“Sidney’s sonnet sequence not only shows a male poet objectifying the beloved but also allows a
female figure some autonomy of voice and character.” To what extent do you agree?
Throughout the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella the male poet presents ‘Stella’ as a distant object
to desire in the typical Petrarchan manner, suppressing the female voice and leaving only an
androcentric narration of thoughts. As said by Susan Gubar, ‘the poetry objectifies the beloved,
translates her into metaphors for the poet's selfhood, and usurps her integrity to create his poetic
corpus.’1 ‘Astrophil and Stella’, the title, is an example of this seizure of Stella’s identity. Its meaning,
‘Star-lover and star’, suggests ‘Stella’ is the one of importance, with a star’s connotations of beauty
and glory. Interestingly, there is also a distance to the image of a star which is reflected in the sonnet
sequence; its unattainability is what grants a star its attractiveness– a core concept of the courtly love
ideal of the Elizabethan era and Renaissance. In being likened to a star, Stella is transformed into an
object, stripped of personality coming second even in the syntax whilst he keeps his humanity; only a
human can be a ‘lover’. Moreover, ‘Astrophil’ is allowed his identity; ‘phil’ is a pun on Sidney’s first
name. This seems to suggest that the speaker and poet are the same, which is arguable; it may be that
Astrophil is a hyperbole, an amplified character of warning– as Sinfield suggests, ‘Astrophil is the first
named male protagonist [of the male poet-lovers] perhaps because Sidney wants to dissociate himself
from him.’2 However, in a significant further departure from the Petrarchan convention in both style
and structure, the poet does not restrict Stella entirely to silence. By the fourth song and sixty-third
sonnet Sidney allows her a voice, and ‘an eloquent love language’3 through her ‘eye’s-speech’. It is
this paradoxical breaking of and conforming to the customs of Petrarchan convention that will be
explored here.
There is both structural and thematic adherence to the Petrarchan convention within the first sonnet of
Astrophil and Stella; the poet immediately sets up the female beloved’s unattainability and the theme
of unrequited love as pain. The motif of love as suffering is used throughout the sonnet, keeping with
the ideas of love seen throughout the Petrarchan sonnet style; interestingly, Sidney relies on the ideas
of ‘courtly love’ of Petrarch’s 1300s rather than his own time. Courtly love in the fourteenth century
was centred around the beloved as as gateway to the divine– as Mathur suggests, the courtly view was
that ‘if they use their intellect and attempt to acquire the spiritual aspect of beauty, they find a link to
the pure spirit of the divine through their beloved.’4 The inevitable unattainability of the poet’s love
was of high importance; when a woman showed reciprocation she could no longer fill the role of a
divine figure. However, by the 1550s courtly love ‘was no longer about reaching unity with God, but
about sexual satisfaction.’5 Despite minor deviations, Sidney seems to choose the Petrarchan over his
contemporary version; likening Stella to the divine ‘Muse’ in line 14 in the final line of the sonnet:
‘“Fool” said my Muse to me, “Look in thy heart and write”’, with the immediate possessive ‘my’
1
Gubar, Susan, "'The Blank Page' and the Issues of Female Creativity," Cited in: Nona Fienberg, “The
Emergence of Stella in Astrophil and Stella.”
2
Sinfield, Alan. “Sidney and Astrophil.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900,
3
Fienberg, Nona. “The Emergence of Stella in Astrophil and Stella.”
4
Mathur, Arushi, Sidney and the Petrarchan Sonnet Convention
5
Gregory, Phillipa, “1485-1660 Becoming the Weaker Vessel”, Normal Women: 600 years of making history
, further objectifying her, whilst he builds on the idea of Stella as inspiration that allows him to write his
poetry, a ‘woman as [an] otherworldly angel’6 rather than an equal human being. The speaker remarks
in line 2 that he hopes ‘she might take some pleasure of my pain’, an example of the continued
hyperbole of melancholy redolent of the courtly love convention; in line 4 he tries to ‘paint the
blackest face of woe’. Astrophil’s melancholic role as courtly lover is reinforced by the superlative
‘blackest’ further strengthening of the ideal of love as suffering, by using the metaphorical ‘paint’ he
likens himself to an artist. Here he strengthens the ideas of the Petrarchan hero as the male poet-artist
but also proposes his work as a creation, suggesting the Petrarchan poet’s purpose of using their love
to achieve a platonic ideal of divinity. Sidney remarks7that ‘Our erected wit of the artist allows us to
discover what our infected will no longer is able for us to see,'8 showing again this Neoplatonic
humanistic ideal of wit and artistic skill as gateway to the platonic higher realm that is characteristic of
Petrarch. Structurally, Sidney primarily adheres to the Petrarchan sonnet form – he chooses this
structure over the preferred English sonnet of his contemporaries. The stricter structure of the
octave-quatrain-couplet in the first sonnet allows him to present two ideas in a more equal capacity;
the volta is after the octave. However, it could be that the strictness of the sonnet provides the need for
a greater ‘wit’ which in turn allows greater achievement of the Petrarchan neo-platonic ideal.
However, there is a deviation from the conventional structure in Sidney’s use of French alexandrines,
which ‘to Sidney, [was] characterised by division into two hemistichs “making it an apt vehicle for
polarization, paradox, parallelism and complementarity.”’9 This theme of the parallel is reflected
structurally in Sidney’s use of anadiplosis throughout the first stanza, ‘she, dear she //[...] might cause
her read, reading might make her know// [...] pity win, and pity grace obtain’ intensifying the
unattainability of Stella’s love by using the visuality of the parallel; they are moving in the same
direction, but will never touch.
Throughout Sonnet 37, Sidney forms a sympathetic relationship between speaker and reader, uniting
them and providing a solely male view of Stella through the eyes of the speaker. For example, the
direct address of ‘Listen then Lordings’– in which the imperative is a subtle reminder that the
speaker-poet is really in power– prepares a union between speaker and audience for a mutual
adoration of the mute Stella. The classical allusion typical of the Petrarchan convention and wider
Renaissance humanism, ‘Toward Aurora’s court’, further distances Stella, presenting her as a mythical
figure through the descriptive ‘Nymph’ rather than granting her a real humanity, thus far conforming
to our expectations of a Renaissance sonnet. This also hints toward Stella’s supposed real identity as
Penelope Devereux, wife of Lord Rich, – their estate lay to the east– Aurora being the goddess of
Dawn in classical mythology. This suggestion of her identity is continued later in the sonnet, wherein
there is significant departure from convention when the male poet ‘dominates his beloved by naming
her’10 objectifying her by forcing her into a constrained role of property of her husband as typical of
6
AQA Critical Anthology
7
‘Defense of Poetry’
8
BBC In Our Time, 'The Artist'.
9
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, p.30, Cited in: Gillespie, Patrick, Sir Phillip Sidney: His Meter and
his Sonnets
10
Fienberg, Nona. “The Emergence of Stella in Astrophil and Stella.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900,
female figure some autonomy of voice and character.” To what extent do you agree?
Throughout the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella the male poet presents ‘Stella’ as a distant object
to desire in the typical Petrarchan manner, suppressing the female voice and leaving only an
androcentric narration of thoughts. As said by Susan Gubar, ‘the poetry objectifies the beloved,
translates her into metaphors for the poet's selfhood, and usurps her integrity to create his poetic
corpus.’1 ‘Astrophil and Stella’, the title, is an example of this seizure of Stella’s identity. Its meaning,
‘Star-lover and star’, suggests ‘Stella’ is the one of importance, with a star’s connotations of beauty
and glory. Interestingly, there is also a distance to the image of a star which is reflected in the sonnet
sequence; its unattainability is what grants a star its attractiveness– a core concept of the courtly love
ideal of the Elizabethan era and Renaissance. In being likened to a star, Stella is transformed into an
object, stripped of personality coming second even in the syntax whilst he keeps his humanity; only a
human can be a ‘lover’. Moreover, ‘Astrophil’ is allowed his identity; ‘phil’ is a pun on Sidney’s first
name. This seems to suggest that the speaker and poet are the same, which is arguable; it may be that
Astrophil is a hyperbole, an amplified character of warning– as Sinfield suggests, ‘Astrophil is the first
named male protagonist [of the male poet-lovers] perhaps because Sidney wants to dissociate himself
from him.’2 However, in a significant further departure from the Petrarchan convention in both style
and structure, the poet does not restrict Stella entirely to silence. By the fourth song and sixty-third
sonnet Sidney allows her a voice, and ‘an eloquent love language’3 through her ‘eye’s-speech’. It is
this paradoxical breaking of and conforming to the customs of Petrarchan convention that will be
explored here.
There is both structural and thematic adherence to the Petrarchan convention within the first sonnet of
Astrophil and Stella; the poet immediately sets up the female beloved’s unattainability and the theme
of unrequited love as pain. The motif of love as suffering is used throughout the sonnet, keeping with
the ideas of love seen throughout the Petrarchan sonnet style; interestingly, Sidney relies on the ideas
of ‘courtly love’ of Petrarch’s 1300s rather than his own time. Courtly love in the fourteenth century
was centred around the beloved as as gateway to the divine– as Mathur suggests, the courtly view was
that ‘if they use their intellect and attempt to acquire the spiritual aspect of beauty, they find a link to
the pure spirit of the divine through their beloved.’4 The inevitable unattainability of the poet’s love
was of high importance; when a woman showed reciprocation she could no longer fill the role of a
divine figure. However, by the 1550s courtly love ‘was no longer about reaching unity with God, but
about sexual satisfaction.’5 Despite minor deviations, Sidney seems to choose the Petrarchan over his
contemporary version; likening Stella to the divine ‘Muse’ in line 14 in the final line of the sonnet:
‘“Fool” said my Muse to me, “Look in thy heart and write”’, with the immediate possessive ‘my’
1
Gubar, Susan, "'The Blank Page' and the Issues of Female Creativity," Cited in: Nona Fienberg, “The
Emergence of Stella in Astrophil and Stella.”
2
Sinfield, Alan. “Sidney and Astrophil.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900,
3
Fienberg, Nona. “The Emergence of Stella in Astrophil and Stella.”
4
Mathur, Arushi, Sidney and the Petrarchan Sonnet Convention
5
Gregory, Phillipa, “1485-1660 Becoming the Weaker Vessel”, Normal Women: 600 years of making history
, further objectifying her, whilst he builds on the idea of Stella as inspiration that allows him to write his
poetry, a ‘woman as [an] otherworldly angel’6 rather than an equal human being. The speaker remarks
in line 2 that he hopes ‘she might take some pleasure of my pain’, an example of the continued
hyperbole of melancholy redolent of the courtly love convention; in line 4 he tries to ‘paint the
blackest face of woe’. Astrophil’s melancholic role as courtly lover is reinforced by the superlative
‘blackest’ further strengthening of the ideal of love as suffering, by using the metaphorical ‘paint’ he
likens himself to an artist. Here he strengthens the ideas of the Petrarchan hero as the male poet-artist
but also proposes his work as a creation, suggesting the Petrarchan poet’s purpose of using their love
to achieve a platonic ideal of divinity. Sidney remarks7that ‘Our erected wit of the artist allows us to
discover what our infected will no longer is able for us to see,'8 showing again this Neoplatonic
humanistic ideal of wit and artistic skill as gateway to the platonic higher realm that is characteristic of
Petrarch. Structurally, Sidney primarily adheres to the Petrarchan sonnet form – he chooses this
structure over the preferred English sonnet of his contemporaries. The stricter structure of the
octave-quatrain-couplet in the first sonnet allows him to present two ideas in a more equal capacity;
the volta is after the octave. However, it could be that the strictness of the sonnet provides the need for
a greater ‘wit’ which in turn allows greater achievement of the Petrarchan neo-platonic ideal.
However, there is a deviation from the conventional structure in Sidney’s use of French alexandrines,
which ‘to Sidney, [was] characterised by division into two hemistichs “making it an apt vehicle for
polarization, paradox, parallelism and complementarity.”’9 This theme of the parallel is reflected
structurally in Sidney’s use of anadiplosis throughout the first stanza, ‘she, dear she //[...] might cause
her read, reading might make her know// [...] pity win, and pity grace obtain’ intensifying the
unattainability of Stella’s love by using the visuality of the parallel; they are moving in the same
direction, but will never touch.
Throughout Sonnet 37, Sidney forms a sympathetic relationship between speaker and reader, uniting
them and providing a solely male view of Stella through the eyes of the speaker. For example, the
direct address of ‘Listen then Lordings’– in which the imperative is a subtle reminder that the
speaker-poet is really in power– prepares a union between speaker and audience for a mutual
adoration of the mute Stella. The classical allusion typical of the Petrarchan convention and wider
Renaissance humanism, ‘Toward Aurora’s court’, further distances Stella, presenting her as a mythical
figure through the descriptive ‘Nymph’ rather than granting her a real humanity, thus far conforming
to our expectations of a Renaissance sonnet. This also hints toward Stella’s supposed real identity as
Penelope Devereux, wife of Lord Rich, – their estate lay to the east– Aurora being the goddess of
Dawn in classical mythology. This suggestion of her identity is continued later in the sonnet, wherein
there is significant departure from convention when the male poet ‘dominates his beloved by naming
her’10 objectifying her by forcing her into a constrained role of property of her husband as typical of
6
AQA Critical Anthology
7
‘Defense of Poetry’
8
BBC In Our Time, 'The Artist'.
9
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, p.30, Cited in: Gillespie, Patrick, Sir Phillip Sidney: His Meter and
his Sonnets
10
Fienberg, Nona. “The Emergence of Stella in Astrophil and Stella.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900,
