Sidney, Philipe

Renaissance Poetry

The most typical expression of renaissance poetry was tbe sonnet tbat derived by ltalian poets Dante and Petrarch. The centtal tbeme oftbe sonnet was tbe love accompanied by the beauty. The nature oftbe poet's desire contains a paradox; tbe poet desires tbe lady, but at same time he hopes she will no surrender. Regarding form the originaI Petrarchan
Sonnet was a poem offourteen lines ofhendecasyllables divided into two parts, two quattains and two tercets.Tbis form was moditied by English poets into Elizabethan sonnet that was formed by three quattains and one couple!, hat represented a conclusion. The most important poets ofthis genre were Edmund Spenser, Philip Sydney and William Shakespeare.

Sydney was born into wealthy family in Kent and tben educated in Shrewsbury and Christ college, Oxford .His output included tbe defence ofpoetry, Arcadia,(successively divided into Old Arcadia and New Arcadia)and the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella.

Astrophel and Stella, a sequence of sonnets and songs, charts tbe unrequited love Astrophel for Stella. But like Petrarch with Laura, she is must and must remain unattainable. It is because she is unreachable and he cannot have her that Stella becomes a virtual reality for tbe poet, fTagmenting into a multiplicity of phantasmic Stellas,none ofwhich real .Tbe principal tbeme oftbis work is obsessive love, speciaIly virtual and the influence ofPlato in tbe dialogoe between appearance and trutb.