Sidney, Philip

A Defence of Poetry
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    A Defence of Poetry
    Sir Philip Sidney
    Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    ASIN: 0199110220

    Book Description

    Often seen as a key to understanding Elizabethan poetry, Sidney's persuasive treatise follows the rules of rhetoric in presenting evidence of the virtues of poetry. Sidney argues with wit and irony that poetry is the art which best teaches what is good and true. This seems a fitting argument for this prominent experimental poet who himself is said to have represented 'life and action good and great'.
    Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
    Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    • "As what my heart still sees, thou canst not spy?"
    Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
    Philip Sidney
    Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    Similar Items:
    1. The Faerie Queene (Penguin Classics)
    2. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia : The Old Arcadia (Oxford World's Classics)
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    5. The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)

    ASIN: 0192840800

    Book Description

    This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Sidney's poetry and prose - all the major writing, complemented by letters and elegies - to give 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 31 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.

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars "As what my heart still sees, thou canst not spy?".......2004-03-10

    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.
    Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry and Astrophil and Stella: Texts and Contexts
    Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    • A well-priced and reliable classroom text
    Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry and Astrophil and Stella: Texts and Contexts
    Philip Sidney
    Manufacturer: College Publishing
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    5. An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction (Oxford World's Classics)

    ASIN: 0967912113

    Book Description

    This edition presents together Sir Philip Sidney's response to the many attacks on poetry current in early modern England, An Apology for Poetry, and his path-breaking sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. The introduction provides biographical and historical contexts for reading Sidney's works, and to help students explore how the Apology arises from and intervenes in the "Quarrel over Poetry," this volume provides substantial excerpts from such texts as Plato's Republic, Scaliger's Poetics, Gosson's The School of Abuse, and Richard Wiles's A Disputation Concerning Poetry (the first extended discussion of poetry in Englad). This edition also includes excerpts from Sidney's letters to his brother, Robert, and his friend, Sir Edward Denny. All the texts are newly edited, annotated, and modernized.

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars A well-priced and reliable classroom text.......2005-07-21

    Has Astrophil and Stella as well as the Apology for Poetry, and contextualizes the Apology well with selections from other classical and renaissance writing about the value of poetry. A good, clean text. Recommended for classes.
    The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia : The Old Arcadia (Oxford World's Classics)
    Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
    • Ian Myles Slater on: Multiple Identities and Versions
    • A monument of dullness?
    The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia : The Old Arcadia (Oxford World's Classics)
    Philip Sidney
    Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    ASIN: 019283956X

    Book Description

    Philip Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his `Old' Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. The book, which he called 'a trifle, and that triflingly handled', reflects their youthful vitality. The `Old' Arcadia tells a romantic story in a manner comparable to that of Shakespeare's early comedies. It is divided into five `Acts', and abounds in lively speeches, dialogues, and quasi-dramatic tableaux. Two young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, disguise themselves as an Amazon and a shepherd to gain access to the Arcadian Princesses, who have been taken into semi-imprisonment by their father to avoid the dangers foretold by an oracle. As a vehicle for Sidney's prophetic ideas about English versification, the `Old' Arcadia also includes over seventy poems in a wide variety of metres and genres. In clarity, symmetry, and coherence the `Old' version is greatly superior both to the ambitious but unfinished `New' Arcadia and the amalgamated, `composite' version, a hybrid monster which Sidney himself never envisaged.

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on: Multiple Identities and Versions .......2004-10-05

    "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" is a book that has been in and out of fashion for about four centuries. It is a story of disguised princes, an impersonated princess, infatuated shepherds, and gender and identity confusions on a rather large scale, all set in a strikingly English version of ancient Greece. It was written in a mixture of prose and verse by the Elizabethan courtier, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), beginning in 1579, supposedly to amuse his sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. (Hence the book's title; the Sidney family itself was recent upper-gentry rather than old nobility, but the received title may have been as much a selling point for the original publisher as personal snobbery.) It seems in fact to have been part of an ambitious project for elevating English, a second- or third-rate language in a Europe dominated by literature in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish.

    It was a key text for English society in the seventeenth century, and received a variety of political and cultural readings -- a long story in itself, involving King Charles I and John Milton, among others. Although Sidney had offered himself as a champion of Elizabeth's officially Calvinist Church, some Puritans tended to find both poetry and fiction at best a distraction, at worst a threat, and the "Arcadia" combined them; not to mention the erotic element. The resulting debate over the "Arcadia," transferred from theological-moral to aesthetic frames of reference, continues; for some critics, liking this book is itself a Bad Thing. Of course, there are those who simply don't like it; nothing appeals to every taste.

    As originally published in 1590, it was a fragment, in two and a half books, breaking off in mid-story (Book III, Chapter 29), where the author left his revisions when he went to the Netherlands, and his death fighting the Spanish, in a self-assumed role as the Protestant Knight-Errant. (There is an on-line version of this text, in the original spelling, transcribed by Richard Bear, at Renascence Editions.) Its publication came near the beginning of several decades of staggering importance in English literature, which included Christopher Marlowe's major works, and those of Shakespeare, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Donne, among others.

    The 1593 edition, in five books, was more complete, with a conclusion presented as being drawn from an earlier draft, edited to conform to Sidney's alterations. This was undoubtedly true, for, even if no other evidence had survived, the handling of these texts gave rise to a dispute between the Countess and one of her fellow editors, and the additions did not quite join with the previously printed section, leaving plot-lines dangling. (This version, likewise in Elizabethan spelling, is available as an e-book from Kessinger; in that edition, the gap is on page 453.) Later printings included one or another (or both) of two more-or-less authorized bridge passages, linking up the unfinished original part of Sidney's revised and expanded narrative to the old conclusion. (There was a 1983 facsimile edition of the 1598 printing, from Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, apparently still available.) The original "old" version was later assumed to be lost, with Sidney's manuscripts.

    This 1593 version of the work has been edited twice in recent years. First, by Maurice Evans, as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia," now in the Penguin Classics series (included 1987; originally for the Penguin English Library, 1977), for the general reader, complete with the longer of the two "bridge" sections, and useful, but limited, notes. Second, by Victor Skretkowicz, as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The New Arcadia)," a critical edition from Oxford University Press (1987), more useful for scholars and students, but probably less attractive to others. The Penguin version is probably the more widely read of the two, and, having read and referred to it for over twenty-five years, I think that it will serve the interested reader well for most purposes. (Beyond the great advantage of being in print....)

    Besides the semi-offical bridge passages, other hands offered supplements and sequels to the 1593 version, some of which have recently come in for new attention. The series "Women Writers in English 1350-1850" includes "A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's *Arcadia*" by Anna Weamys, edited by Patrick Colborn Cullen (1994); this represents a mid-seventeenth-century Royalist reading. An interesting critical approach is offered by Elizabeth A. Spiller in "Speaking for the Dead: King Charles, Anna Weamys, and the Commemorations of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia," available on-line.

    The book's popularity faded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly with the rise of the modern novel as a preferred type of narrative fiction. Although it still had some readers and admirers, the romantic essayist and critic William Hazlitt called it "one of the great monuments of the abuse of intellectual power." Hazlitt's antipathy was in part a legitimate reaction to types of prose and verse he found overblown, in part a sign of a chronological cultural gap; the temporal equivalent of despising foreign literatures as being, well, so foreign.

    Sidney was one of the key figures of the "English Renaissance" -- the (by European standards) delayed flowering of literature in England in the 1580s and 1590s (and several decades thereafter), most of which he didn't live to see, but which he promoted by propaganda and example. An aspect of the "new learning" of the Renaissance which doesn't get a lot of emphasis in standard textbooks was the popularity of the late (Hellenistic and Roman) romance in classical Greek; novels of love and adventure, often involving shepherds, disguised nobles, and lost princesses (or at least missing heiresses). The most widely read example of this genre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the brief "Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus, but in earlier times there were equal or greater favorites; for example, the long and complex adventure story, "Aethiopica" by Heliodorus (first English translation by Thomas Underdowne, 1587). Their Renaissance vogue produced a series of imitations across Europe, most notably Jacopo Sannazaro's "Arcadia" (1502) and Jorge de Montemayor's "La Diana" (1558?). These were themselves international sensations; Sidney was trying to bring English literature into the (for him) modern age, just as, say, Coleridge, was trying to do in his day -- or Hazlitt, for that matter.

    Maybe Sidney's example had nothing to do with the appearance of Spenser or Shakespeare as major poets; but Spenser certainly didn't think so, and some of Shakespeare's plays show every sign of being aimed at an audience that had enjoyed and absorbed the "Arcadia" and its various lesser imitators.

    Beginning in 1909, the situation was complicated by the rediscovery (by Bertram Dobell) of manuscript copies of what came to be known to scholars as the "Old Arcadia" -- the complete first version, very differently arranged, with some different characterizations of the protagonists. It was not actually "lost," just ignored. This shorter, simpler, "unpublished" work, although not printed, turns out to have had a fair circulation among the Elizabethan elite, in a sort of ruling-class *samizdat*. First printed in 1926, as part of a multi-volume edition of Sidney's works, it was acclaimed by some critics -- including its editor, Albert Feuillerat -- as the true, preferred, version. Sidney's extensive revisions were dismissed as an abandoned experiment in unfortunate elaboration, and the 1593 edition as a sad botch, a pieced-together work without artistic merit.

    Others -- notably C.S. Lewis -- championed the 1593 "New" Arcadia as that closest to the author's considered intent, and a work of actual historical importance. In this view, Sidney's most radical change -- opening in the middle of the action, and using his original first part as an inset story, or "flashback" -- was a serious attempt at classicism, modeled on Homer, Virgil, and Heliodorus, not a product of muddled thinking. Editors of anthologies and volumes of "selected works" have often resorted to providing selections from both redactions.

    The "Old Arcadia" was critically re-edited by Jean Robertson for Oxford University Press in 1973 as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia)," and, again, in a popular edition, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones for the World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 1985; with new bibliography, 1994); for some reason, this out-of-print edition currently appears on Amazon with an image of a volume of Jonathan Swift(!).

    The Duncan-Jones text was reprinted in 1999 in the re-designed Oxford World's Classics series, and this version is in print (for now). The cover title of this edition is simply "The Old Arcadia," but Amazon, following the publisher's own web site, lists it as "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia: The Old Arcadia" (and variations). Both are, of course, legitimate, but this is a little confusing.

    The [Oxford] World's Classics "Old Arcadia" is a good companion to the Penguin "New Arcadia" -- and I am not going to take sides on which of Sidney's versions is "better."

    4 out of 5 stars A monument of dullness?.......2000-08-24

    T.S. Eliot labelled Sidney's Arcadia as a "monument of dullness," and about 100 pages into the book, I felt inclined to agree with his assessment. Sidney was a poet first and foremost, and even he admitted to his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, that this particular work was but "a trifle."

    Yet, surprisingly, I found myself getting captivated by the plot of two princes disguised as shepherds to win the girls of their dreams (in the process, of course, they also win girls -- and guys -- of their nightmares). The somewhat stilted (even by Renaissance standards) language makes it difficult to plod through at times, but the plot is interesting and keeps your attention -- and that's ultimately what counts.

    Re: this edition, it is one of the few good editions of the original "Old" Arcadia around. Sidney revised the work during his lifetime and his friend and biographer, Fulke Greville, later published a bizarre composite of the old and revised versions that for centuries stood as the definitive "Arcadia". K. Duncan-Jones provides a clean text with useful scholarly apparatus. One caveat: in my edition, pp. 297-306 were *missing*, mistakenly replaced by a double-printed pp. 307-316. This is an annoyance for someone who is reading the book as a scholar, which I believe represents the majority readership of the book, as I can't imagine casual readers picking it up for bedstand reading!
    All in all, a fun work and better than the first act leads one to believe!
    Classic Hundred All-Time Favorite Poems
    Average customer rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    • A great resource
    • Readers are AWful not AWEful
    • Embarrassingly bad readings
    • Absolute garbage
    • One Hundred Poems Murdered
    Classic Hundred All-Time Favorite Poems
    Sir Thomas Wyatt , Sir Walter Ralegh , Sir Philip Sidney , Christopher Marlowe , William Shakespeare , John Donne , Ben Jonson , Robert Herrick , George Herbert , Thomas Carew , Edmund Waller , John Milton , Sir John Suckling , Richard Lovelace , and Andrew Marvell
    Manufacturer: Highbridge Audio
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    Customer Reviews:

    4 out of 5 stars A great resource.......2007-05-18

    I love listening to this cassette while I drive! I think the commentary is first rate, insightful and learned. I find the readers, who are generally great poets in their own right, sensitive and the readings clear and nuanced.

    1 out of 5 stars Readers are AWful not AWEful.......2006-09-26

    Every review here is correct. The readers are amazingly inept. It's hard to believe that the publisher thought this was working. Any average, passionate, good reader would have done so much better. It's very sad. I really wanted to like this work.

    1 out of 5 stars Embarrassingly bad readings.......2006-01-14

    In this age of sight and sound, one might hope for a renewed interest in poetry read aloud. After all, your average Ipod can store all the world's great poetry. Any such prospect will quickly be extinguished if there are many productions as bad as this one. At first I thought the readers had been chosen in accordance with some manic diversity template, without the slightest concern for whether they could actually read poetry with even minimal competence. In fact, this project was not ruined by political correctness (though that would be typical these days). Instead, the readers are poets themselves. This is a perennially tempting, and invariably bad, idea. The gift of writing poetry is utterly distinct from the gift of reading it. (Perhaps this is the one arena where the deconstructionists are right: here, the "reader" is as important as the writer.) The truths, and the feelings embodied in these poems would be far better conveyed by professional actors or readers; o for a Derek Jacoby, or a Kenneth Branagh, or a Michael York, to substitute for these awful readers. Give these discs to your child in high school if you want to ensure that he or she will never, ever want to read, or hear, another poem.

    1 out of 5 stars Absolute garbage.......2004-11-05

    I can't believe that anyone found a good word to say about this production of poetic vandalism. It's more than bad, it's criminal,and I, for one, would certainly agree that some of the readers sound as if they might have recently escaped from some institution. How bad is it? Well, I've bought more than one set, which might sound contradictory. However, the reason that one set wasn't enough is that I keep giving my cassettes away as warnings, as jokes, and just to share what must be the absolutely worst set of readings ever recorded. This, of course, means that I have to replace them, because something this bad is precious. Anyway, to be more specific, the problem is with the reading of the poems. To be fair, the best of the of the lot reach mediocrity, but the worst....well, they bring a new meaning to "apalling." Some ot the readers do try, and some of them have a vague idea of how to read poetry, but some of them, one with a Pulitizer prize for poetry! sound like they're reading the yellow pages in a language they don't understand. Do yourself a favor. Unless you delight in the perverse, or would like to have something to contribute to the Guiness Book of Records, don't buy this set.

    1 out of 5 stars One Hundred Poems Murdered.......2003-11-28

    What could be an acceptable reading of standards is degraded by sophomoric introductions.
    Don't buy this, unless for skeet shooting.
    Librese Del Cyncer: Cancer Free
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      Librese Del Cyncer: Cancer Free
      Sidney J. Winawer , Moshe Shike , and Philip Bashe
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      Great Sonnets (Dover Thrift Editions)
      Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
      • Great intro and survey of sonnets
      • Great Bathtub Reading
      • The sonnet - yes
      • a fine collection of familiar sonnets
      • quick collection of sonnets
      Great Sonnets (Dover Thrift Editions)
      William Shakespeare , William Blake , George Gordon Lord Byron , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , John Milton , Sir Philip Sidney , Edmund Spenser , and William Wordsworth
      Manufacturer: Dover Publications
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      Similar Items:
      1. English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions)
      2. Essay on Man and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
      3. English Victorian Poetry: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions)
      4. Lyric Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
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      ASIN: 0486280527

      Book Description

      Treasury of over 170 English and American sonnets by more than 70 poets, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?", Milton's "On His Blindness," Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," many more by Spenser, Sidney, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Longfellow, Yeats, Frost, Poe, etc.

      Customer Reviews:

      5 out of 5 stars Great intro and survey of sonnets.......2007-01-10

      I needed a little reference with sonnet examples.
      This fit the bill, and had some savory treats as well.
      I am a bit time-greedy with my poetry reading, and a sonnet
      is a fantastic way to get some of the best Shakespeare,
      Shelley, Longfellow, Hardy, Frost, etc. distilled down
      to a minute, even reading slowly.
      It's great to flick open to a page
      and see some masterful language on a time budget.
      If you have little time, or haven't read poetry
      for a while, this great little tome is fresh
      entertainment. Read Shakespeare sonnets aloud
      to the missus, and you'll both be entertained.
      The sonnet bites back at the sound-bite!
      No batteries needed, no compatibility problems,
      no cell-tower fade on the train.
      I love little books.. Try some today!

      5 out of 5 stars Great Bathtub Reading.......2005-11-27

      Bertie Wooster can sing the latest Broadway melody while he scrub brushes his back, but I prefer reading poetry aloud in my acoustically-correct, ceramic-tiled bath. And I've discovered the perfect book for it: Dover's Thrift Edition of Great Sonnets.

      It is from this small volume that I've learned that the world is charged with the grandeur of God ("God's Grandeur," Hopkins), that lust in action is a waste of shame ("Th' Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame," Shakespeare), and that listening to my lover's breathing while pillowed upon her breast beats looking at that lone, cold, bright and steadfast star any old day ("Bright Star," Keats).

      And that's not all. This thin volume of sonnets is chock-full of other such keen observations.

      For example, how does Wordsworth ("Surprised by Joy") manage to convey so economically that fleeting feeling of joy accidentally experienced by a man mourning the death of a loved one, that is immediately followed by his feeling of guilt for having felt it, which makes us feel how quickly times passes?

      How does Archibald MacLeish reduce a cataclysmic event as large as the end of the world into so few choice words that when the circus big top blows off you feel as if the top of your head has blown off with it? ("The End of the World")

      How can someone say so much in so few lines and so few words? Sixteen lines to be exact, with five strong beats or stresses per line-no more and no less-and a very exacting rhyme scheme. I don't know. I'm usually given to such wordiness that it would take me a warehouse the size of a state university filled with three-ring binders to tell you, and I still couldn't begin to touch the truth of it. However, that poets can do it never ceases to astonish me.

      What's more, should my dog-eared Dover thrift edition ever fall by accident into the tub, I can cheaply replace it.

      5 out of 5 stars The sonnet - yes .......2005-04-25

      This is yet another great value produced by Dover publication. For a small amount of money one receives ' treasures' that can help sustain one throughout one's lifetime. There are ' immortal poems' in this collection including many of the greatest sonnets ever written , sonnets by Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, the greatest masters of the form.
      I myself came to know many of these sonnets in popular editions by other publishers, editions which have commentary these 'Dover Thrifts' lack. But the poetry is here, and much of it is real food for the soul.
      The collection raises the question why it is that so much great English poetry has been written in this particular form- a question I do not really have the answer to.

      5 out of 5 stars a fine collection of familiar sonnets.......2002-02-05

      A fine collection of sonnets, including many if not most of the most familiar ones. Eight from Shakespeare, four from E. Browning, four from Frost, four from Hopkins, four from Longfellow. For me at least, a more appealing collection than another I recently purchased.

      4 out of 5 stars quick collection of sonnets.......2002-01-22

      this isn't an exhaustive collection of sonnets, nor a serious study. it is simply what it is: a short collection of sonnets that can be purchased cheaply. there are many great sonnets not included and no contemporary sonnets. but it isn't meant to be anything more than what it is. and if you love the sonnet, it's a good collection.
      Defence of Poesie, Astrophil and Stella, and Other Writings
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        Defence of Poesie, Astrophil and Stella, and Other Writings
        Philip Sidney
        Manufacturer: Everyman Paperback Classics
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

        GeneralGeneral | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        ClassicsClassics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        Movements & PeriodsMovements & Periods | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Arthurian Romance | Beat Generation | General | Gothic Revival | Medieval | Modernism | Postmodernism | Renaissance | Romanticism | Surrealism | Victorian
        ClassicsClassics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | British | Chinese | General | German | Greek | Japanese | Latin American | Medieval | Roman | Russian | Spanish & Portuguese | United States
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        ASIN: 0460876597

        Book Description

        Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) was a patron, brilliant courtier, diplomat, scholar, soldier and lover, as well as being the first and one of the most important writers of the English Renaissance; his writings, serious or light-hearted and always experimental, vindicate this high esteem. The sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella is distinguished in the English language as a masterpiece of lyric splendor and a classic of the courtly tradition.
        Astrophel And Stella
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          Astrophel And Stella
          Philip Sidney
          Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Paperback

          ClassicsClassics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
          ASIN: 1419107887

          Book Description

          Ouing In Trueth, And Fayne In Verse My Loue To Show, That She, Deare Shee, Might Take Som Pleasure Of My Paine, Pleasure Might Cause Her Reade, Reading Might Make Her Know.
          Fighting the Underworld
          Average customer rating: Not rated
            Fighting the Underworld
            Philip Sidney Van Cise
            Manufacturer: Greenwood Press Reprint
            ProductGroup: Book
            Binding: Hardcover

            GeneralGeneral | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
            GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
            ASIN: 0837102561

            Authors:

            1. Sienkiewicz, Henryk
            2. Silliman, Ron
            3. Silverberg, Robert
            4. Silvis, Randall
            5. Simenon, Georges
            6. Simic, Charles
            7. Simon, Neil
            8. Simons, Paullina
            9. Simpson, Louis
            10. Sinclair, Iain

            Authors

            Authors