WRITING UNDER TYRANNY: ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE HENRICIAN REFORMATION
Book • 2005
Greg Walker's book explores the profound impact of Henry VIII's increasingly tyrannical regime on English literature from 1528 to 1547, focusing on how poets, playwrights, and prose writers at the heart of the political nation reacted to the slide into what was perceived as English tyranny.
The book argues that political oppression not only destroyed traditional literary forms but also spurred the creation of new modes of writing—such as individual subjectivity, interiority, and the Petrarchan lyric—that would come to define the English Renaissance.
Walker reads literary texts as direct responses to government policy, showing how writers like Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, developed innovative poetic forms to navigate and resist the constraints of their time.
The book argues that political oppression not only destroyed traditional literary forms but also spurred the creation of new modes of writing—such as individual subjectivity, interiority, and the Petrarchan lyric—that would come to define the English Renaissance.
Walker reads literary texts as direct responses to government policy, showing how writers like Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, developed innovative poetic forms to navigate and resist the constraints of their time.
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Sir Thomas Wyatt (Archive Episode)
