The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

his time and the king’s brother. When the judge died, the people of the city expressed their gratitude by burying him with a cro ...

SONNET. This form utilized either six or eight hendeca- syllable lines (11 syllable lines of alternating stress), with a standar ...

“SUMER IS ICUMEN IN” ANONYMOUS (ca. 1250) A traditional English rota (round), this secu- lar lyric is sometimes considered the e ...

not a peer of the realm like his father, Surrey was quickly tried in common court with no objective evi- dence and no cross-exam ...

C D 430 “TAGUS, FAREWELL” (“OF HIS RETURNE FROM SPAIN”) SIR THOMAS WYATT (1539) SIR THOMAS WYATT probably wrote this poem in 153 ...

tail-rhyme STANZA. The initial rhyming lines are usually a COUPLET or tercet. This form is also called caudate rhyme and is clos ...

advice, departs for the forest to rejoin his outlaw band. Part 6 opens with Gamelyn’s return to the forest, where he resumes his ...

court, and he fi gures prominently in the modern sci- ence fi ction and fantasy genre as well. See also POETS OF THE PRINCES; “U ...

WYATT’s poetry, the date of composition of this poem is uncertain since none of Wyatt’s poetry was pub- lished during his lifeti ...

Often called Wyatt’s most original poem, “They Flee from Me” constructs a sexually aggressive woman and a nervous, hesitant male ...

compilation Melisata, the contents of “The Three Ravens” suggest composition long before that. It fol- lows the standard BALLAD ...

just after Constable converted to Roman Catholicism in 1590 or 1591. The poem beginning with a direct address to the “Sweete Say ...

to him. Herbert writes, “There lives no wit that may thy praise become” (l. 49), claiming that she is not fi t to extol Sidney’s ...

FURTHER READING The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pem- broke, Vol. 1, edited by Michael G. Brennan, Marger ...

luxurious royal suite was added. In the Tudor era, political and social trends contributed to the decline of the Tower as a roya ...

forum to express personal and original ideas. This practice, of course, was not unique to women. Transla- tors of both sexes rec ...

of irony attending the “chaungynge of Criseyde”: the exchange is a less than auspicious exchange politically (since Antenor is, ...

bed once all the other occupants are asleep. However, feeling his way in the dark, he trips over a stool and hurts his shin, cra ...

TUDOR WOMEN POETS In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) invented a fi ctional character—Judith Shakespeare—t ...

the discourse of lovers’ COMPLAINT poems by creating a female complaint. For women writing outside of the scope of the court and ...