Selected Writings: Astrophil and Stella the Defense of Poesy and Miscellanious Poems

About this book

This selection includes the full text of the "Defence of Poetry" and "Astrophil and Stella" fully annotated with a selection of the other poems. "When Sidney died " writes Richard Dutton "those who mourned him did so as a hero of Protestant Europe a model of Christian virtue of the Renaissance scholar-poet of the true knight." Dutton corrects the exaggerations in the popular view painting a human fallible and credible figure. He also emerges as a more sympathetic writer losing the coldness of the heroic gloss that normally accompanies him.