conventions to discuss physical love, notably Sir
Thomas Wyatt in “THEY FLEE FROM ME,” Sidney is the
fi rst to so fully address desire in love.
The language of the sequence further reveals Sid-
ney’s diffi cult relationship with the Petrarchan infl u-
ence. While the circumstances portrayed in the
sequence do have original aspects, the language Sidney
uses to describe them often makes use of Petrarchan
tropes, including, among others, the oxymoron of the
“cruel fair,” which identifi es the lady as beautiful but
cruelly dismissive of his love; frequent use of the BLA-
ZON, a part-by-part description of the beloved; and the
highly Petrarchan notion that the lady’s eyes can pierce
the lover’s heart. On the other hand, Sidney also uses
Astrophil and Stella to cultivate his own signature liter-
ary devices. Sidney’s speaker famously calls for poetic
originality in the fi rst line of Sonnet 1: “Foole, said my
muse to me, looke in thy heart and write” (l. 14).
The sequence is very witty, and Sidney typically
ends his sonnets with a pithy fi nal COUPLET which often
subverts or reframes the poem that precedes it. As
many critics have noted, it is the very tension between
Petrarchism and originality that make the sequence
both diffi cult to read and compelling. The version of
Petrarchan love Sidney presents in Astrophil and Stella
both broadened and altered the type of infl uence
Petrarchan verse had on Renaissance poets and has
contributed to the slipperiness of this term in contem-
porary criticism.
Astrophil and Stella has been consistently read and
revered since its publication, yet critical interpreta-
tions of the series vary widely. One major line of criti-
cal debate concerns the sequence’s biographical
elements. From the 19th century to the middle of the
20th century, Astrophil and Stella was considered pri-
marily a portrayal in verse of Philip Sidney’s thwarted
love affair with Penelope Devereux, the oldest daugh-
ter of the earl of Essex. There is evidence to suggest
that the earl wished Penelope to marry Sidney; how-
ever, she married Lord Rich in 1581. Puns on rich
throughout the series, the most provocative perhaps
being Sonnet 24, have been taken as textual support
for this hypothesis, as has Stella’s implied married sta-
tus. Today the solely autobiographical interpretation
of the sequence is increasingly rare; many contempo-
rary critics downplay it, while some argue that the his-
torical evidence for a romantic liaison between the
two is virtually nonexistent.
Recent criticism has also produced numerous other
approaches to understanding the sequence. The ten-
sion in the series between Sidney’s devout Protestant-
ism and the primarily secular, even bodily or worldly,
goals of the Petrarchan love lyric has received much
scholarly attention. The structure of the sequence has
also been variously interpreted. Do the poems, read in
sequence, tell a coherent story? Or do they only reveal
a tenuous narrative with each sonnet as a discrete part?
Sidney’s poems have additionally been brought into
discussions about 16th-century concepts of the self. To
this end, more recent criticism has even compared Sid-
ney’s poems to other types of artistic production and
the material culture of the English Renaissance. Nota-
bly, the scholar Patricia Fumerton has explored how
Sidney’s sonnets relate to miniature portraits in their
efforts to both conceal and reveal their subjects’ inter-
nal experiences.
The continued interest scholars and students have
shown in Astrophil and Stella and its complex discourse
of love attests to the strong infl uence Sidney’s poetry
has had both on English literature and on contempo-
rary concepts of how love can be represented through
language.
FURTHER READING
Cooper, Sherod M., Jr. The Sonnets of Astrophil and Stella: A
Stylistic Study. The Hague: Mouton, 1968.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Sir Philip Sidney. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Ferry, Anne. The ‘Inwar’ Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney,
Shakespeare, and Donne. Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1983.
Fumerton, Patricia. “ ‘Secret’ Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures
and Sonnets.” In Representing the English Renaissance,
edited by Stephen Greenblatt. 57–97. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1988.
Hamilton, A. C. Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of His Life and
Works. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
———. “Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella as a Sonnet Sequence.”
ELH 36, no. 1 (1969): 59–87.
Herman, Peter C., ed. Sir Philip Sidney’s An Apology for
Poetry and Astrophil and Stella: Texts and Contexts. Glen
Allen, Va.: College Publishing, 2001.36 ASTROPHIL AND STELLA