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Nzinga Dixon
AP English Literature & Composition
Dr. Holt
8 May 2016
Conceptual Love
Poets have grappled with writing about love and relationships since the conception of
love poetry but Petrarch and his subsequent contributors, including Phillip Sidney, have a
specific style of writing about love conceptually rather than intimately. Phillip Sidneys poem,
Astrophil and Stella 5, is more about the concept of love, its definition and the role it should play
in life, rather than actually being in a relationship and the feelings of the parties that are
involved. The idea of poets writing about love as a theory rather than their actual relationships
seems to be a common thread in Petrarchist poems. Even when poets like Petrarch, Dante,
Sidney and Shakespeare talk about relationships in their poems they always seem very one sided
and solely theoretical. In nearly all of Petrarchs poems Love and Nature are personified as if
they are the subjects of discussion yet the beloved barely ever receives any action. This only goes
to show that the poets were more focused on general concepts of Love and Nature than the
feelings of or their relationship to the beloved. For example, In Petrarchs sonnet 102 he says, If
no love is, O God what feel I so?/ And if love is, what thing and which is he?/ If love be good,
from whennes cometh my woo (Petrarch 1-4). In this sonnet, Petrarch asks hypothetical
questions of God about and tries to describe love but he only briefly mentions the beloved and
this again shows the poets dedication to love solely as a concept. I wrote my poem along the
same lines as Sidneys such that I am also analyzing and defining what love should be like

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throughout my poem. The idea of being somewhat detached from their poems by writing about
love theoretically rather than intimately is a prevalent theme throughout all of Petrarchism.
Sidneys poem, Astrophil and Stella 5, is about the concept of love, its fundamentals and
what love in general should be about. Sidney says, It is most true that eyes are formed to serve/
The inward light; and that the heavenly part/ Ought to be king so the inward light or
heavenly part should be what a real relationship is centered around (Sidney 1-3). Sidney is
suggesting that people should try and direct feelings of love to their own soul and faiths but he is
also saying that not everyone does this. He says, from whose rules who do swerve/ Rebels to
Nature strive for their own smart./It is most true, what we call Cupids dart,/An image is, which
for ourselves we carve which explains how some dont follow these rules at all (Sidney 3-6).
Rebels to Nature, as Sidney calls them, are people who have ignored the rules of Nature and
instead they try to use their own intelligence to justify love. Most people follow the rules of
Cupids love and see themselves as an image of this self-made superficial love. This brand of
love is superficial because it is not focused around the inward light but instead the man made
idea of Cupids love. Sidney calls the followers of Cupids love fools [who] adore in temple of
[our] heart and they will continue to follow their rules until the good god, Cupid himself
makes them suffer (Sindey 7-8). People eventually suffer if they dont follow the rules of Nature.
Sidney continues to say that beauty, especially that which is determined by humans, can
sometimes be a disguise. On earth, people are only visiting and everyones soul should
eventually leave the earth in order to return to their heavenly part. Sidney ends the poem by
saying True; and yet true, that I must Stella love (Sidney 14). Even though all of these things
about love are true, he still has to love Stella through both Cupids love and Natural love. None
of Sidneys poem addresses love for another person explicitly except for the last line and even in

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the last line there is no description of the beloved or their feelings. This poem is an excellent
example of poets of Petrarchism writing predominantly conceptually about love and its ethics but
not delving too deeply into their personal feelings.
The poem that I wrote called, Natures Solace draws on the same idea of writing
conceptually as Astrophil and Stella 5. I got my inspiration for writing my poem from Sidneys
frankness and use of the word true to define Cupids love versus Natural love. Thus instead of
using true I used antonyms of the word like fraudulent, deceitful, and counterfeit to
prove the same point. I tried to imitate Sidneys writing style by not dwelling to deeply into
specific personal affairs and talking mostly about just love in general. I wrote, we have learned
to look beyond just lust/ Deep into a realm of Natures solace to show how lust is a part of
superficial love but if one chose to look beyond that layer they could truly be invested in real or
Natural love. I also end my poem in a similar way to Sidney by saying True; and yet true, is
this human sentiment. In writing this poem I wanted to show how styles of Petrarchism, and
Sidney in specific, can inspire others to also write theoretically about love as it has definitely
happened in the past.
Petrarch and Dante set the stage for poets to come to write about love but the way that
they wrote about love as a theory also drew people like Phillip Sidney to write about love
theoretically. It is hard to say where the inspiration for Petrarch and Dante to first write about
love this way came from. It is possible that writing about their personal relationships might have
been frowned upon, maybe they found it too difficult to share their personal feelings or it may
have just been easier for them to write about love in general as it applies to all people. There are
also a few cases like John Donne where poets can do the opposite of Petrarch and speak
explicitly about the beloved, the souls of the parties involved and the speakers relationship to

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the beloved. Even though Donne does not write about love as a concept he is still considered to
be under the umbrella of Petrarchism. Donne proves that Petrarchism can be defined in many
ways but most tend to follow in Petrarch and Dantes footsteps. However this theme of writing
about love conceptually among poets came to be, it definitely remains a defining quality of
Petrarchan love poetry today.

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Works Cited
Petrarch. Sonnet 102. Petrarchean Love Poems. Handout. A.P. English Literature. Lauren
Holt. The Galloway School. 20 April 2016.
Sidney, Phillip. Astrophil and Stella 5. Petrarchean Love Poems. Handout. A.P. English
Literature. Lauren Holt. The Galloway School. 20 April 2016.