11TA TT'S IMITATIONS of Petrarch have been illuminated by the V V sensitivity and learning of modern scholars. Their art has been shown to be independent and admirable, their attitude individual and moving.' As the original cast of these imitations becomes more clearly recognized, however, the need to understand it, both historically and aesthetically, becomes more acute. The problem is to explain and perhaps to justify Wyatt's harshly masculine treatment of poems renowned for the delicacy of their art and sentiments. Current explanations of the un-Petrarchan elements in Wyatt's Petrarchan poems are inadequate. Wyatt's imitations are not rebellious parodies:2 they themselves establish in England the poetical love convention which, despite Chaucer, is for Wyatt's contemporaries a little-known foreign vogue. Yet the persistency and coarseness with which Wyatt denounces his lady and demands sexual satisfaction can hardly arise from either ignorant translation or ingenuous manners; as a Renaissance courtier, traveler, and scholar Wyatt certainly is