Interpreting Sir Thomas Wyatt's Whoso List to Hunt: The Indirect Address of Translation and Interpretation

Throughout the reign of the volatile Henry VIII, writers were posed with a very sensitive problem: how to convey a message to their intended audience without giving offense to the ruler.  This problem was addressed most directly in a passage from Sir Thomas More’s work Utopia, in which it is written: “[B]y the indirect approach you must seek and strive to the best of your power to handle matters tactfully...” (710) 

More’s work then goes on to deliver scathing political commentary while seeming on the surface to be an instructive story about a “nowhere” country, written in a style that mimics the popular travel diaries of the period.  Another example of this indirect method of addressing a subject can be seen in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s translation of Francesco Petrarch’s sonnet 190, to which Wyatt added the title “Whoso List to Hunt”.  In comparing Wyatt’s translated version of this sonnet to Petrarch’s original work the reader can note where Wyatt’s own emotions have colored the interpretation, while still managing to remain within the boundaries of translation.  

With the careful selection of form and the manipulation of the poem’s translated content Wyatt uses the sonnet as an instrument for the conveyance of his message, ultimately leaving it as the reader’s task to decide how to interpret the piece.  Sir Thomas Wyatt’s sonnet “Whoso List to Hunt” is an example of More’s “indirect approach” because it uses Petrarch’s sonnet 190 as a vehicle to present the writer’s personal opinions while on the surface still functioning as a translated Italian sonnet.