Whoso List to Hunt Analysis

Buckle down folks, because we've got a whole lot to cover on this important little issue. Let's jump in right… now. First and foremost, the meter of this poem is something called iambic pentamete...

The speaker of this poem is a really complicated guy. He'd give Freud a run for his money, we think. But we're getting ahead of ourselves with all this psychoanalysis stuff; first, we should point...

The speaker talks about deer hunting in nearly every line of this poem, so we'll go ahead and guess that it's taking place somewhere outside, away from the city—basically a place where you could...

Wyatt is all over the place in this poem—sonically speaking that is (okay, regularly speaking as well). The poem's opening line—"Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind"—makes the poem so...

The title "Whoso List to Hunt" doesn't really tell us a whole lot, now does it? Heck, it's not even a complete sentence (we should take five points off just for that). The title's vagueness, howeve...

Wyatt loves to talk about hunting, and when Wyatt talks about hunting, he's not usually talking about actual hunting, but the trials and tribulations of love, courtship, and the like. By now you've...

Wyatt can be a tough read, especially in poems like "Whoso List to Hunt." While his word choice is pretty straightforward (except for the occasional strange word like "list" and a few bits of Latin...

In 1541, Wyatt was accused of treason. Instead of being put to death, Wyatt was ordered to separate from his mistress and return to the wife he had separated from many years earlier (um, yay?). (So...

Yeah we know the word "sex" doesn't pop up anywhere in this short poem, but man is it lecherous (sex-loving, lustful). In case you haven't already guessed, in this poem hunting is a dirty little me...

Francesco Petrarch, Rima 190 (throughout—"Whoso List to Hunt" is a loose imitation)Bible, John 20:17 (13)Anne Boleyn (possibly) (throughout)Henry VIII, King of England (possibly) (13)