Compare and Contrast the Ways Philip Sidney s Astrophil...
Introduction
In the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century, new ideas and motives in arts, inspired by the past
but concerned with new concepts, appeared. Building on a courtly love, some writers and poets
attempted to discuss the nature of love by commenting on gender issues and sexuality (MacArthur,
1989). Thus, love conventions, based on a passion or an unrequited love, would change,
challenging social norms and discussing male and female sexualities. On the one hand, the authors
explore male sexualities and a desire for a woman. Phillip Sidney s narrator is a lustful, musing
about his chosen woman, her body and a sexual intercourse. Milton s character Comus resembles a
similar character when attempting to seduce the Lady, and ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net
...
This male desire is given devious and egotistic connotations, because it overcomes reason, and
becomes preoccupied with Stella s body. Stella, on the other hand, is personified Love and Virtue
but that body grant to us (AS, sonnet 52.14). However, Astrophil remains lustful, and when he is
denied her body, he views her as too too cruel (AS, sonnet 2.3 4), and becomes resentful.
John Milton: Comus, A Mask presented at Ludlow Castle (1634)
Milton s mask, presenting notions of chastity and a rampant sexuality, uses Comus, a devious
character, to address the issue of physical desire. Comus, a passionate and sexual necromancer,
captures the Lady, brings her to his pleasure palace, and attempts to seduce her through magic
and a persuasion to be not coy (C, p.44). Similarly to Sidney s poet, Comus experiences a
narcissistic temptation of a bodily pleasure, which makes him more emotional than his female
victim. By using a phallic symbol, his wand, he enchants the Lady, and offers her food and drink
to increase her appetite and her desire. Her serve the drink in a cup, symbolically representing a
well of sexual pleasures. Thus, his idea of passion is of natural impulses, projected through the body
rather than the mind. But the Lady, just like Stella, recognises a higher nature of her virtues, and
thus she defeats the Comus. Hence, the two characters represent two opposites: body and mind,
desire and rationality, and lust and morality. The author
... Get more on HelpWriting.net ...