SOURCE: “The Arcadian Rhetoric” in Sidney's Poetry , Harvard University Press, 1965, pp. 60–101.

In the following essay, Kalstone examines the poetry of the Arcadia, and asserts that Sidney's work is more complex than the Arcadia of the Italian poet Sanazzaro.

Sidney's “gallant variety” of verses in the Arcadia divides itself into two groups: eclogues and occasional pieces.¹ The eclogues are to be found clustered between books of the romance, four sets of them joining the five books that make up the Arcadia, and are thus distinguished from the occasional poems that are scattered singly through the text as part of the current of action. To the eclogues, Sidney allots a special function; there he draws most noticeably upon Sannazaro and the framework of the Italian Arcadia, presenting each set of eclogues as a dramatic unit on the model of the Italian pastoral.² The action of the romance halts; the Arcadian...