ANALYSING SONNETS

"My galley charged with forgetfulness" is a sonnet because it consists of 14 lines. It belongs to a collection because the title resumes the beginning of the poem. The writer is Thomas Wyatt but the true author is Petrarch, one of the best known Italian sonneteers. Thomas Wyatt in fact, brought the Italian sonnets into England and he limited to translate them into the English language . "My galley charged with forgetfulness" is his translation of "Passa la nave mia colpa di oblio", Petrarch's Rime 189.

Thomas Wyatt's sonnet has got some differences from the Italian one, for example structure. The Italian one is arranged into an octave and a sestet. The second one hasn't a definite structure because Wyatt didn't worry a lot about metrics.  Indeed his main aim was to translate it. The rhyme scheme is different too: "My galley charged with forgetfulness" shows the following rhyme scheme:  ABBA ACCA DCCD EE, instead "Passa la nave mia colpa di oblio" rhyme scheme is ABBA ABBA CDE CDE.

The context is the same, the narrator is talking about a voyage that he is taking. It is night and he is travelling in a difficult situation: it is dark, the landscape is only formed by rocks and rocks ( On the contrary, Petrarch makes reference to Scilla and Cariddi that is the current strait of Messina), the captain is his enemy and they are facing a stormy sea. In addition, the stars which would enable the pilot to navigate are obscured and his hope to reach the harbor disappears.

The voyage is a metaphor of Petrarch's life, the problem set out in the octave is that of love (personified with the figure of the captain). The love makes him live difficult situations: his feelings are figured by the stormy sea (confusion) and  darkness (lack of happiness). Therefore the problem is the impossibility to stop his passion. In the sestet the solution is given: the only way to find a solution is the sight of his beloved but he understands that  is impossible (indeed the narrator tells that he can't see the stars).

The semantic field is that of the weather and that of the sea because they well communicate the idea of his feelings and his confusion.