The Passion Signified: Imitation and the Construction of Emotions in Sidney and Wroth

Abstract

"LOVING IN TRUTH," begins Astrophil, "and fain in verse my love to show." 1 That he truly loves is here his unquestioned premise, briefly stated as prologue to the real difficulty he is facing. The problem for Astrophil is how to show that love in verse, how to represent that love in a way that will move Stella. The passion precedes the representation of it; it is, syntactically and otherwise, posited as the origin of all that follows in the next 108 sonnets.