An overview of Sir Philip Sidney in Literary Criticism. Prescribed text for English literature students

1. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
Literary Criticism

2. INTRODUCTION
• 1554-1586
• Elizabethan courtier and a gentleman
• Stephen Gosson accused poetry in his “School of Abuse”- 4 points
1)A man could employ his time more usefully than in poetry
2)Mother of lies
3)Nurse of abuse
4)Plato had rightly banished poets from his ideal commonwealth
• Sidney replied with “Apology for Poetry”
• Sidney replies with reference to ancient classics and Italian writers of renaissance
• GREEK - Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch
• ROMANS - Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid
• Italians - Minturno, Scaliger, Castelvetro

3. THE ARGUMENT OF HIS BOOK
• Apology for Poetry -> “LAUREL CROWN”
• Sidney examines poetry like a logician
• Poetry is superior to :
- philosophy by its charm
- history by its universality
- science by its moral end
- law by its encouragement of human than
civic goodness

4. • Types of poetry pleasing:
• PASTORAL pleases by helpful comments on contemporary events, life in
general.
• ELEGY, by its kindly pity for the weakness of mankind and wretchedness
of world
• SATIRE by its pleasant ridicule of folly
• COMEDY by its ridiculous imitation of common errors of life
• TRAGEDY by its moving demonstration of “the uncertainty of this world
and upon how weak foundations guilden roofs are builded”
• LYRICS by its representation of the loftiest truths in the loftiest manner

5. DEFENSE
1) No other form of learning teaches as well as moves to virtue as poem does
2) Poet is not a liar – he never affirms that his fiction is true.
Poetic truths – ideal and universal
3) People abuse poetry- not the poem abuses men’ s wit.
Abuses are more nursed by philosophy and history by describing
bloodshed, battles and violence.
Poetry brings light to knowledge
4) Plato wants to banish the poets not poetry. Some poets of his time misused
poetry.
He wanted to banish the poets who are inferior and unable to instruct

6. HIS CLASSICISM
• RESPECT FOR RULES:
• He wanted poetry to represent England like it was for Ancient Greece and
Rome
• In Greece, poets were referred as “Maker” (heavenly maker)
• In Rome, poets referred as “ Prophet” (one gifted with foreknowledge of
things)
• He had admiration for renaissance Italy – Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch
• Pronouncement basis from Plato/ Aristotle/ Horace
• He follows Plato-> teaching function of poetry
• For definition of poetry, he follows Aristotle and Horace

7. • RESPECT FOR RULES
• “poesy is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termth it in his word Mimesis…
with this end to teach and delight” – Castelvetro's translated edition of
Aristotle’s Poetics (1570)
• Aristotle stressed only unity of action; Castelvetro saw other two unities
implied in unity of action
• Sidney insists the observance of the unity of action, time and place
• Sidney praises “Gorboduc” for its Senecan technique; but not as a model of
tragedy as there was fault in place and time
• Sidney doesn’t like Tragi-comedy as it combined both and neither the whole
representation of both

8. • HIS ADVOCACY OF CLASSICAL METRES
• ‘AREOPAGUS’ membership (16th-century society/ club dedicated to the
reformation of English poetry)
• Sidney praised unrhymed classical verse
• Said Verse/metre is an ornament and no cause to poetry
• Poetry – art of inventing new things
• As an Elizabethan, as English blood runs in his body, he loves rhyme or verse
(English poetry is full of rhymes and verses)
• “The ballad of chevy chase – the old song of Percy & Douglas”- moved him
• According to him, verse is superior form of expression to ordinary prose
• Unrhymed classical metres – fit for music, fit to express diverse passion
• Rhymed English- music to ears.

9. VALUE OF HIS CRITICISM
• Poetry – an art of imitation for a specific purpose:
“to teach and to delight”
• Poetry is imitation of nature in its ideal pattern. i.e, Golden world of
the idea itself
• Poetry – a vision of the idea itself and a force for the perfection of the
soul

10. THANK YOU
N.T