Obtaining Grace: Poetic Language and the Language of Reform in Astrophil and Stella
This article examines the treatment of grace in Sidney’s sonnet-sequence, Astrophil and Stella, to interrogate the place of secular lyric within Protestant poetics. Although Protestant poetics is now understood to cover a range of positions—from a purist model of language that emphasizes the unbridg...
| Published in: | Reformation |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
2021
|
| In: |
Reformation
Year: 2021, Volume: 26, Issue: 1, Pages: 23-41 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance KDE Anglican Church NBK Soteriology |
| Further subjects: | B
semiotic
B Grace B Astrophil and Stella B Philip Sidney B Protestant poetics B signifier |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article examines the treatment of grace in Sidney’s sonnet-sequence, Astrophil and Stella, to interrogate the place of secular lyric within Protestant poetics. Although Protestant poetics is now understood to cover a range of positions—from a purist model of language that emphasizes the unbridgeable gap between a divine Logos and fallen human words (a “cult of the signified”), to a more sacramental model that sees humanity’s world and words as suffused with the spirit (a “cult of the sign”)—both share an assumption that life is meaningful and that God makes it so. Sidney follows Petrarch in breaking with these models, using poetic language and poetic form (a “cult of the signifier”) to show how much more there is to language than signification alone. Ultimately, grace and God are to be found as much in rhythm, rhyme, wordplay, music, and sound, as in those elements of language that signify. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1752-0738 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Reformation
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/13574175.2021.1898234 |