Refraining Songs: The Dynamics of Form in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella

Abstract

"Refraining Songs" reappraises the role of the songs in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella as they reveal Sidney's own theoretical views on narrative in lyric and strengthen the case for the 1598 ordering of the poems. These formally diverse lyrics interspersed among the sonnets both narrate the more important events of Astrophil and Stella's affair while also acting as interruptions or extended articulations of Astrophil's overburdened emotional state. This essay reconciles these divergent capacities of the songs, arguing that Sidney uses the songs to create an opposition between narrative and lyric in order to explore narrative's effects upon poetic sequence. Complicated by shifts within and juxtapositions of poetic form in the sequence, narrative itself becomes a lyric refrain as events are written and rewritten, creating a recursive narrativity that Sidney exploits for innovative possibilities of genre.