Sidney

1
Sidneys Defence of Poesie

• ENGL 203
• Dr. Fike

2
Main Point for Today

• Periodicity Sidneys two textsthe sonnet from
  Astrophel and Stella and the Defence of
  Poesieillustrate a central element of
  Renaissance English literature namely, the way
  in which authors placed new emphasis on the
  classics.
• We will see this point developing in various
  ways, particularly in Sidneys use of Plato and
  of the structure of the classical oration.

3
Principles of Neo-Platonism

• Beauty is divine in nature and origin.
• There is a separation of flesh and spirit
• flesh is bad and earthly
• spirit is good and heavenly.
• Love is essentially spiritual
• it is a meeting of souls and minds
• love can transcend the body.
• One makes progress along a ladder
• from sensual to spiritual love
• and from contemplation of earthly beauty to
  contemplation of and union with Heavenly Beauty.
• (Source Ellrodts Neoplatonism in the Poetry
  of Edmund Spenser, pages 25ff.)

4
Sidneys Sonnet 5

• Do you see Neo-Platonic ideas here?
• How is this sonnet about reason?

5
Key Points

• POINT Were developing the idea that Sidneys
  inspiration was classical and Platonic.
• Plato and Socrates are explicitly mentioned in
  Sonnet 25 The wisest scholar of the wight most
  wise.
• Beauty and virtue Line 9 identifies true
  beauty with virtue, a kind of beauty that
  transcends physical good looks. In line 10,
  this beauty is earthly, mutable beauty. It is
  a shade of that greater beauty (virtue).
• Reason gt earthly beauty ? virtue
• Ladder of love Lines 12-13 on earth we are
  but pilgrims made, / And should in soul up to our
  country move.

6
Summary

• There is earthy beauty, and then there is a more
  transcendental kind of beauty namely, virtue.
• The eyeballs get us in trouble when we dwell on
  physical beauty instead of virtue, when you let
  the outer, earthly light of physical beauty
  overcome the inner, more spiritual light of
  reason, which can help us toward virtue.
• There is a sense at the end of the sonnet that we
  must ascend a ladder of love, from earthly to
  spiritual love, though the speaker seems anchored
  in the earthly in line 14. See also Sonnet 71
  But, ah, Desire still cries, Give me some
  food.

7
Transition

• Were going to work our way around to see how
  Sidney uses Plato in the Defence as well.
• Sidneys text responds to a person Stephen
  Gossons School of Abuse, whose main point is
  that delight is bad.

8
From Gossons Text

• But the exercise that is now among us is
  banqueting, playing, piping, and dancing and all
  such delights as may win us to pleasure or rock
  us asleep.
• His real beef is with the role of the theaters in
  misusing delightful representations players
  are Lords of this misrule, or the very
  schoolmasters of these abuses.

9
More from Gosson

• Therefore, he that will avoid the open shame of
  privy sin, the common plague of private offenses,
  the great wracks of little rocks, the sure
  decease of uncertain causes, must set hand to the
  stern and eye to his steps to shun the occasion
  as near as he can, neither running to bushes for
  renting his clothes, nor rent his clothes for
  impairing his thrift, nor walk upon ice for
  taking a fall, nor take a fall for bruising
  himself, nor go to theaters for being allured,
  nor once be allured for fear of abuse.

10
Point

• So Gossons text was the catalyst for Sidneys
  Defence of Poesie, though Gosson was specifically
  criticizing the theater and plays whereas Sidney
  is writing more about literature in general.
• Sidney replies on 643/143ff. to Gosson and Plato.
• In order to get there, we need to ask some
  preliminary questions.

11
Questions

• What is ironic about Platos criticism of the
  poets? (637/137)
• What is a poet? (638/138)
• What is poetry? (three points 639-41/139-41)
• First two rows, 1 second pair, 2 third pair,
  3 find a partner and search for answers.

12
Possible Answers

1. Platodepended on poetry (637/137), and the
   first great philosophers WERE poets (639/139).
   Plato himself uses poetic techniques, including
   made-up dialogue, characters, and dramatic
   situations. In short, the dialogues are
   themselves contrary to fact, as untrue as any of
   the events in Homer, whom Plato criticizes.
2. A poet is a maker (638/138). His role is thus
   analogous to Gods role in making the earth. So
   the poet has a quasi-divine function.
3. Poetry It is imitation (mimesis, 639/139), it
   does not have to rhyme (640/140), and it is a
   speaking picture (639/139 and 641/141 top).

13
Next Question

• What is poetrys relationship to history and
  philosophy?

14
Answer

• History is inadequate because it lacks theory.
• Philosophy is inadequate because it lacks
  particulars.
• Poetry combines the best of both it deals with
  the universal consideration (641/141). It is
  more philosophical than history and more
  particular than philosophy.

15
Another Question

• What is the function of poetry? (639/139)

16
Answer

• The purpose of poetry is to teach through delight
  and thus to move us toward virtue.
• Delight teach ? virtue
• Contrast to Doctor Faustus?
• Sidney and Mary Poppins
• The greatest delight is through story telling (GH
  285-86).

17
Objections

• What objections to poetry does Sidney identify?
• How does Sidney reply?

18
Objections (page 643/143)

1. Poetry is a waste of time.
2. Poetry is the mother of lies.
3. Poetry, insofar as it portrays the gods doing
   terrible things to man and each other, is the
   nurse of abuse.
4. Plato banished the poets from his Republic.

19
Sidneys Replies

1. Poetry moves us to virtue, and there is no end
   more desirable.
2. Poets cannot lie if they do not claim to be
   telling the truth.
3. Poetry can also edify and improve, can have a
   moral influence it can delight and teach and
   thereby move people to embrace virtuous behavior.
4. Sidney believes that Plato opposes only poets who
   promulgated wrong opinions about the deities,
   rather than all poets in general. Sidney also
   points out that Socrates himself versified
   fables. In the Ion, says Sidney, Plato actually
   commends poetry. Plato even attributes to poetry
   an ability to inspire a divine force, far about
   mans wit (846/146).

20
Sidney and the Platonic Hierarchy

• Platos order Forms/ideas gt nature gt art
• Forms exist prior to and apart from physical
  manifestations.
• You have the idea of a tree (most real), a
  physical tree (less real), and a painting of or
  poem about a tree (least real).
• Question What is Sidneys order on 638/138
  Nature never set forth.

21
Sidneys Order

• In Sidneys opinion, ART TRANSCENDS NATURE!
• Art golden
• Nature brazen

22
Summary

• Plato
• Forms (highest, most real)
• Nature
• Art (lowest, least real)
• Art is a reflection of a reflection of the most
  real.

• Sidney
• Art (golden, higher)
• Nature (brazen, lesser)

23
Discussion Question

• What is Sidney saying about the artist on
  638-39/138-39? The passage begins Neither let
  it be deemed.
• Read the whole paragraph and discuss.

24
Possible Answers

• God made man thus God is the maker of a maker,
  namely the artist.
• God set man in supremacy over nature, and it is
  the artist who shows this most in poetry.
• For the poet in creation has a divine aspect. As
  the wind-like Spirit of God was moving over the
  face of the waters (Genesis 12), so the mind in
  creation takes on the force of a divine breath
  (846/146, 849/149). In short, the poet is
  God-like.
• Like Adam, the poet is fallen, but he is only
  partially natures creature because, having been
  created in the divine image, he has this divine
  breath within him.
• Far from being twice removed from Platos
  transcendent realm of Forms, the poet has a
  divine quality in himself that surpasses nature.
  
• Sidney is a Christian he is aware that humanity
  is fallen, that human nature can be improved but
  not perfected. That is why he focuses on
  poetrys ability to teach and delight and move us
  toward virtue in other words, to unite pleasure
  and truth. Like Christianity, poetry can improve
  but not remake human nature. A spoonful of
  sugar makes the medicine go down poetry is
  like medicine for the soul.
• The erected wit, or right reason, is the divine
  element of mans rational soul and the source of
  poetic art.

25
Connections to Wordsworth

• Re. breath Wordsworth, The Prelude 1.33-38
  For I methought, while the sweet breath of heaven
  
• Was blowing on my body, felt within
• A correspondent breeze, that gently moved
• With quickening virtue, but is now become
• A tempest, a redundant energy,
• Vexing its own creation.
• Wordsworth, The Prelude 14.192 Imagination is
  Reason in her most exalted mood.

26
Connection to Shelley

• From A Defense of Poetry (2758) the mind in
  creation is as a fading coal, which some
  invisible influence, like an inconstant wind,
  wakes to transitory brightness the power arises
  from within, like the colour of a flower which
  fades and changes as it is developed, and the
  conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic
  either of its approach or its departure. Could
  this influence be durable in its original purity
  and force, it is impossible to predict the
  greatness of the results but when composition
  begins, inspiration is already on the decline,
  and the most glorious poetry that has ever been
  communicated to the world is probably a feeble
  shadow of the original conception of the poet.

27
Point

• Sidneys treatise on poetry is neither the first
  nor the last in a long line of defenses of
  poetry.
• For example, he gets the business about teaching
  and delighting from Horace, and Sidneys language
  undergirds subsequent treatises on poetry like
  Wordsworths and Shelleys.
• WWs emphasis on pleasure parallels Sidneys
  stress on delight.
• Shelleys claim that the great secret of morals
  is love parallels Sidneys stress on moral
  virtue.

28
Another Element of Sidneys Classicism The
Classical Oration

• Types of classical orations
• Panegyrical Related to praise of a person for
  some achievement
• Deliberative Carefully and fully considers all
  the points relevant to an issue (think
  deliberate)
• Judicial Related to legal defense of a client
  in court.
• Which type of classical oration did Sidney write?

29
Answer

• Judicial It is as if Poetry is on trial, and
  Sidney defends her as a classical rhetorician
  would defend a client in a court of law.

30
The Structure of the Classical Oration

• exordium (entrance or beginning)
• narratio (narrationstates the facts)
• propositio (proposition/definition)
• partitio (divisiontypes of poetry)
• confirmatio (confirmationpoetry and her rivals 
  history and philosophy)
• reprehensio (confutationobjections to poetry)
• digression (on native English poets)
• peroratio (conclusion) 

31
Simplified Version

• Introduction
• Background
• Arguments
• Objections
• Repliesconcession and refutation
• Conclusion/summation

32
Concluding Points

• Although Sidneys prose style in the Defence
  makes it difficult to see the treatises
  organization, it is actually very carefully
  structured, following the outline of the
  classical oration (what we at Winthrop call the
  classical argument) sprezzatura (the art of
  concealing art).
• This structure, Sidneys emphasis on
  Neo-Platonism in his sonnet, and his multiple
  references to Plato illustrate the idea that
  writers in the Renaissance were very interested
  in reviving and using classical learning.
  END