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RESEARCH PRODUCT

‘Oft turning others' leaves' : la contrainte de l' imitatio dans les sonnets anglais des XVIe et XVIIe siècles

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In the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, imitation was not usually considered a constraint by poets. Yet Sir Philip Sidney, in his sonnet cycle Astrophil and Stella, seems to advocate a new form of poetic writing based on personal experience and originality, even if he uses the traditional device of impossible love imitated from Petrarchan sonneteers. Stella appears as a new constraint, and her absence and coldness trigger a reflection on the impossibility to write.