Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella

Sarah Howe (University of Cambridge)
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Philip Sidney probably wrote his landmark sonnet sequence,

Astrophil and Stella

, between 1581 and 1582 during a period at Wilton House, the estate of his sister’s husband, the Earl of Pembroke. At that time Sidney was most likely at work not only on the sonnets of

Astrophil and Stella

, but also on a prose treatise arguing in favour of poetry and imaginative literature in general. (This treatise later came to be known as either

The Defence of Poesy

or

An Apology for Poetry

, according to the titles of its two different printings in 1595.) It is impossible to establish which work Sidney completed first, but it is suggestive that the sonnets of

Astrophil and Stella

emerged at around the same time as their author was thinking about poetry in a more theoretical vein. Yet the relationship…

3065 words

Citation: Howe, Sarah. "Astrophil and Stella". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 July 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6494, accessed 19 March 2024.]

6494 Astrophil and Stella 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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