Sidney Flashcards
The Old Arcadia - STORY - key quotes
“Having made a journey to Delphos… he brake up his court and retired…into a certain forest nearby” “Being so cruelly menaced by fortune, he would draw himself out of her way by this loneliness, which he thought was he surest mean to avoid her blows.”
Philanax - “who will stick to him that abandons himself?”
Musidorus - “this effeminate love of a woman doth so womanise a man” - Pyrocles: “determining to beare the countenance of an amazon” “thinking it a less fault in friendship to do a thing without your knowledge than against your will”
Musidorus disguise: “my reason (now grown a servant to passion)” “come shepherd’s weedes, become your master’s minde”
The Old Arcadia - about
(1570-80) Two different versions - shorter “Old Arcadia” and more complex, elongated “New Arcadia”
For his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. ie. circulated for PRIVATE reading - “onely for you, onely to you”
Defence of poesy - about
(1595)
Justifying writing instead of fighting!
Poetry as a symbol of cultural value
Defence - key quotes
“In our neighbour country Ireland, where truly learning goeth very bare, yet are their poets held in devout reverence”
“Having slipped into the title of a poet”
“The poet is indeed the right popular philosopher”
Superiority of poetry: “for who will be taught if he be not moved with the desire to be taught?” Poetry food for the “tenderest stomachs”
“Of all the writers under the sun the poet is the least liar…. He nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth”
Astrophil and Stella - info
(1591) Sonnet sequence of 108 sonnets, 11 songs. Astrophil: “star lover” and Stella: “star”
Physical riches vs emotional wealth
Sexuality/desire/love
Astophil - quotes pre-kiss
(opening) “Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,/ that she (dear she) might take some pleasure of my pain;/ pleasure might cause her to read, reading might make her know…”, “Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows”, “truant pen”
(difficulty writing continues) “my youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys”
(violence of love) “her eyes/serve him with shot, her lips his heralds are,/ her breasts his tents, legs his triumphal car” (of Cupid)
“come, let me write. ‘And to what end?’ To ease/a burdened heart.” “slave” to love’s “tyranny”
“Oh joy too high for my low style to show”
“desire, though thou my old companion art,/ and oft so clings to my pure love”
“Exiled aye from those high treasures which/ he knows not, grow only in folly rich”
Sir Philip Sidney - key texts
The Old Arcadia
Defence of poesy
Astrophil and Stella
Old Arcadia - critics
Hamilton - “ambitious and wide-ranging”. Inverts heroic formulas undercuts w. Fe/male characters - shame of cross dressing instead of heroism.
Duncan-Jones - “the splendid rhetorical show of the public courtier conceals his inward torment”
Pastoral - about
Key texts: Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Colin Clout a shepherd-poet figure); Sidney’s Old Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella
Cooper: pastoral has a “remarkable symbolic richness” and “allegory was the essence of pastoral” “shepherd a symbol of contemplative life”
Sir Philip Sidney - about
d.1586 prematurely in battle. Eminent courtier and poet with frustrated ambition (?). Uncle: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Had unclear inheritance and social status; spent much time at his sister’s house at Wilton, writing.
The Old Arcadia - themes
courtship, allegory/pastoral, love/lust, cross dressing, nobility, kingship, public/private and identity politics, chivalry. High vs. Low plots (Dametas and co.)
INNOVATIVE FORMS - mixture of prose with embedded different length lyrics - echo poems/eclogues… Four “books”
The Old Arcadia - key characters
Pyrocles (Zelmane/Cleophila) Musodorus (Dorus) (Greek princes)
Philoclea (sister to) Pamela (daughters of)
Basilius and Gynecia (Duke and Duchess of Arcadia)
Philanax (close supporter of Basilius)
Dematas (father of) Miso and Mopsa (shepherds serving the royals)
Eucharus (father of Pyrocles and Musidorus)
The Old Arcadia - ECLOGUES - key quotes
Lalus to Dorus - “No style is held base where love well named is… and plain speech oft than quaint phrase better framed is”
Cleophila to Philoclea: “If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand”
Allegorical skirmish between Reason and Passion: “Can Reason then a tyrant counted be?/ if Reason will that Passions be not free?”
ECHO POEM: “What is it that may be a salve to my love? Love./ What do lovers seek for, long seeking for to enjoy? Joy.”
Jealous husbands: “He forced her to think that which she never thought”
Claius: “my thoughts chase me like beasts in forests”
Astrophil and Stella - key themes
Love, lust, process/difficulty in writing, theft/rape, body/physical description/sexuality, longing/unrequited love…
Astrophil and Stella - quotes post-kiss
“O sweet kiss - but ah, she is waking,/ loving beauty chastens me;/ now I will away hence flee;/ fool, more fool, for no more taking”
“my lips are sweet, inspired with Stella’s kiss” (literary/sexual) “thought waited on delight, and speech did follow thought”
rejection: “with that she had done and spoken,/ that therewith my song is broken.” - her eyes “leaving my hemisphere, leave me in night”
“But as soon as thought of you gives birth to my delight,/ and my young soul flutters to you, his nest,/ raw despair, my daily guest though unasked,/ immediately dips my wings, and wraps me in his night” (end)
