An Elusive Kiss: The Difficulties of Description in Astrophil and Stella “Sonnet 79” Elise Maddaloni College

In Early Modern English, romantic love played a significant role in literature, and Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella is no exception to that rule. Astrophil and Stella, a collection of 108 sonnets and eleven songs, follows the development of a love affair between the speaker, Astrophil, and his love, Stella. Throughout the sonnets, Astrophil becomes increasingly infatuated with Stella, and in the “Second Song”, the speaker recounts stealing a kiss from Stella. Following this song is a series of sonnets about that kiss, and of those, “Sonnet 79” is one of the most prominent. “Sonnet 79” is remarkable in that, on the surface, the speaker is able to propose innumerable ways of describing Stella's kiss; however, for Sidney, that abundance is actually a sign that he does not know how he can truly describe it. Sidney communicates the speaker's inability to fully express the experience of the stolen kiss through his use of rhetorical devices and other elements.

Still reminiscing the stolen kiss of the “Second Song”, the speaker spends “Sonnet 79” addressing said kiss and dramatically elaborating on it. At the very start of the sonnet, in lines 1-2, Sidney delivers an antanaclasis of the word “sweet”: “Sweet kiss, thy sweets I...