also 
appeared, and in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Petrarchan 
tendencies in English literature had almost become invisible. Petrarchism 
loses its freshness and attractiveness for readers, becomes dark and pedan-
tic, and cannot continue to exist in this form. The last English poet who 
still owed something to Petrarch (although not to his love lyrics, but 
primarily to his prose) was John Milton. His figure stands at the very end 
of the period of significant Italian influences on English literature and 
marks the beginning of a new era of national fiction.
Considering all that has been written, the following conclusion can 
be formulated. The beginning of English Petrarchism can be seen in the 
texts of G. Chaucer. However, the poet’s adaptation of Petrarch’s son-
nets in the poem Troilus and Cressida proved too weak as an impulse for 
the Petrarchan discourse to spread further in England. Its first victori-
ous steps date to the 1530s and are associated primarily with the names 
of T. Wyatt and H. Howard, Earl of Surrey, who brought the Italian 
poetic tradition to English literature. Initially, English Petrarchism took 
shape as a reading of the translated Petrarch. Nevertheless, it is essen-
tial to emphasize that the very first translations of Petrarch’s poems 
in England were not precise. They preserved the traditional poetics of 
Petrarchism; its tropes and stylistic figures were translated as closely as 
possible. The images of the protagonist and his beloved were incorpo-
rated into the English literary ground. However, even at the most stable 
level of the Petrarchan artistic system—language—T. Wyatt and Earl 
of Surrey demonstrated a creative approach to the Petrarchan narrative.
At first glance, after the 1540s, there appears to be an almost fifty-
year break in tradition in English Petrarchism since, at this time, it 
is not replenished by any famous name. However, this impression is 
misleading since by the 1590s, the first English Petrarchists’ texts pub-
lished in Tottel’s Miscellany have been repeatedly reprinted and still 
retained their popularity among the reading public.
In the 1590s, the second rise of English Petrarchism took place, 
connected with the unprecedented distribution of the sonnet genre in 
English poetry, which, as it is known, was not Petrarch’s invention but 
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98
was perceived by European poets inseparably on behalf of the great 
Italian humanist. After the pirated edition of Ph.  Sidney’s Astrophil 
and Stella (1591), about two dozen sonnet sequences (more than 3,000 
poems) appeared in England, which varied the themes and rheto-
ric of Petrarchan discourse in different ways. At the same time, it is 
worth noting that the English Petrarchists of the 1590s were no longer 
focused only on Petrarch’s Canzoniere but also on numerous indirect 
sources, primarily the works of various French Petrarchists. As stated in 
the poetry anthology Petrarch’s Canzoniere in the English Renaissance:
When Sidney and his successors revised the love-sonnet they did not have to 
start where Wyatt and Surrey had left off. In the intervening period Petrar-
chism had become established as a dominant European mode which could 
be absorbed by any cultured English poet. There was no need to look back to 
Wyatt or pore over the Canzoniere itself. … In this situation, with Petrarchism 
a pervasive element in the literary atmosphere, there was no need for any 
major poet to keep running back to the founding father. (Mortimer 19)
E. Curtius called the literary situation in England in the 1590s the “son-
net plague” (Curtius 225). Its main conclusion and, we must admit, a 
very disappointing result was that the sonnet genre in English literature 
had been gradually “emasculated.” The last Petrarchan sonnet sequences 
of the Elizabethan era were utterly deprived of originality and suffered 
from all possible shortcomings of undisguised superficial imitation.
A separate field of research opens the issue of Petrarchan impulses in 
W. Shakespeare’s sonnets, which were created between 1592 and 1594 
and, therefore, also fit into the general context of the Elizabethan “son-
net boom.” Because of its complexity, scale, and scientific significance, 
this problem should become the subject of separate literary explorations.
WORKS CITED
Arber, Edward, editor. Tottel’s Miscellany: Songes and Sonettes by Henry Howard, Earl 
of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Elder, Nicholas Grimald, and Uncertain Authors. 
London, Queen Square Bloomsbury, 1870. Internet Archive, https://ia800200.
us.archive.org/32/items/tottelsmiscellan00tottuoft/tottelsmiscellan00tottuoft.
pdf. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus & Cressida. E-book ed., Poetry in Translation, 2001.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated by 
Willard R. Trask, Pantheon Books, 1953.
Herman, Peter C., editor. Sir Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry and Astrophil and 
Stella: Texts and Contexts. Glen Allen, College Publishing, 2001.
Kuin, Roger. “Feint/Frenzy: Madness and the Elizabethan Love-Sonnet.” Criticism, 
vol. 31, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1–20.
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Lee, Sidney, editor. An English Garner: Elizabethan Sonnets. New York, Cooper Square 
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Norton, 1993.
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Razvoj petrarkizma v angleški književnosti
Ključne besede: angleška poezija / 16. stoletje / literarni vplivi / petrarkizem /  sonet / 
Tottel’s Miscellany
Članek obravnava razvoj petrarkizma v angleški književnosti, namen pa je ana-
lizirati nastanek, razvoj in glavne usmeritve petrarkističnega pesniškega gibanja 
v Angliji. Metodologijo raziskovanja določa kompleksen preplet biografske, 
literarnozgodovinske in primerjalnozgodovinske metode literarne analize. Za 
začetek angleškega petrarkizma velja pesnitev G. Chaucerja Troilus in Kresida, 
prvi preboj tega gibanja pa sega v trideseta leta 15. stoletja in je povezan z ime-
noma T. Wyatt in H. Howard. Vtis, da naj bi prišlo po letu 1540 v angleškem 
petrarkizmu do skoraj petdesetletne prekinitve tradicije, se je izkazal za napač-
nega, saj so bila prva besedila angleških petrarkistov, objavljena v antologiji 
Tottel’s Miscellany, do devetdesetih let 15. stoletja večkrat ponatisnjena. Takrat 
je prišlo v skladu z dejstvom, da se je v angleški poeziji sonetni žanr bliskovito 
razširil, do drugega vzpona angleškega petrarkizma. Medtem ko lahko izposta-
vimo precejšnjo neizvirnost in izrazito pomanjkljivost zadnjih petrarkističnih 
sonetov elizabetinske dobe, ki so očitne površinske imitacije, moramo šteti 
petrarkizem za glavno usmeritev angleške lirike 16. stoletja.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.111.09-1"15"
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v47.i3.05