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Katherine Bayford's avatar

I enjoyed this greatly. I also particularly love his Whoso List… especially the slight suggestion that the doe is perhaps not as virginal as Plutarch’s according to what gems are missing from her neck. Is there a book on Wyatt or Tudor poetry that you would recommend?

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Jane's avatar

CS Lewis’ English Literature in the Sixteenth Century is a genuinely fun book to read imo

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Alan Horn's avatar

This is great, though I don’t read Gascoigne’s couplet as introducing a new thought. Isn’t it just a paraphrase of “Fortune favors the bold”?

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Jane's avatar

Yes, that’s the whole conceit. Formally it’s a v standard Elizabethan sonnet (at a time when the form was pretty new), something to which the framing device draws attention & implicitly lauds

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