Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella

A comprehensive study of Sidney’s iconic sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. The author recounts the plot of this compelling love story, validates Sidney’s reputation as a poet of immense technical prowess, and explains the historical, biographical, and cultural contexts which inspired Sidney and shaped his vision.

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This book will help readers understand and appreciate the sonnets and songs that make up Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, widely regarded as one of the greatest sonnet collections in English literary history. The author provides commentary on each of the 108 sonnets and 11 songs, explaining how each poem contributes to the plot of the story—a compelling tale of a love that is at once beautiful, true, heartfelt, frustrating, stressful, and unrequited. The author illustrates how Sidney riffs brilliantly on the sonnet form, fills his poetry with striking and inventive imagery and metaphor, and uses rhythms and forms rarely used before in English poetry. He discusses the story’s historical, cultural, and biographical contexts, highlighting those sonnets and songs that indicate Astrophil is modelled on Sidney himself, and Penelope on Lady Penelope Devereux, the beautiful daughter of the Earl of Essex and Maid of Honor in the Court of Queen Elizabeth I.