Transformation of Courtly Love in Astrophil and Stella

Abstract

The poet-lover in Astrophil and Stella is generally considered to be conflicting between reason and passion pining for an unattainable beloved lady. The plot and the themes of the sequence are highly conventional, derived from Petrarch and his many Italian, French and Spanish imitators. However, the poet-lover also claims that he protests this Petrarchan convention in his search of fresh and original ways of writing. Thus the sequence has been studied as a counter-discourse of English Petrarchism and has been given more focus on its writing skills. On the other hand, this paper aims to examine the poet-lover not as an anti-Petrarchan lover but as an anti-courtly lover in a way to reveal some unfamiliar and unexpected aspects of a star-crossed lover. This paper examines that the poet-lover is rebellious in accepting the decrees of love, proud in his estimation and presentation of his own values, cruel and dishonorable in vengeance on his ungrateful lady, and presumptuous and impudent in admitting his desire. These uglier and more disappointing characteristics are quite opposite of those the readers generally expect from a lover in the standard of courtly love. While the poet-lover dramatically transforms the standard of courtly love in order to write most persuasively and most attractively, Sidney reveals that the villain images of the poet-lover as an anti-courtly lover is nothing but guises and masks he conveniently adopts and discards in order to carry out experiments in the dramatization of self. The study intended to examine some unfamiliar aspects of the protagonist leads to the conclusion that Sidney manages to infuse his sonnets with an extraordinary vigor and freshness by appropriating the convention and the concepts of courtly love.