Freedom and Control Flashcards
How is freedom and control presented in who so list to hunt?
-For centuries, love and freedom have long been intertwined in poetry, each serving as a lens to explore human longing and constraint
-In Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt, shaped by the chivalric ideals of the Renaissance, love becomes a pursuit of freedom that ultimately fails, rendering the women he desires as unattainable
What does ensnared mean?
Trapped or caught
What could a big idea be?
-Thomas Wyatt delves into the fraught interplay between love, freedom, and control, illustrating the consequences of societal constrainst
What could the quote“whoso list to hunt” suggest? (2)
-By framing desire as a hunt, Wyatt turns love into a competitive pursuit, where the quest for dominance limits true emotional freedom:
-the speaker’s exhortation, “Who so list to hunt,” serves as a hearty entreaty for other men to join his chase of the elusive “hynde,” a creature that perhaps symbolizes the patriarchal context of the poem, where women were objectified as possessions to be “hunt[ed]” and passed from father to husband.
What does the quote “alas I may no more” suggest?(3)
-the speaker’s seemingly authoritative nature unravels with the lament, “Alas, I may no more,” where the monosyllabic rhythm and plaintive tone strip the pursuit of its initial bravado and expose the futility of his pursuit.
-revealing the emotional toll of attempting to confine what cannot be possessed.
How does the structure of the poem reflect the theme of control and freedom?(4)
-Wyatt reflects this failure in his disruption of the Petrarchan sonnet form; the octave, traditionally setting up a problem to be resolved, instead begins with the hunt’s consequences and loops back to its hopelessness,
This mirrors the speaker’s entrapment, where his longing for love is inextricably tied to the need for control, trapping him in a cycle that denies true connection or freedom.
What does the tension between the “hynde” belonging to Ceaser and also being “wylde” suggest?(5)
-The reference to “Ceaser” as the true owner of the hind highlights the impossibility of attaining what belongs to ultimate authority, while the hind’s description as “wylde” demonstrates that the absence of freedom creates a love that resists control entirely.
-By emphasizing the hind’s untamed and free nature, Wyatt illustrates how restrictive frameworks of control over connection, showing how such constraints render love unattainable.
What poem could you compare who so list to hunt to in terms of love and freedom?
-the scrutiny
-Where Wyatt’s tone carries the weight of resignation, Lovelace’s speaker teases with cavalier arrogance. Yet both poems reveal how masculinity distorts love and freedom—turning them from connections into rituals of control and conquest.
