House of Notes

Examine in detail the main ideas in Sidney’s ‘An Apology for Poetry’ and comment on its significance. An Apologie for Poetrie may for purposes of convenience be divided into sixteen sections. 1. The Prologue Before launching a defence of poetry, Sidney justified his stand by referring in a half-humorous manner to a treatise on horseman-ship by pietro Pugliano. If the art of horsemanship can deserve such an eloquent euology and vindication, surely poetry has better claims for euology and vindication. There is a just cause to plead a case for poetry since it has fallen from the highest estimation of learning to be ‘the laughing stock of children.’ 2. Some Special Arguments in Favour of Poetry Poetry has been held in high esteem since the earliest times. It has been ‘the first light-giver to ignorance.’ The earlier Greek philosophers and historians were, in fact, poets. Even among the uncivilized nations, in Turkey, among the American Indians, and m Wales, poetry enjoys a

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