Parthenophil and Parthenophe: A Critical Edition

by Barnabe Barnes, Associate Professor Victor A. Doyno M.A. Ph.D. (Editor)

Barnes’s collection of sonnets, madrigals, elegies, and odes was published in 1593 and was the first of such collections to appear since Sir Philip Sidney’s earlier Astrophel and Stella. Like Sidney’s collection, Parthenophil and Parthenophe is a series of protestations of love, here of poems praising Parthenophe’s beauty or persuading her to grant her love to Parthenophil. The volume concludes with a triple sestina in which the lover casts a magic spell on his mistress and consummates his love. Barnes’s sonnets and other poems represent the combination of conventional Petrarchan idealism with the classical attitude toward eroticism. A long- neglected minor masterpiece of Elizabethan literature, Barnes’s work emerges here in its first modern edition as a carefully structured trans­formation of the Petrarchan genre which combines historical importance with intrinsic worth. In addition to his careful editing of the text, Mr. Doyno has provided substantial commentary on the poems, dealing with previously unknown sources, the rhetorical background, and various problems of interpretation. In addition, in his lengthy introduction he deals with the relevant biography of Barnes, his probable intentions in composing the sonnets, and the classical and renaissance background for the poems. Mr. Doyno’s introduction is the first detailed critical evaluation of Barnes’s work, and, like his edition of Parthenophil and Parthenophe, is certain to stand as definitive for some time to come.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1593

About the author

1571-1609

Barnabe Barnes was an English poet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnabe...

Reviews

[˗ˏˋ n a j v a ˊˎ˗ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Would I were changed but to my mistress' gloves,
That those white lovely fingers I might hide,
That I might kiss those hands which mine heart loves;
Or else that chain of pearl (her neck's vain pride)
Made proud with her neck's veins, that I might fold
About that lovely neck, and her paps tickle;
Or her to compass like a belt of gold;
Or that sweet wine which down her throat doth trickle,
To kiss her lips and lie next at her heart,
Run through her veins, and pass by pleasure's part.”