Boccaccio’s impact on Chaucer. Petrarch’s formal innovations taken up by Wyatt, Surrey, Philip & Mary Sidney, Shakespeare. Dante present everywhere. For an understanding of poetry in English, a very good starting point is Italian
Tudor writers reinvent Petrarch with subtlety. Dante has furnished many writers in English with vast resources of image, music & allusion. The result is some of the finest poems: complex, profound, vivid - & like the best Italian poetry not giving up its riches too easily, repaying endless rereading
Jan 13, 2026 09:59The interplay of Italian literary models & Tudor creativity in particular is, as I’ve mentioned before, paralleled in music, where the influence of Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese polyphony is felt then played back to Europe by an engaged & vital artistic culture
A good excuse for some Tallis
Spem In Alium (Thomas Tallis) - Tallis Scholars
YouTube video by Choral Music
