Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Symmetry and Sense : The Poetry of Sir Philip Sidney / Robert L. Montgomery.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©1961Description: 1 online resource (146 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781477301449
Subject(s): Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- FOREWORD -- 1. INTRODUCTION -- 2. MANNER OVER MATTER -- 3. ORNATE STRUCTURE AND IMITATION -- 4. ORNATE STYLE AND THE CULT OF IDEALISTIC LOVE -- 5. THE THEORY OF ARTLESS STYLE -- 6. THE STRUCTURES OF ENERGETIC STYLE -- 7. ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: "REASONS AUDITE" -- APPENDICES -- INDEX
Summary: Few Elizabethans left the image of their personalities cut so deeply into the Renaissance imagination as did Sir Philip Sidney. Widely admired in his own time, Sidney must seem to the modern reader almost universally accomplished. His talents as courtier, diplomat, soldier, scholar, novelist, and poet are history. Almost immediately after Sidney's death in battle against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, the process of legend began, and the legend has survived, sometimes obscuring the facts. The versatile "Renaissance man" has become, in the eyes of some critics, the romantic lover whose frustrations and despair found release in the "confessional" form of the sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, and in other poems. To show these poems to be consciously constructed works of art, not simply passionate outbursts of romantic emotion, is one aim of this study. The author examines Sidney as poet and critic, concentrating his study on rhetorical technique and poetic rhythm and form. He shows Sidney experimenting with the symmetrical possibilities of rhythm and phrase; practicing the ornateness current and acceptable in his day. He examines Sidney's comment on such a style in The Defense of Poesy and the ways in which the poet's own work agreed with or departed from his expressed opinions. He also balances Sidney's poetry against the powerful tradition of Petrarchan love literature and the equally powerful Renaissance impulse to subject passion to the rule of reason. Finally, in an extended analysis of Astrophel and Stella, he shows Sidney as the master of a plainer, wittier, more subtly fashioned style and a complex, more dramatically immediate form. What emerges from the study is not the personality of the poet, but the principles of his art and the value of his achievement in the mainstream of English Renaissance verse.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781477301449

Frontmatter -- Contents -- FOREWORD -- 1. INTRODUCTION -- 2. MANNER OVER MATTER -- 3. ORNATE STRUCTURE AND IMITATION -- 4. ORNATE STYLE AND THE CULT OF IDEALISTIC LOVE -- 5. THE THEORY OF ARTLESS STYLE -- 6. THE STRUCTURES OF ENERGETIC STYLE -- 7. ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: "REASONS AUDITE" -- APPENDICES -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Few Elizabethans left the image of their personalities cut so deeply into the Renaissance imagination as did Sir Philip Sidney. Widely admired in his own time, Sidney must seem to the modern reader almost universally accomplished. His talents as courtier, diplomat, soldier, scholar, novelist, and poet are history. Almost immediately after Sidney's death in battle against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, the process of legend began, and the legend has survived, sometimes obscuring the facts. The versatile "Renaissance man" has become, in the eyes of some critics, the romantic lover whose frustrations and despair found release in the "confessional" form of the sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, and in other poems. To show these poems to be consciously constructed works of art, not simply passionate outbursts of romantic emotion, is one aim of this study. The author examines Sidney as poet and critic, concentrating his study on rhetorical technique and poetic rhythm and form. He shows Sidney experimenting with the symmetrical possibilities of rhythm and phrase; practicing the ornateness current and acceptable in his day. He examines Sidney's comment on such a style in The Defense of Poesy and the ways in which the poet's own work agreed with or departed from his expressed opinions. He also balances Sidney's poetry against the powerful tradition of Petrarchan love literature and the equally powerful Renaissance impulse to subject passion to the rule of reason. Finally, in an extended analysis of Astrophel and Stella, he shows Sidney as the master of a plainer, wittier, more subtly fashioned style and a complex, more dramatically immediate form. What emerges from the study is not the personality of the poet, but the principles of his art and the value of his achievement in the mainstream of English Renaissance verse.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2022)