Compare and Contrast the Ways Philip Sidneys Astrophil...

Introduction In the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century, new ideas and motives in arts, inspired by the past but concerned with new concepts, appeared. Building on a courtly love, some writers and poets attempted to discuss the nature of love by commenting on gender issues and sexuality (MacArthur, 1989). Thus, love conventions, based on a passion or an unrequited love, would change, challenging social norms and discussing male and female sexualities. On the one hand, the authors explore male sexualities and a desire for a woman. Phillip Sidneys narrator is a lustful, musing about his chosen woman, her body and a sexual intercourse. Miltons character Comus resembles a similar character when attempting to seduce the Lady, and†¦show more content†¦This male desire is given devious and egotistic connotations, because it overcomes reason, and becomes preoccupied with Stellas body. Stella, on the other hand, is personified Love and Virtue but that body grant to us (AS, sonnet 52.14). However, Astrophil remains lustful, and when he is denied her body, he views her as too too cruel (AS, sonnet 2.3-4), and becomes resentful. John Milton: Comus, A Mask presented at Ludlow Castle (1634) Miltons mask, presenting notions of chastity and a rampant sexuality, uses Comus, a devious character, to address the issue of physical desire. Comus, a passionate and sexual necromancer, captures the Lady, brings her to his pleasure palace, and attempts to seduce her through magic and a persuasion to be not coy (C, p.44). Similarly to Sidneys poet, Comus experiences a narcissistic temptation of a bodily pleasure, which makes him more emotional than his female victim. By using a phallic symbol, his wand, he enchants the Lady, and offers her food and drink to increase her appetite and her desire. Her serve the drink in a cup, symbolically representing a well of sexual pleasures. Thus, his idea of passion is of natural impulses, projected through the body rather than the mind. But the Lady, just like Stella, recognises a higher nature of her virtues, and thus she defeats the Comus. Hence, the two characters represent two opposites: body and mind, desire and rationality, and lust and m orality. The author