APOLOGY FOR POETRY -SIR PHILIP SYDNEY

APOLOGY FOR POETRY

                                                                               -SIR PHILIP SYDNEY

ABOUT AUTHOR:

           Sir Philip Sidney was a child of privilege, born to Sir Henry Sidney, Elizabeth I’s governor of Ireland, and Lady Mary Dudley. His godfather was King Philip II of Spain; his uncle Robert Dudley was one of Elizabeth’s closest advisers. Philip was educated to join his family’s tradition of service, first at the Shrewsbury School and then at Oxford. Following a three-year tour of Europe (1572-1575), where he perfected his languages and became familiar with European politics, Sidney returned to Elizabeth’s court and embarked on a career as diplomat and parliamentarian. A man of broad interests, he befriended leading artists and scholars of the day (including poet Edmund Spenser and alchemist John Dee), and was the dedicatee of more than 40 books on subjects as diverse as painting, law, poetry, and botany.

An Apology for Poetry Summary:

Next An Apology for Poetry

             In “An Apology for Poetry,” Sir Philip Sidney sets out to restore poetry to its rightful place among the arts. Poetry has gotten a bad name in Elizabethan England, disrespected by many of Sidney’s contemporaries. However, Sidney contends, critics of poetry do not understand what poetry really is: they have been misled by modern poetry, which is frequently bad. If one understands the true nature of poetry, one will see, as Sidney shows in his essay, that poetry is in fact the “monarch” of the arts. Sidney does so by articulating a theory of poetry, largely drawn from classical sources, as a tool for teaching virtue and the poet as a semi-divine figure capable of imagining a more perfect version of nature. Armed with this definition, Sidney proceeds to address the major criticisms made of the art of poetry and of the poets who practice it, refuting them with brilliant rhetorical skill.

          Following the seven-part structure of a classical oration, Sidney begins with an exordium, or introduction. He tells an anecdote about horse-riding, noting that, like his riding instructor Giovanni Pietro Pugliano, he will not dwell so much on the writing of poetry as the contemplation and appreciation of it. Since he has become a poet, he feels obliged to say something to restore the reputation of his unelected vocation.

       Sidney begins his defense of poetry by noting that poetry was the first of the arts, coming before philosophy and history. Indeed, many of the famous classical philosophers and historians wrote in poetry, and even those who wrote in prose, like Plato and Herodotus, wrote poetically—that is, they used poetic style to come up with philosophical allegories, in the case of Plato, or to supply vivid historical details, in the case of Herodotus. Indeed, without borrowing from poetry, historians and philosophers would never have become popular, Sidney claims. One can get some indication of the respect in which poets were held in the ancient world by examining the names they were given in Latin and Greek, vates and poietes. Vates means “seer” or “prophet,” and in the classical world, poetry was considered to convey important knowledge about the future.

Sidney then moves to the proposition, where offers a definition of poetry as an art of imitation that teaches its audience through “delight,” or pleasure. In its ability to embody ideas in compelling images, poetry is like “a speaking picture.” Sidney then specifies that the kind of poetry he is interested in is not religious or philosophical, but rather that which is written by “right poets.” This ideal form of poetry is not limited in its subject matter by what exists in nature, but instead creates perfect examples of virtue that, while maybe not real, is well-suited to teaching readers about what it means to be good. Poetry is a more effective teacher of virtue than history or philosophy because, instead of being limited to the realm of abstract ideas, like philosophy, or to the realm of what has actually happened, like history, poetry can present perfect examples of virtue in a way best suited to instruct its readers. The poet can embody the philosopher’s “wordish descriptions” of virtue in compelling characters or stories, which are more pleasurable to read and easier to understand and remember, like Aesop’s Fables. The poet should therefore be considered the “right popular philosopher,” since with perfect and pleasurable examples of virtue, like Aeneas from Virgil’s Aeneid, poetry can “move” readers to act virtuously. Reading poetry about virtue, Sidney writes, is like taking a “medicine of cherries.”

Following the classical structure from this examination to the refutation, Sidney rebuts the criticisms made of poetry by “poet-haters.” Sidney outlines the four most serious charges against poetry: that poetry is a waste of time, that the poet is a liar, that poetry corrupts our morals, and that Plato banished poets from his ideal city in the Republic. He highlights that all of these objections rest on the power of poetry to move its audience, which means that they are actually reasons to praise poetry. For if poetry is written well, it has enormous power to move its audience to virtue. Following a short peroration, or conclusion, in which he summarizes the arguments he has made, Sidney devotes the final portion of his essay to a digression on modern English poetry. There is relatively little modern English poetry of any quality, Sidney admits. However, is not because there is anything wrong with English or with poetry, but rather with the absurd way in which poets write poems and playwrights write plays. Poets must be educated to write more elegantly, borrowing from classical sources without apishly imitating them, as so many poets, orators, and scholars did in Sidney’s time. For English is an expressive language with all the apparatus for good literature, and it is simply waiting for skillful writers to use it. Sidney brings “An Apology for Poetry” to a close on this hopeful note—but not before warning readers that, just as poetry has the power to immortalize people in verse, so too does it have the power to condemn others to be forgotten by ignoring them altogether. The critics of poetry should therefore take Sidney’s arguments seriously.

An Apology for Poetry: analysis:

Sidney is writing before the great golden age of the Elizabethan theatre (Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson), but theatre was a growing art form in London at this time. And before that, communities up and down England had been entertained during religious festivals by the Miracle and Mystery Plays, which dramatised – usually in verse – events from the Bible, such as the Nativity and the Crucifixion. As well as arguing that poetry is superior to philosophy, Sidney also shows that it is a superior didactic tool to history. The problem with history is that has to stick to what actually happened. And moral lessons aren’t always easy to derive from history, especially when evil triumphs over good. What kind of moral message does that send out? But in poetry, Sidney argues, evil doesn’t triumph: good always overcomes it. But there’s more to it than this. Indeed, Sidney uncovers a startling paradox about the difference between poetry and history. Whereas poets and playwrights never lie – yes, you read that right – historians, conversely, do lie all the time. How can that be?

Sidney explains this by saying that for writers of fictions – such as poets and playwrights – it’s actually impossible to lie, because they never affirm that anything they say is true. They are presenting their writing as fiction, so they’re not pretending to deal in facts. If you offer a story to readers and imply, ‘I made this all up’, although what follows is a fiction – essentially, one long lie – you as a poet are not lying, because by couching your narrative as a work of fiction, you are admitting that what you offer up is untrue. But the historian, by contrast, purports to present the reader with facts, so as soon as they play fast and loose with those facts, or smooth over certain details, or cast things in a favourable or unfavourable light depending upon their own biases, they run the risk of lying. Because historians – unlike poets – affirm things, they lie as soon as they offer something which is packaged as ‘fact’ but is not factually true.

This rhetorical masterstroke is one of the most famous and influential parts of Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry. It’s a counterblast to not only Gosson’s assertion that the poet is the ‘mother of lies’, but to Plato’s older objection to the poet (in his The Republic, arguably the first work of utopian literature ever written) on the grounds that poets are untrustworthy, because they make things up. On the contrary, as we’ve seen, Sidney believes the poet is valuable precisely because he makes things up and only makes things up. And poetry, through its world of fancy and idealism, can impart valuable lessons to people. Even comedy, often Aristotle’s idea of poetry as mimesis or imitation. Comedy, Sidney maintains, leads people towards virtue by representing human error and folly as absurd and worthy of scorn. Sidney also addresses the role of the English language, arguing that it is a worthy vehicle for poetry. As the language of the people (it had even been the official language of the English court since the early fifteenth century), English is perfect for such a democratic art as poetry – a form that, after all, Sidney believes should both delight and instruct its readers and spectators.