Cupid is a fraud...

I think it’s pretty obvious based on the excerpts that we were assigned to read from “Astrophil & Stella,” that he is completely infatuated with her. He’s obsessed, and he knows it because clearly he can’t stop writing about her. I write a lot, and I know I’m obsessing over something when I can sit down and write page after page without even realizing that all of the sudden I’ve written five pages that say pretty much the same thing. That’s what it seems like Astrophil is doing, to me, anyway. (How’s that for reader-response?) For example, in the very first section he says that he partly wants to write this poetry so that Stella may “might take some pleasure of my pain: / Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, / Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain” (lines 2-4). In other words, he is so infatuated with Stella that his love for her is what triggers many of his actions; actions that are demonstrative of both his undying devotion and his utter desperation.

I thought it was interesting how in part 5 he says that “It is most true, what we call Cupid's dart, / An image is, which for ourselves we carve / […] True, and yet true that I must Stella love” (61-62, 70). I took this to signify how often times people try to define “falling in love” as a thing that was “just meant to be,” “fate,” or “Cupid’s dart.” I think what he’s trying to say is that the real (or at least more logical) reason that people “fall in love” is because they have—perhaps subconsciously—constructed certain ideologies for themselves that, in turn, affect who they become attracted too. I’m not sure what post I’m responding to here but I thought it was interesting anyway...!