In Reading Dryden Briefly

It is interesting to note how we can see the written language changing through time in merely looking at two texts written less than one hundred years apart (I am of course alluding to the readings of Sidney and Dryden). There becomes a subtle shift towards modern English in " An Essay of Poesy ", that made it a much easier read for myself, and I'm sure a lot of you guys. The one thing that took away from the flow of the read was the fact that Dryden quoted ancient Greek poets, and did not translate the text, rather he left it in it's Latin form.

Dryden writes in a Platonic style, and the 'Essay' resembled in particular ' The Symposium '. Unlike ' The Symposium ' (as far as we know) the characters, as mentioned in the preface, are fictional. Although, there were probably influences in each case. A footnote to Crites on page 41 states that Crites loosely imitates the English poet Sir Robert Howard. The gist of the narrative of the text is that the three characters Eugenius, Lisideius, and Crites, are discussing the idea of poesy. The initially content of the conversation is the argument that the Ancient Greek Poets like Sophocles, Cicero, and Horace were better than the Contemporary British Poets such as John Denham, and John Suckling. The preface states that there are three major issues dealt with in the text. The latter two, to date, I have yet get to in my reading. The style of conversation among the characters is very eloquent, and of high rhetoric. Dryden probably felt forced to do this so that the reader would take the points within the text seriously. In comparing this Essay on poesy to that of Sidney's I feel that Dryden's reader, unlike Sidney's reader, can sort of side with a number of ideas drawn out in the dialogue, and does not have to ultimately embrace, or conversely reject the arguments set out. Another advantage of Dryden's use of dialogue is that there can be a questioning and defacing of a singular opinion. For instance Crito sided for the 'ancient dramatists' and on the contrary Eugenius sided for the modern, allowing an ebb and flow of argument.

Whew, I'm done. Back to the Books! Ciao

Continuing Thoughts on Astrophil and Stella

I found lecture today to be as fun as it was useful. The unraveling of the Sonnets piece by piece in sequence answered a lot of previously unanswered questions I had left bouncing around my brain, and kept my intellect racing around ideas in a voluntary frenzy. One in particular came about because I had done a bit of research one day in the library (Yes, I know what you are thinking, huge ubernerd!) and picked up two books on Sidney written by the critics Janet H. MacArthur, and J.G. Nichols who wrote on Astrophil and Stella. MacArthur in particular referred to the two sonnets left out, which at that moment in time was news to me. The ever questioned sonnets 109, and 110 were described as ‘indeterminable’ and MacArthur felt this was fitting for Sidney because he leaves them there to hang high and dry for onlookers to gaze at. I find it peculiar that Sidney does not incorporate them into the sequence. He leaves them out of the sequence, but left them still, for people to see (or more accurately for editors to add, and then for us to see) to allow the reader to piece them as one chooses into the sonnet sequence, if one so desires. Maybe this was done because Sidney himself was ambivalent towards their appearance, yet initially felt they were written with intention to be in the piece, so for the sake of authenticity he felt like leaving them on paper somewhere amongst the final draft. Regardless, I do like sonnet 109, for me it fits well in the sequence because it shows Astrophil’s passion, and his yearning desire to articulate more about what his thoughts and feelings are towards Stella. Astrophil (I doubt is Sidney ALL the time) comes across, as mentioned in class, as a babbling idiot sometimes, and sonnet 109 is a great display of such character. I especially like lines 3, and 6 “ Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care,…With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware; ”. These lines are fun to say out loud, you should try it sometime! Ok, ciao.

Astrophil and Stella

I found it much harder to read 'Astrophil and Stella' then 'The Defense of Poesy'. 'The Defense of Poesy', written in prose, used more colloquial English of Sidney's time. This type of English although different from modern English used today is definitely easier to understand then when put against the foreign language of poetry. And not just any poetry but poetry of the late 16th Century.

That aside, I enjoyed many of the sonnets that Sidney put together. The speaker in this series of sonnets is a young love-sick courtier, whose affection is inconveniently for a married woman. This speaker is not unlike that of Shakespearian or Petrarchian Sonnets. Structurally different (other than the framework of the sonnet) but thematically similar. I found it very interesting that Astrophil the Courtier names his lady Stella after a star, and he a star lover. Relating to some of the points made in the lectures, I noticed that Sidney looks to Petrarch for influence. Not only in direct reference of his name (which he sprinkles in some of the sonnets), but also in style, and genre (the idea of courtly love). But as influenced as he may have been of Petrarch, both himself and Petrarch seemed to write quite differently. In my opinion Petrarch was a much smoother writer than Sidney, and this is quite distinguishable in looking at the rhetorical devices that Sidney used.

Sidney liked alliterate and other repetitive devices of such manner. He will often juxtapose words in a line, sometimes words that contrast, as in an oxymoron, and sometimes the same word as found here in Sonnet 5 " True, and yet true...". Here in particular this device was used to separate the 'ideal' versus 'ideality'. In defiance against the metrical norm of poetry, instead of integrating monosyllabic with polysyllabic words to form a balanced rhythm, Sidney sometimes strung a line of monosyllabic words together " I may, I must, I can, I will, I do " (sonnet 47). Maybe Sidney was further proving that he was not afraid to defy convention in order to deliver the message through the best use of the medium.