ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that pervading Sidney’s rivalrous relationship with Petrarch is sensitivity to his own cultural immersion and belatedness as a love poet. Sidney makes clear to his readers, again and again, how well he knows the scope of other, contemporary poets’ writings and the extent of their dependence on writings by predecessors. He emphasizes his familiarity with the cosmopolitan breadth of modern poetic practice, how thoroughly he recognizes the debts of moderns to ancients, and how sharply aware he is of the distance in time between himself and Petrarch. Acknowledging all those things, he seeks by way of response to create a distinctive space for Astrophil and Stella within the heterogeneous canon of current verse, in particular, to signal the differences between his love poems and those of his contemporaries. It is through linking the mythology and mythography of Cupid with the issue of choice that, in the main, he enacts his agonistic ambition.
