Description
Philip Sidney wrote Astrophil and Stella as a sonnet series composed of no less than 108 sonnets, upholding traditional Petrarchan conventions, and delighting his readers with artistically woven hyperbolic metaphors that still resound with the musical souls of modern day poetry lovers today. Astrophil and Stella are symbolic names, referring to Sidney’s desire to portray an impossible love between a star lover (the meaning of the name Astrophil) and his precious star (Stella). Throughout the sonnets, Sidney’s masterful metaphors create an aura of mystery and a divine image around Stella, who is raised to divine standards of beauty and inaccessibility. While presenting her as incredibly desirable, the sonnets also paint a picture of her interior qualities, presenting her as cold and impossible to reach. Astrophil’s adoration for her transforms Stella into a powerful object of desire that is depicted in superlatives, without, however, making the poems distasteful or overly romanticized. Astrophil and Stella is one of Sidney’s most well-known sonnet collections, written in an age when this style used to be the height of romance. For many of those who still enjoy the poetry of the late 16th century, this extensive work, written around 1580, is still a truly priceless jewel in this day and age. The sonnets are as playful and engaging as they are romantic, and their powerful, in-depth meaning goes well beyond the surface of what love means for most of those struck by Cupid’s arrow. Instead, Sidney dives deep within the nature of the darkest corners of longing within the human psyche, and creates one of the most complex and well-defined works of poetry written in his age. Anyone who enjoys a beautiful, passionate work of rhetorical virtuosity and poetic excellence will undoubtedly enjoy this remarkable collection of 108 sonnets, each of them an empathetic and powerful plea for Stella’s love.