Sir Philip Sidney, Defense of Poesy

Sir Philip Sidney, Defense of Poesy  

Genre: the first work of literary criticism in English.

Form: prose, with some portions of verse cited as examples.

Characters: Sidney, in his historical persona as Sir Philip Sidney, poet and courtier [both carefully constructed "roles," so don't treat him as a politically naive truth-teller!]; Edward Wotton, a courtier and friend to Sidney who shared his Continental tour; John Pietro Pugliano, Italian riding master to the Emperor; and all the poets who ever had been.

Summary: Sidney clearly had been contemplating the problem of the poet's role in society for a long time, perhaps since his earliest education in which he would have encounteredPlato's famous banishment of poets from the ideal Republic on the grounds that they could lead the Guardians and citizens to immorality.  It long has been argued that he may have been responding to Stephen Gosson, a Puritain pamphleteer whose "School of Abuse" blamed playwrights and the theatre, in particular, and poets in general, for leading English society astray.  Gosson dedicated the pamphlet to Sidney without asking permission, and some poets at the time suspected Sidney would reply in some fashion.  To compare Gosson's spectacularly unsuccessful patronage appeal with Spenser's for Shepherd's Calendar in that same year (1579).  Based on the aesthetic of "Defense" and what you know about English nobles' sense of propriety with respect to contact with "commoners," how many things did Gosson do wrong that Spenser did right?  In the "Defense," Sidney argues that poets were the first philosophers, that they first brought learning to humanity, and that they have the power to conceive new worlds of being and to populate them with new creatures.  According to Sidney, their "golden" world of possibility is superior to the "brazen" one of historians who must be content with the mere truth of happenstance.  He then defines what he believes to be the essential formal characteristics of the various genres of poetry, and defends poetry against the charge that it is composed of lies and leads one to sin.

Famous "Sidneyisms" you should be able to explain:

"The lawyer saith what men have determined; the historian what men have done.  The grammarian speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest persuade, thereon give artificial rules. . . Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit.  Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done. . . Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden"(956-7).

"[T]he skill of each artificer standeth in the idea or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself.  And that the poet hath that idea is manifest, by delivering them forth in such excellency as he had imagined them.  Which delivering forth also is not wholly imaginative [i.e., fanciful], as we are wont to say by them that build castles in the air; but so far substantially it worketh, not only to make a [poetic character like the Persian conqueror] Cyrus, which had been but a particular excellency as nature might have done, but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyruses, if they will learn aright why and how that maker made him" (957).  [This last passage concisely explains why literary criticism needs to be taught, and often why creative writers can learn from constructive literary criticism--usually of other poets' work.]

"Poetry is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis--that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth--to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture--with this end, to teach and delight" (958).

The first kind of poets, like the psalmist, David, are divinely inspired (958), the second kind is philosophically inspired, and the third sort, "indeed right poets," must be distinguished from those inferior imitators whom Sidney compares to "the meaner sort of painters, who counterfeit only such faces as are set before them" (958).   These are inferior to "the more excellent, who having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon you which is fittest for the eye to see as the constant though lamenting look of Lucretia, when she punished in herself another's fault, wherein he painteth not Lucretia whom he never saw, but painteth the outward beauty of such a virtue" (958).

[Lucretia, a chaste Roman wife, killed herself after the King's son raped her, punishing herself for his crime.  According to Roman tradition, her deed led to the overthrow of the Tarquin dynasty and the establishment of the Roman Republic.]

"[I]t is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet [ . . . ]  But it is that feigning of notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching, which must be the right describing note to know a poet by" (959).

"[A]s Aristotle saith, it is not gnosis but praxis must be the fruit [of teaching].  And how praxis can be, without being moved to practice, it is no hard matter to consider.  The philosopher showeth you the way . . . But this to no man but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive studious painfulness [ . . . ] Now therein of all sciences . . . is our poet the monarch.  For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect to the way, as will entice any man to enter into it.  [ . . . ]  He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the sweet enchanting skill of music; and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.  And, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue" (962-3).

"The poet he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth.  For, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false.  So as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies.  But the poet (as I said before) never affirmeth. [ . . .  so wise readers of poetry] will never give the lie to things not affirmatively but allegorically and figuratively written" (968).

"But our comedians think there is no delight without laughter, which is very wrong, for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight [my emphasis]" [ . . . ]Delight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present.  Laughter hath only a scornful tickling" (971).

"I conjure you all that have the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the nine Muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets, as though they were next inheritors to fools; no more to jest at the reverent title of rhymer; but to believe, with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecians' divinity; to believe, with Bembus [Pietro Bembo], that they were first bringers-in of all civility, to believe with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil" (974).

N.B.: This work has two titles based on the two printed editions.  The first, "Defense of Poesy," uses "poesy" for all literary forms, including lyric, drama, and prose.   The second, "Apology for Poetry," uses "apology" in the sense of the Greek word apologia, or "an argument in defense" of a client.   In both senses, Sidney stands as an advocate for all creative writers at a crucial point in the development of English literature.  The Crown censored all publications, and increasingly banned those which were considered "immoral" as well as those which threatened the Tudor dynasty.  Puritans, like Gosson, though they may have been motivated by strong moral beliefs, also tended to chill the creative environment in which poets worked, driving them into the questionable freedom offered by the protection of the nobles' courts.  (Compare Chaucer's relationship to John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster and father to Bolingbroke [Henry IV]).  Poets remained caught in this uneasy relationship between court and religious critics until Samuel Johnson's era (C18) and the rise of a self-sustaining market relationship among poets, printers, booksellers, and the reading public.