House of Notes

Discuss Sidnev’s Apology for Poetry as an epitome of Renaissance criticism. Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie (1580-81) was intended as a reply to Stephen Gosson’s School of Abus (1579) Gosson had inducted poetry on four counts : that a man coaid employ his time more usefully than in poetry that it is the mother of lies, that it is the nurse of abuseramt that, Plato had rightly banished poets from his ideal state. Sidney in his Apology replies to each of these charges, drawing copiously, in the absence of critical authorities in England, on the ancient classics and the Italian writers of the Renaissance: in particular, on Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, among the Greeks, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, among the Romans; and Minturno, Scaliger, and Castelvetro, among the Italians. Yet it is an original document. Sidney’s Apology is not only a reply to Gosson but much more. It is a spirited defence of poetry against all the charges that had been laid at its door since Plato. He says