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The Moral Use of Platonic Conventions and Patterns of Imagery in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella

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The Moral Use of Platonic Conventions and Patterns of Imagery in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. 5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 73-26,410 TUCKER, Virginia Acheson, 1930- 'DIRECTING THREDS . THROUGH THE LABYRINTH": THE MORAL USE OF PLATONIC CONVENTIONS AND PATTERNS OF IMAGERY IN SIDNEY'S ASTROPHIL AND STELLA. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Ph.D., 1973 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan © 1973 VIRGINIA ACHESON TUCKER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED "DIRECTING THREDS . THROUGH THE LABYRINTH" THE MORAL USE OF PLATONIC CONVENTIONS AND PATTERNS OF IMAGERY IN SIDNEY'S ASTROPHIL AND STELLA by Virginia Acheson Tucker A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1973 Approved by APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Adviser f Oral Examination /€L Committee Members c, o n £4uJr/- Date ot Examination 11 TUCKER, VIRGINIA ACHESON. "Directing Threds . through the Labyrinth": The Moral Use of Platonic Conventions and Patterns of Imagery in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella. (1973) Directed by: Dr. Christopher Spencer. Pp. 213. Upon examination, the widely recognized stylistic discontinuity of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella resolves itself into a pattern. What some critics have seen as immaturity in many of the early sonnets proves to be conventionality, and many of the final sonnets exhibit the same trait. But while the conventionality of the early group (1-51) is en­ livened by Sidney's wit and originality, that of the final group (87- 108) is often sterile and lifeless. Furthermore, the vigor of the middle sonnets (52-86) springs less from a break with convention than it does from a positive attack upon it; convention is constantly the measure. Actually there are two conventions—of literature and of love— and both are essentially Platonic. Although neither Platonism nor Neo- Platonism rejects the role of sexual love for purposes of procreation within the bounds of law or custom, Astrophil's love for a married woman can be morally and ethically justified only if it remains Platonic. As a Platonic lover, he must sublimate his passion and direct his own thoughts and those of his lady to the higher beauty. As a poet, his duty, as prescribed by Sidney in The Defence of Poesie, is similar. He must transform the "brasen world" of nature into the "golden world" of the Ideal. Sidney's own role as poet-author must be clearly separated from Astrophil's as poet-persona. In sonnets 1-51, Sidney makes Astrophil establish himself as one who is fully acquainted with his duty as poet and as lover. Sidney does this by having Astrophil assert the validity of the governing conventions in his debates with himself and by showing him successfully idealizing Stella and his love for her. In sonnet 52, however, Astrophil makes the deliberate choice of appetite over reason, of the Brasen World over the Golden, and thereby acts against his own understanding, so signifying the ultimate corruption of his will. This corruption is further demonstrated in succeeding sonnets in Astrophil's attack upon the conventions and his subversion of them for the purpose of seduction. He has failed both as poet and as lover. By allowing us to witness Astrophil's failure and the suffering which results from it, Sidney has proven himself a right poet, one who turns us to virtue and away from vice. He has affirmed the validity of the conventions which Astrophil has attempted to negate. Astrophil's negation renders the conventions inaccessible to him when he attempts to return to them for solace, and the failure of his attempt is under­ lined by the comparative lack of vitality in the conventionality of the final sonnets. The imagery in the sequence is also primarily conventional, and its main interest lies in the pattern of its use. The major patterns are constructed so that they parallel and underline Astrophil's movement from his attempt to construct the Golden World of the Ideal in the first fifty-one sonnets to his fall into the Brasen World of the rest of the sequence. Four of these patterns, closely related are (1) images asso­ ciated with the idealization of Stella's person; (2) light-dark imagery, associated with the light of the Ideal or its absence; (3) imagery associated with the Platonic hierarchy of the senses, the superior ones being sight, hearing, and mind, and the inferior ones, touch, taste, and smell; and (4) imagery which characterizes Stella's eyes. A separate examination of the songs, which raises questions about the 1598 placement, reveals that they fall into two groups, the iambic songs, 1, 3, 6, and 7, in which Astrophil is abstracting and idealizing his passion as in the early sonnets, and the trochaic songs, 2, 8, 9, 10, and 11, in which the sensual is given rein; the iambic song 5 bridges the gap between the two. This grouping parallels and reinforces the grouping of the sonnets into Golden and Brasen World types. Thus, Sidney's manipulation of the conventions in the songs as well as in the sonnets, reflected as it is in the imagery, action, argument, tone, and style of the sequence, works to help the reader judge Astrophil so that he may choose for himself the path to virtue. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My gratitude goes to the members of my doctoral committee for their kind consideration at all times; but it goes, in particular, to Christopher Spencer for his invaluable guidance, unflagging attention, and ready accessibility during the time in which he acted as my dis­ sertation director, and to Jean Buchert for many things but especially for Ficino, without whom this study could not have taken its present shape. My gratitude also goes to The Southern Fellowships Fund for the grant which in part made possible this dissertation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. SIDNEY AND THE USES OF POETRY 19 III. ASTROPHIL AND THE "GOLDEN" WORLD 45 IV. ASTROPHIL AND THE "BRASEN" WORLD 83 V. SOME PATTERNS OF IMAGERY 130 VI. THE SONGS 171 VII. CONCLUSION 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY 210 iy CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A great deal o£ evidence indicates that for "more than a century after tiis death" Sir Philip Sidney was considered to be the pre-eminent poet of his time.* Though this may no longer be the case, there has been a notable revival of interest in him both as poet and as critic in the twentieth century. William L. Godschalk's "Bibliography of Sidney Studies Since 1935," which cannot be considered complete, lists a total of nine books and thirty-one articles or parts of books on Sidney in the period from 1935 to 1962.^ it was in the latter year that one of the major events in the history of Sidney scholarship occurred, the publication by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, of The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, the definitive edition of William A. Ringler, Jr. For the first time a secure text of Sidney's poetry was available to scholar and poetry-lover alike. In the following year, to complement the Ringler edition of the poems, the Cambridge University Press re­ issued the long out-of-print Feuillerat edition of The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (1917-1926) as The Prose Works of Sir Philip William A. Ringler, ed., "Introduction," The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. xv. All citations from the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney are from this text. OA indicates Old Arcadia; C£ indicates Certain Sonnets. 2 Pp. 352-358 in Kenneth Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman, 2nd ed.
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