Italian literature was an important influence on the poetry of
Thomas Wyatt (1503–42), one of the earliest English Renaissance poets. He was responsible for many innovations in English poetry, and alongside
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517–47), introduced the sonnet from Italy into England in the early 16th century. Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English tongue, to civilise it, to raise its powers to those of its neighbours. While a significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by the Italian poet
Petrarch, he also wrote
sonnets of his own. Wyatt took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his
rhyme schemes make a significant departure.
Petrarchan sonnets start with an
octave (eight lines), rhyming ABBA ABBA. A (
volta) occurs (a dramatic turn in the sense), and the next lines are a
sestet with various rhyme schemes. Petrarch's poems never ended in a
rhyming couplet. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet rhyme scheme is CDDC EE. This marks the beginnings of the
English sonnet with three quatrains and a closing couplet. In the later 16th century, English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical myths. The most important poets of this era include
Edmund Spenser and
Sir Philip Sidney. Elizabeth herself, a product of
Renaissance humanism, produced
occasional poems such as "
On Monsieur's Departure" and "
The Doubt of Future Foes". Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–99) was one of the most important poets of this period, author of
The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596), an epic poem and fantastical
allegory celebrating the
Tudor dynasty and
Elizabeth I. Another major figure, Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86), was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the
Elizabethan age. His works include
Astrophel and Stella,
An Apology for Poetry, and ''
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion (1567–1620), became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households. See
English Madrigal School''. Shakespeare also popularised the English sonnet, which made significant changes to Petrarch's model.
Changes to the canon While the
canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th century has always been in some form of flux, it is only towards the late 20th century that concerted efforts were made to challenge the canon. Questions that once did not even have to be made, such as where to put the limitations of periods, what geographical areas to include, what genres to include, what writers and what kinds of writers to include, are now central. The central figures of the Elizabethan canon are Spenser, Sidney,
Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, and
Ben Jonson. There have been few attempts to change this long established list because the cultural importance of these five is so great that even re-evaluations on grounds of literary merit have not dared to dislodge them from the curriculum. Spenser, for example, had a significant influence on 17th-century poetry and was the primary English influence on
John Milton. In the 18th century, interest in Elizabethan poetry was rekindled through the scholarship of
Thomas Warton and others. The
Lake Poets and other
Romantics, at the beginning of the 19th century, were well-read in Renaissance poetry. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed only in the Victorian period, with anthologies like Palgrave's
Golden Treasury. A fairly representative idea of the "Victorian canon" is also given by
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's
Oxford Book of English Verse (1919). The poems from this period are largely songs and apart from the major names, one sees the two pioneers Wyatt and Surrey, and a scattering of poems by other writers of the period. However, the authors of many poems are anonymous. Some poems, such as
Thomas Sackville's Induction to
The Mirror for Magistrates, were highly regarded (and therefore "in the canon") but they were omitted from the anthology as non-lyric. In the 20th century
T. S. Eliot's many essays on Elizabethan subjects were mainly concerned with
Elizabethan theatre, but he also attempted to bring back long-forgotten poets to general attention, like
Sir John Davies, whose cause he championed in an article in
The Times Literary Supplement in 1926 (republished in
On Poetry and Poets in 1957). In 1939, American critic
Yvor Winters suggested an alternative canon of Elizabethan poetry, in which he excluded the famous representatives of the
Petrarchan school of poetry, represented by Sidney and Spenser. Instead, he focused on the "native or plain-style"
anti-Petrarchan movement, which he argued had been overlooked and undervalued. The most underrated member of this movement he deems to have been
George Gascoigne (1525–1577), who "deserves to be ranked ... among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher". Other members were Sir
Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), Thomas Nashe (1567–1601),
Barnabe Googe (1540–1594), and
George Turberville (1540–1610). Winters characterised such anti-Petrarchan poems as having "broad, simple, and obvious" themes that border on "proverbial" as well as a restrained,
aphoristic style; such a poet would "stat[e] his matter as economically as possible, and not, as are the Petrarchans, in the pleasures of rhetoric for its own sake". Both Eliot and Winters were much in favour of the established canon. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, the established canon was criticised, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers. ==Theatre==