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Astrophil and Stella
Astrophel and Stella is a series of sonnets by Sir Philip Sidney, each of which expounds upon a different element or emotion of Astrophel’s unrequited love for Stella. In Sonnet 31, Astrophel is...
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Astrophil and Stella
One distinct relationship that links the three sonnets is that each explores a different aspect of the experience of love. Sidney's sonnets are linked through the predicament of love. Sidney...
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Astrophil and Stella
In "Astrophil and Stella," Sidney uses images, such as Venus and Mars, Cupid, and the Sisters nine, to capture the celestial theme of his poem. Not only are both Venus and Mars the names of...
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Astrophil and Stella
Astrophil and Stella is a sonnet sequence and "songs" that relate the love and obsession of Astrophil, whose name means "star-lover" in Greek, for Stella, whose name means "star" in Latin. Thus,...
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Astrophil and Stella
This is a very broad question considering that Astrophil and Stella is a sonnet cycle comprised of 108 sonnets and songs of other lyric types, while "Whoso List" and "Love that Lost" are both...
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Astrophil and Stella
A conceit is an unconventional metaphor that compares two things in illogical or surprising ways as opposed to more conventional metaphors comparing things that are more apparently similar, like...
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Astrophil and Stella
This sonnet discusses the nature of love and in particular the basis of human love and how it exerts such a powerful influence on humans. The historical event that is referenced in the lines of...
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Astrophil and Stella
In sonnet 31 of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence, Astrophil extensively compares his own feelings about Stella with the feelings of the moon. Such an extended comparison...
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Astrophil and Stella
The central conceit of this poem is based around the personification of the moon as a love-struck individual, much as the speaker of the sonnet is frustrated in love. The speaker, in this sonnet,...
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Astrophil and Stella
The first, and most well-known, sonnet of Philip Sydney's sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, uses many different literary devices. The most obvious is meter. The poem is written in iambic...
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Astrophil and Stella
One important theme of the first poem of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella is love, or at least physical desire. Another important theme is the desire to write poetry that...
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Astrophil and Stella
Lines 9-14 of the first poem of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence titled Astrophil and Stella might be explained as follows: But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay, In spite...
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Astrophil and Stella
In the opening poem of his sonnet sequence titled Astrophil and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney is already beginning his depiction of Astrophil as a foolish young man who has trouble controlling his...
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Astrophil and Stella
Alliteration is a feature of this sonnet, and can be found in the second line, in the words "pleasure of my pain." This is a literary term that is used elsewhere in this poem and you might like to...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sonnet 55 of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella cycle has two tones. The first is a matter-of-fact tone while Astrophil speaks of his partnership with the Muses. The second is a love-struck tone as...
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Astrophil and Stella
The tone of Sonnet 1 in "Astrophel and Stella" by Sir Philip Sidney varies over the course of the poem, following the convention of the Shakespearian, or English sonnet, in having a minor turn...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella is a collection or sequence of sonnets and other poems that tell the story of Astrophil’s foolish obsession with the beautiful Stella. 108 sonnets...
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Astrophil and Stella
Poetic analysis covers all devices from elements, like structure and rhyme, to techniques, like metonymy and metaphor. In this present format, I can provide a rudimentary analysis that you can...
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Astrophil and Stella
If one were asked to state in one sentence the theme of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, one might offer a sentence such as this: “The theme of Astrophil and Stella is...
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Astrophil and Stella
The first four lines establish the poet's belief that when we are in love, we act in ways that cause us harm: . . . and those who deviate from its rules Are rebels against Nature, and their...
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Astrophil and Stella
In the first four lines, Sidney admonishes the affected intellectuals who call on "the Sisters nine" (the nine muses) in order to mask their works with "flourishes" the poets themselves cannot...
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Astrophil and Stella
Although Sir Philip Sidney’s collection of poems titled Astrophil and Stella is usually described as a “sonnet sequence,” it is actually a collection both of 14-line sonnets and of longer...
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Astrophil and Stella
[INTERPRETATION CONTINUED FROM ABOVE] In the next stanza (25-29), Astrophil assures Stella that the noise she has just heard was made by a mouse; everyone else in the house except the two of them...
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Astrophil and Stella
Perhaps because Sidney himself was a warrior knight, who died as a result of wounds in Holland, he was drawn to the history of Edward IV, who usurped the English throne in 1461 and, in the process,...
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Astrophil and Stella
This sonnet is similar to many other sonnets in the Astrophil and Stella sequence of sonnets, as it talks about and discusses the impact of love on the speaker and the way in which his Muse,...
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Astrophil and Stella
By what outward signs do we truly know that somebody is in love? This is the question that this sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney seeks to address. The sonnet opens by listing the number of things that...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sidney begins this sonnet with four lines in which he praises himself for his "cunning in warlike sports," in this case, battling his opponents with wooden staffs. The response from the crowd is...
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Astrophil and Stella
Like many sonnets in Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence, sonnet 40 presents Astrophil as a kind of idolator who blames Stella, the object of his idolatry, for the suffering...
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Astrophil and Stella
In sonnet 30 of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, Astrophil once more stresses his obsession with Stella. He claims that when others ask him questions about international...
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Astrophil and Stella
In sonnet 28 of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence, Astrophil rejects allegorical or symbolic interpretations of his poetry. In lines 1-3 he addresses those who make a habit...
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Astrophil and Stella
The beginning of understanding Sidney's Sonnet 27 (sonnet cycle c. 1575-1585) lies in grasping the structure, as there may be several structures to sonnets. The structure of this sonnet opposes...
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Astrophil and Stella
Since Astrophil and Stella is a sonnet cycle, understanding some sonnets depends upon first understanding certain others. In this instance, understanding Sonnet 20 depends upon first...
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Astrophil and Stella
Understanding Sidney's sonnets requires more than a simple reading. In some, the syntactical alterations need to be mastered; in some the structure needs to be understood; in some their place in...
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Astrophil and Stella
This sonnet is part of the Astrophel and Stella sequence of sonnets by Sir Philip Sidney, which chart the struggle of the speaker to embrace his emotions for his lover. This sonnet focuses on the...
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Astrophil and Stella
This sonnet deals with the ubiquitous topic of love and the way that it is such a powerful emotion that it completely confuses and overpowers those who are subject to it. The speaker in this sonnet...
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Astrophil and Stella
This sonnet is about a speaker (who we assume to be Sir Philip as readers) who is struggling with himself in a thinking mood. He reports that his quest for thought could come from a variety of...
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Astrophil and Stella
This sonnet contains two speakers. The first seems to be a friend of Astrophil who notes that Astrophil's love is causing his behavior to shift. Astrophil has been losing his sense of reason, his...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sonnet 18 from Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence is typical of the sequence as a whole in many ways, including the following: The sonnet begins with an emphasis on...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sonnet 19 of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence might be analyzed in various ways, including the following: The poem opens with a line emphasizing a major theme of this...
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Astrophil and Stella
The term in rhetoric for intentionally altering standard English word order of Subject Verb Object (SVO) to another order, for example OVS or VSO or OSV, is hyperbaton. Hyperbaton in its various...
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Astrophil and Stella
The quoted clause, "where new doubts honour brings," is difficult to understand because it is a hyperbaton, which is a figure of speech that relies upon word order rather than word meaning to...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney was one of the earliest sonneteers, posthumous publication of his sonnets in 1591 predating Spenser's (1595), Daniel's (1592), and Shakespeare's (1609) sonnets). He used a...
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Astrophil and Stella
It is possible to argue that in Astrophil and Stella, Sidney presents a highly ironic view of secular, earthly love. Astrophil seems mainly interested in Stella's physical beauty and in her...
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Astrophil and Stella
Since your question about Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella sonnets as Petrarchan poems is highly specific, I will try to address, in the limited space available, some of the issues you...
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Astrophil and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence describes the infatuation of Astrophil (“star-lover”) with Stella (“star”). Because of this infatuation, everything that Astrophil...
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Astrophil and Stella
In order to understand the rhetorical questions in the sestet of the sonnet "Astrophel and Stella XXXI" by Sir Philip Sidney, it is necessary to understand what has gone before. In the first...
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Astrophil and Stella
The adjective “Petrarchan” alludes to the writings of the 14th-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (known in English as “Petrarch”). Petrarch’s most influential compositions consisted...
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Astrophil and Stella
In Sonnet 1, Sidney begins by remarking that he wishes to make known to Stella (Penelope) how much "pain" he suffers because of his love for her and thus hopes that she will...
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Astrophil and Stella
Who will in fairest book of nature knowHow virtue may best lodg'd in beauty be,Let him but learn of love to read in thee,Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.There shall he find all...
