Glaser, Joe. “Wyatt, Petrarch, and the Uses of Mistranslation.” College Literature, vol. 11, no. 3, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984, pp. 214–22, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111613. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
Glaser argues that Wyatt’s sonnets are problematic due to the mistranslations of the works that inspired his own poetry. The author claims that Wyatt’s poems are harsh and resentful interpretations of Petrarch’s collection of sonnets. Using works such as “Whoso List a Hunt” and “Was I never yet”, Glaser asserts that Wyatt, whose career and lifestyle existed in a precarious state, eliminated Petrarch's imagery-loaded and optimistic narration in favor of pessimistic perspectives and bitter themes. Many critics believe Wyatt’s choice to manipulate and darken these translations comes from the culture of Tudor England, which strongly valued power; this severely opposes Petrarch’s ideologies of love and romance. In addition, Glaser claims that Wyatt’s poetic structure contradicts his evident understanding of literature. Several of his sonnets possess both clunky rhymes and inconsistent meter. With this in mind, critics are unsure as to why Wyatt elected to translate Petrarch’s work in the first place. Glaser concludes that, if Wyatt truly disagreed with Petrarch’s content, he likely would have avoided interpreting the work altogether. However, scholars cannot be certain of any one motivation for Wyatt’s literary choices.
--Emily Tushar
