APOLOGY FOR POETRY-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

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APOLOGY FOR POETRY-SIR
PHILIP SIDNEY
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Among the English critics, Philip Sidney
holds a very important place. His #Apology
for Poetry is a spirited defence of poetry
against all the charges laid against it since
Plato. He considers poetry as the oldest of
all branches of learning and establishes its
superiority.
Poetry, according to Sidney, is superior to
philosophy by its charm, to history by its
universality, to science by its moral end, to
law by its encouragement of human rather
than civic goodness. Sidney deals with the
usefulness of other forms of poetry also.
(The pastoral pleases by its helpful
comments on contemporary events and life
in general, the elegy by its kindly pity for
the weakness of mankind, the satire by its
pleasant ridicule of folly, the lyric by its
sweet praise of all that is praiseworthy, and
the epic by its representation of the loftiest
truths in the loftiest manner).
Reply to four charges
Stephen Gosson in his School of Abuse,
leveled four charges against poetry. They
were :
#(i) A man could employ his time
more usefully than in poetry,
#(ii) It is the
‘mother of lies’,
#(iii) It is immoral and ‘the
nurse of abuse’ and
#(iv) Plato had rightly
banished poets from his ideal
commonwealth.
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Sidney gallantly defends all these charges
in his ‘Apology for Poetry’. Taking the first
charge, he argues that poetry alone teaches
and moves to virtue and therefore a man
cannot better spend his time than in it.
Regarding the second charge, he points out
that a poet has no concern with the
question of veracity or falsehood and
therefore a poet can scarcely be a liar. He
disposes of the third charge saying that it is
a man’s wit that abuses poetry and not vice
versa. To the fourth charge, he says that it
is without foundation because Plato did not
find fault with poetry but only the poets of
his time who abused it.
His Classicism
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Sidney’s Apology is the first serious attempt
to apply the classical rules to English
poetry. He admires the great Italian writers
of Renaissance (Dante, Boccaccio and
Petrarch). All his pronouncements have
their basis either on Plato or Aristotle or
Horace. In his definition of poetry he
follows both Aristotle and Horace : ‘to teach
and delight’.
.
Sidney’s #Apology is the first serious attempt
to apply the classical rules to English
poetry. He admires the great Italian writers
of Renaissance (Dante, Boccaccio and
Petrarch). All his #pronouncements have
their basis either on Plato or Aristotle or
Horace. In his definition of poetry he
follows both Aristotle and Horace : ‘to teach
and delight’.
Sidney insists on the observance of the
unities of time, place and action in English
drama. He has no patience with the newly
developed tragi-comedy. (His whole critical
outlook in the unities and the tragi-comedy
was affected by the absence of really good
English plays till his time). He also praises
the unrhymed classical metre verse. Poetry
according to him, is the art of inventing new
things, better than this world has to offer,
and even prose that does so is poetry.
Though he has admiration for the classical
verse he has his native love of rhyme or
verse. His love of the classics is ultimately
reconciled to his love of the native
tradition.
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The Value of his Criticism
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Though Sidney professes to follow Aristotle,
his conception of poetry is different from
Aristotle’s. To Aristotle, poetry was an art of
imitation. To Sidney, it is an art of imitation
for a specific purpose : it imitates ‘to teach
and delight’. (Those who practise it are
called makers and prophets).
Sidney also unconsciously differs with
Aristotle in the meaning he gives to
imitation. Poetry is not so much an art of
imitation as of invention or creation. (It
creates a new world altogether for the
edification and delight of the reader). This
brings him again close Plato. According to
him, the poet imitates not the brazen world
of Nature but the golden world of the Idea
itself. So, Plato’s chief objection to poetry is
here answered in full. Sidney makes poetry
what Plato wished it to be – a vision of the
idea itself and a force for the perfection of
the soul.