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 | | Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics) by Philip Sidney, Katherine Duncan-Jones (Editor) ISBN-10: 9780192840806 ISBN-10: 0-19-284080-0 ISBN-13: 9780192840806 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-284080-6 Paperback 2002-11-28 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description This authoritative edition brings together a unique combination of Sidney's poetry and prose--all the major writing, complemented by letters and elegies--that reveals the essence of his work and thinking. Born in 1554, Sir Philip Sidney was hailed as the perfect Renaissance patron, soldier, lover, and courtier, but it was only after his untimely death at the age of thirty-one that his literary accomplishments were truly recognized. This collection ranges more widely through Sidney's works than any previous volume and includes substantial parts of both versions of the Arcadia, The Defence of Poesy and the whole of the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella. Supplementary texts, such as his letters and the numerous elegies which appeared after his death, help to illustrate the whole spectrum of his achievements, and the admiration he inspired in his contemporaries. | ||
Reviews | ||
"As what my heart still sees, thou canst not spy?" This review relates to the volume: -Sir Philip Sidney: Major Works-. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Katherine Duncan-Jones. Oxford World's Classics. 2002. 416 pp. This volume contains the works: A dialogue between two shepherds...Wilton/ Two Songs for an Accession Day Tilt/ Philisides, the shepherd good and true/ Sing, neighbours, sing/ The Lady of the May/ Certain Sonnets (32 sonnets)/ The lad Philisides/ The Old Arcadia (Complete)--Four Eclogues, as well as, "What tongue can her perfections tell", and "Since nature's works be good"/Lamon's Tale/Astrophil and Stella (Complete, a sequence of 108 sonnets with 11 numbered songs interspersed!)/ The Defense of Poesy/ 4 poems from -The New Arcadia-/ Sidney's poetic versions of Psalms 6, 13, 23, 29, 38/ Letters (15)/ and 4 Appendices (Henry Goldwell, "Shows Performed, 1581"/ Edmund Molyneux, "A historical remembrance of the Sidneys"/Anon., "The manner of Sir Philip Sidney's Death"/ Three elegies on Sidney from -The Phoenix Nest-, 1593/ Extract from Fulke Greville, 16 October 1586)/ and excellent Notes to the works from pp. 332 - 408. Sir Philip Sidney was born on 30 November 1554 and died on 17 October 1586, from complications of a battle wound, at the age of 31. Perhaps the two best insights into Sidney are supplied by Katherine Duncan-Jones in her "Introduction" -- the first is a quote by the modern critic, Theodore Spencer, who said: "Once the poet has set himself the task of writing an amorous complaint, that deep melancholy which lay beneath the surface of glamour of Elizabethan existence, and which was so characteristic of Sidney himself, begins to fill the conventional form with more than a conventional weight. It surges through the magical adagio of the lines; they have the depth of reverberation, like the sound of gongs beaten under water, which is sometimes characteristic of Sidney as of no other Elizabethan, not even Shakespeare." ["Introduction," p. xi]. The other quote follows some critical introduction by the editor herself: "Tellingly, Sidney's own persona, Philisides, is described on his first appearance as diabled by unhappiness: "Another young shepherd named Philisides...had all this time lain upon the ground at the foot of a cypress tree, leaning upon his elbow, with so deep a melancholy that his senses carried to his mind no delight from any of their objects." But these poems rarely dwell in melancholy. The slight hindrance, sometimes, is Sidney's versification itself. The reader may find it slightly stilted and a bit too poetically "artificial" to meet the rhythm or the rhyme. However, the glories far outweigh the slights. A further help to understanding Sidney might come from applying deeper SYMBOLISM and interpretation to his works, in names and themes. There is this left to end: Love makes the earth water to drink, Love to earth makes water sink; And if dumb things [without speech] be so witty Shall a heavenly grace want pity? [from: -Astrophil and Stella-.] -- Robert Kilgore. | ||