Some additional context to back up my early findings.
https://www.gradesaver.com/astrophil-and-stella
‘Astrophel and Stella 108 sonnets and 11 songs, "Sonnet cycles" were so named because they incorporated linked sonnets that generally described the progressive rise and fall of a love relationship. In other word’s an inferred plot.’
‘Sidney's sonnet sequence also exhibits clear references to Homeric epic, particularly Homer's Penelope.’
‘Some scholars have suggested that the 108 sonnets in the sequence represent the 108 suitors of Penelope, who play a game of striving to hit the Penelope stone in order to determine who can court her.’
This bit is interesting…
‘The 119 poems are also just one number short of the number of months Ulysses spent trying to return home to Penelope in The Odyssey. The structure of the sonnet sequence, falling one month short of achieving Ulysses's journey home, can be seen as an emphasis on Sidney's failure in his pursuit of his own Penelope.’
And here kind of backs up the theory we shouldn't take the text literally as romantic prose...
‘It is generally accepted that the Stella of the poems is Penelope Devereux, later Lady Rich, and that Astrophel (Astrophil) is Sidney himself.’ - 'Critics disagree, however, on whether Sidney's love for Penelope is real or merely literary.’
‘First of all the title is made up of one name of Greek origin and one name of Latin origin: a clear disjunction. The presence of the grammatical copula "and" suggests that the two are a couple (such as "Tristan and Isolde" or "Romeo and Juliet"), which readers immediately realize is not the case. Even the names themselves, meaning "star-lover" and "star," describes a separation between the two: there will always be distance between the stars and those who love them.’
Scheria was where Ulysses was prior to returning home, but Scheria is a mythical location not actual (a place that isn't a place)?
https://www.gradesaver.com/astrophil-and-stella
‘Astrophel and Stella 108 sonnets and 11 songs, "Sonnet cycles" were so named because they incorporated linked sonnets that generally described the progressive rise and fall of a love relationship. In other word’s an inferred plot.’
‘Sidney's sonnet sequence also exhibits clear references to Homeric epic, particularly Homer's Penelope.’
‘Some scholars have suggested that the 108 sonnets in the sequence represent the 108 suitors of Penelope, who play a game of striving to hit the Penelope stone in order to determine who can court her.’
This bit is interesting…
‘The 119 poems are also just one number short of the number of months Ulysses spent trying to return home to Penelope in The Odyssey. The structure of the sonnet sequence, falling one month short of achieving Ulysses's journey home, can be seen as an emphasis on Sidney's failure in his pursuit of his own Penelope.’
And here kind of backs up the theory we shouldn't take the text literally as romantic prose...
‘It is generally accepted that the Stella of the poems is Penelope Devereux, later Lady Rich, and that Astrophel (Astrophil) is Sidney himself.’ - 'Critics disagree, however, on whether Sidney's love for Penelope is real or merely literary.’
‘First of all the title is made up of one name of Greek origin and one name of Latin origin: a clear disjunction. The presence of the grammatical copula "and" suggests that the two are a couple (such as "Tristan and Isolde" or "Romeo and Juliet"), which readers immediately realize is not the case. Even the names themselves, meaning "star-lover" and "star," describes a separation between the two: there will always be distance between the stars and those who love them.’
Scheria was where Ulysses was prior to returning home, but Scheria is a mythical location not actual (a place that isn't a place)?
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