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Astrophel and Stella

Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella consists of 108 sonnets and 11 songs telling the story of the star lover Astrophel and his star Stella. It adapts the Italian Petrarchan tradition, using rhyme schemes with some freedom. Born in Kent, Philip Sidney was educated at Shrewsbury School and Oxford, then traveled throughout Europe where he met influential figures and wrote several works including Astrophel and Stella.

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Shreyash Sill
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173 views1 page

Astrophel and Stella

Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella consists of 108 sonnets and 11 songs telling the story of the star lover Astrophel and his star Stella. It adapts the Italian Petrarchan tradition, using rhyme schemes with some freedom. Born in Kent, Philip Sidney was educated at Shrewsbury School and Oxford, then traveled throughout Europe where he met influential figures and wrote several works including Astrophel and Stella.

Uploaded by

Shreyash Sill
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Introduction

Likely composed in the 1580s, Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella is an English sonnet sequence containing 108 sonnets and 11 songs. The name derives from the two Greek words, 'aster' (star) and 'phil' (lover), and the Latin word 'stella' meaning star. Thus Astrophel is the star lover, and Stella is his star. Sidney partly nativized the key features of his Italian model Petrarch, including an ongoing but partly obscure narrative, the philosophical trappings of the poet in relation to love and desire, and musings on the art of poetic creation. Sidney also adopts the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, though he uses it with such freedom that fifteen variants are employed.

LIFE
Born at Penshurst Place, Kent, he was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. Philip was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1572 he was elected to Parliament [1] as Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury and in the same year travelled to France as part of the embassy to negotiate a marriage between Elizabeth I and the Duc D'Alenon. He spent the next several years in mainland Europe, moving through Germany, Italy, Poland, the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria. On these travels, he met a number of prominent European intellectuals and politicians. His works areThe Lady of May, Astrophel and Stella, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, An Apology for Poetry.

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