Customer Reviews (2)

Splendid
What a great book! This is biography at its best. Katherine Duncan-Jones succeeds in that most difficult of tasks - writing a biographical work that is at the same time scholarly and amusing. She paints a convincing portrait of this gifted, generous and tormented individual,who was also remarkably tolerant and warm-hearted for the times in which he lived. Sidney emerges from this book as a sophisticated and highly intelligent man who felt bitter and frustrated because of the unfair treatment he received at the hands of a capricious Queen, in whose service he nevertheless lost his very life. Altogether, I found Sidney very different from the typical Elizabethan - his dislike of hunting as a cruel, bloody sport, and his enlightened views on women are some of the traits in which we recognize a modern mind. And, nevertheless, after his absurd death he became a sort of hero or role-model for his contemporaries - many of whom hadn't recognized his worth while he lived. Duncan-Jones writes elegantly and in an entertaining style, quoting extensively from Sidney's writings as well as from those of his relatives and friends. I completely disagree with another reviewer, who criticized the "extraneous material" and the quantity of facts and persons in the book. No material is extraneous here: everything is relevant, either to Sidney's life or to the social and political context in which it must be viewed. As to the amount of characters - well, think about your own life: if someone were to write your biography, how many characters would there be? Four of five? I wouldn't trust a biography that didn't have many characters (even counting only the significant ones). After all, every person's life is complex - and full of other persons. All in all, this book is highly recommended - you'll gain a great awareness of an exceptional man.

Disjointed, difficult to follow.
Out of print? Good! This book is so filled with bits of extraneous material that it is almost impossible to follow. Despite considerable interest in the subject matter, and despite returning to the book four orfive times, I could not distinguish which facts pertained to Sir PhilipSidney and which to the hundreds of people with whom he came into contactwithout almost graphing out the characters. It was worse than any Russiannovel. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume is designed to guide students of Sidney through the labyrinth of Sidney scholarship now available. Within the framework of a detailed bibliography and an account of Sidney's fluctuating reputation, it presents some of the more representative and stimulating studies of recent years. The essays have been selected both for their individual qualities and because, taken together, they cover a wide range of Sidney's art, and illustrate a variety of approaches to it. The essays should, like the texts they study, stimulate in their readers debate, argument, and real engagement with Sidney's masterpieces. ... Read more

Book Description
The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources onmajor figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to awriter's work, enabling students and researchers to read these sourcesdirect.Download Description
The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read these sources direct. ... Read more

Book Description
The structure of Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is governed by a distinctive and complex set of proportions, found also in the sonnet sequences of Fulke Greville and Robert Sidney written under its influence.For all these works to be ordered around the same set of proportions indicates a remarkable degree of careful planning and precise execution, and in turn affects their meaning. The tremendous effort of constructing the sequences according to intricate mathematical patterns suggests that the patterns themselves held a particular significance, one that requires investigation for the light it throws on these authors' intentions in composition.In this study Tom Parker reveals cosmological ideas implicit in the form of Astrophil and Stella, ideas which not only undermine much of the romantic and biographically-based criticism of the sequence, but call into question how we should read the sonnet sequences that were influenced by Sidney, both within and beyond his immediate circle. As well as those of Greville and Robert Sidney, the book looks in detail at the sonnet sequences of Giordano Bruno, Mary Wroth, Henry Constable, Barnabe Barnes, and Michael Drayton, to determine the extent to which the sonnet vogue of the 1590s incorporated Sidney's broader cosmological concerns. ... Read more