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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Sir Thomas Wyatt's poetry has evoked wide disagreement among critics; even Wyatt studies seem conducive to scholarly scuffling. Back in 1908 and 1909, a lively controversy took place over the question of priority of French or Italian influence on the poet. The excitement has long since died down, but the question may be reopened by the small finding which this note reports.
Wyatt's well-known douzaine, Madame, withouten many wordes, was found by A. K. Foxwell to have a French source, with ‘some lines which are an exact translation of St. Gelais’ douzaine, S'amour vous a donne un cueur en gage’. Although this view has not been challenged before, a much likelier candidate for Wyatt's model is an Italian poem, Madonna, non so dir tante parole. This poem has been known to students of the Italian madrigal because it was set by one of the pioneer madrigalists, Phillip Verdelot.
1 Summarized in Foxwell's, A. K. A Study of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poems (London, 1911), pp. 60–61.Google Scholar A recent exchange in these pages brought varying degrees of blame to Wyatt's lute and to one of the participants; RN vii, no. 4 (Winter 1954), 127-130; viii, no. I (Spring 1955), 12-14.
2 Foxwell, p. 67.
3 The madrigal has been published in Adrian Willaert und andere Meister. Italienische Madrigale, ed. Walter Wiora (Chorwerk, v).
4 Percopo, Erasmo, ‘Dragonetto Bonifacio, Marchese d'Oria, rimatore Napolitano del Secolo xvi’, Giomale storico della letteratura italiana, x (1887), 197–233.Google Scholar
5 Della vita di Apollonio Tianeo, tradotto per Messer Francesco Bandelli (Florence, 1549); cited in Cesari, G., ‘Le origini del madrigale cinquecentesco’, Rivista musicale italiana, xix (1912), 384.Google Scholar
6 Version from Egerton MS 2711, as printed in K. Muir's edition of the Collected Poems (London, 1949), pp. 25-26.
7 Reprinted from Einstein, A., The Italian Madrigal, I (Princeton, 1949), pp. 177–178.Google Scholar
8 Reprinted from Foxwell, op. cit.
