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Sir Thomas Wyatt: Love Addiction Essay

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Sir Thomas Wyatt: Love Addiction
Whether you live in the twenty-first century or lived the early sixteenth century, the idea of love is the same. Falling in love is easy, while recovering from a broken heart is much more difficult. According to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Sir Thomas Wyatt was a well-educated courtier and diplomat, spending much of his adult life abroad, until imprisoned for treason. After analyzing Wyatt’s poetic work, knowing his past experiences greatly helps find meaning in his sonnet poems. ‘They Flee From Me” is a masterpiece written by Wyatt that demonstrates his addiction to love with depressed temptation for past lovers.

Within the first four lines there is …show more content…

I found it intriguing how he was more interested in the way the relationships made him feel than the aspects of himself which influenced its end”. Wyatt introduces a theme of remorse throughout the beginning of the poem when in fact, like Gabrielle said, could have prevented his own sadness. In lines ten through thirteen we start to see a different tone demonstrated by Wyatt though, where he seems to be demonstrating a memory or dream of the encounter with this past lover. Rather than resenting the abandonment, he turns to the remembrance of a positive memory. A past memory that brings Wyatt to his happiest place, where he reincarnated exact movements and touch with this infamous lover, “when her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, and she me caught in her arms long and small; and therewith all sweetly did me kiss”. Annie Wald made a clear revelation when she believes Wyatt, as the narrator “seems to be requiring some help from the reader to determine just exactly what the new situation of love could mean”. Annie makes the point that the encounter with this lover even left the narrator puzzled as to what he was truly feelings, and for that reason can not forgot the positive memory. Although remembering a liked memory causes joy and short-term ecstasy, falling

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