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Loving in Truth Critical Appreciation

1st sem English Major

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826 views

Loving in Truth Critical Appreciation

1st sem English Major

Uploaded by

babavvh47
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Discuss Loving in Truth as a Petrarchan sonnet.

/ Loving in Truth as a typical


love poem. / Critical appreciation of the poem.

Ans. Sir Philip Sidney's Loving in Truth taken from his sonnet series Astrophil and
Stella, is a typical Elizabethan sonnet based on Petrarchan figurative devices. In
fact, it is characteristic piece of Sidney well known sonnet series and adequately
represents his theme of love and impressive technique.

As a Petrarchan form of sonnet, Loving in Truth has love as its central theme.
Sidney, the celebrated ideal courtly poet of the Elizabethan Age, reportedly had a
love relationship with Penelope Devereux, a lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth I. His
Astrophel and Stella tells the story of the poet Astrophel's unrequited love for Stella,
a high-born and virtuous woman. Loving In Truth, The first sonnet from the cycle
conveys the changing emotions of Astrophel, in whose voice the poem is written
toward Stella. The suggested title Loving In Truth implies the poem in genuine or
sincere in love that is genuinely inspired. The poet expresses his eagerness to
delight his ladylove by writing verse on his love. But he tries in vain to possess
sufficient poetic inspiration and find fit words to paint the deep feeling of love: "I
sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe"

As noted above the sonnet deals with love and focuses the importance of
spontaneous feeling of heart. The lover here is all for love and ready to bear all pain
for his lady's pleasure. All that he seeks is to obtain her pity and grace. Here Sidney
packs mute melancholy (the blackest face of woe) as his Stella is far beyond of his
reach. His is a story of unrequited love.

Love truly forms the dignity of the poem. The lover's painful effort and study of
invention fine are intended for her sake. Indeed the poem rings with a lover intimate
feeling and emotion. Love is here an ideal of life that requires selfless dedication and
earnest yearning.

The singleness of emotion that characterizes the Petrarchan sonnet is also distinctly
evident in the present sonnet which is concerned with the emotion of love, rather
dedicated love though graced with the spark of wit here and there. It well echoes the
single and profound emotion of love that Astrophil has for Stella. There is, no doubt,
a transition in the poet's mood from the octave to sestet, but essential unity is
nowhere found missing and the emotional impact remains all through unchangeable.
The poet's tone, inspired with the high ideal of love, is expressive of the singleness
of the feeling.

Although Loving In Truth is a love poem, it is free from the sentimental hyperbolism
or conventional epithets. There is graceful narration of poet's play of wit. The eager
lover expresses his ardent love, with an intellectual in which wit and reason are
perfectly balanced. There is a steady flow of logical sequence of thought to arrive at
the conclusion.

The play of wit is made equally by the use of such figures of speech as the pun, the
personification and so on in the lines below::

"Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;


And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way."

The personification of Invention as Nature's child and Study as step mother is at


once romantic and thought provoking.

The technical feature of such a sonnet is found by Sidney here in Loving In Truth.
The technical purity of 14 lines and the octave- sestet divisions are maintained by
Sidney The octave consists of poet's frantic effort to please his ladylove by writing
love lyrics. The sestet shows his failure and ultimate revelation. In his use of dictions,
metaphorical imagery and epithets are well chosen, simple yet impressive.

"Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow


Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;"

Through a beautiful pun the poet resorts to artificial composition to refresh his
tortured brain by the sweet showers of others' spring. But the words of other's verse
never shoot his purpose and they are stumbling and blocking his inflow of creativity.
Thus the poem becomes an important for its articulation of romantic idealism
exhibited in the muse's last words:

"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write!"

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