Renaissance Criticism

Following medieval criticism characterized by spiritual- or allegorical-centered interpretations of literary works—most notably the Sacred Scriptures—Renaissance criticism would return to the Aristotelian and Platonic tenets on art as imitation, with a number of improvements and expansions to accommodate the critical controversies of the period.

With his Apology for Poetry (1595), perhaps a response to the “Schoole of Abuse” by Stephen Gosson, considered a “Puritan attack on imaginative literature,” English nobleman Sir Philip Sidney comes in defense of poetry, earning for him as the quintessential Renaissance sensibility in literary criticism.

A classical oration with the seven standard parts—the Apology set out to accomplish three tasks.

I.

First, it was written in defense of poetry and its superiority over history and philosophy. Sidney considered poetry to aid toward the “purifying of wit, the enriching of memory, the enabling of judgment and the engaging of conceit.”

For Sidney, poetry has noble roots and serves a noble purpose. Sidney argued that poetry may be found at all times in all cultures, surveying that the famous classical figures from philosophers to historians relied on poetic techniques in writing their works. Sidney considers the prophetic and creative functions of the poet and of poetry, famously declaring that the poet improves upon nature, thus—”Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.”

Sidney improves on Aristotle in defining poetry as an “art of imitation,” sorting them into three kinds—poetry which imitates “the inconceivable excellencies of God”; poetry which deals with moral philosophy, natural philosophy, astronomical philosophy, or historical philosophy; and those works of “right poets” who “imitate to teach and delight.”

Such definition sets an agenda for the discussion of poetry—allowing for an outpouring of insights into the critical controversies of the period.

Also defending comic poetry, Sidney says that it holds vices up to such ridicule that no one would want to be like the ridiculous, vice-ridden characters portrayed therein. He furthers by saying that much of the Bible is even written in poetic form. For instance, Nathan recalls David (and the reader) to virtue by telling a story. Or Christ teaches by means of parables which “inhabit both the memory and judgment.”

Since the [final] end of [all earthly] learning is virtuous action, Sidney considers poetry better equipped to teach right behavior than either philosophy or history:

For whatsoever the philosopher says should be done, the poet gives a perfect picture of it in someone by whom he presupposes it was done; so as he couples the general notion with the particular example.

While combining the moral precepts of philosophy with the entertaining examples of history, the poetic pursuit cloaks “its lessons with the pleasurable devices of art, rendering it more effective than the first two disciplines.

II.

Second, Sidney’s Apology deals with specific objections raised against poetry. Below are the point-by-point responses of Sidney to the previous attacks charged against poetry since the classical antiquity.

As regards poetry is a waste of time; Sidney counters by asking how can poetry be a waste of time if learning leads to virtue and poetry is the best way to learning? For him, poetry has been the first educator of primitive peoples, which lead them to a more civilized state and a more sensitive receptivity to knowledge of every sort.

Next, against the objection that poetry is the “mother of lies”, Sidney famously declares: “for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth.” Placing poetry outside of the realm of truth and falsehood, Sidney contends that the poet never claims that he is presenting absolute truth in the first place—thus the accusation of falsehood leveled at poetry is merely irrelevant.

As to the claim that poetry is the “nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires,” Sidney considers the abuse of any art should not condemn that art—”poetry is not to blame for the abuses committed against it by bad poets.”

Then, essentially, when we realize that poetry was banished from Plato’s imaginary republic—so it must be dangerous—Sidney clarifies that Plato did banish “the abuse, but not the thing. Therefore, by being in a way threatened by its power, Plato rather honored poetry.

 
III.

The third task set forth in the Apology examines the current state of English literature. more of a broad survey of English literature and rather not a comprehensive blow-by-blow revaluation of works of the time, Apology offers some critical comments on diction, poetic figures, meter, rhythm, rhyme and the English vernacular to other languages.

Significantly, Sidney’s censure of the English drama which failed to adhere to the [overemphasized if not misread] Aristotelian unities of time and place— will further later preoccupy the neoclassical critics of drama, most notably the French Pierre Corneille and the Englishman Samuel Johnson.

On the whole, Sidney’s defense of poesy/poetry—it is said he treats poetry both as having feminine and masculine attributes with reference to both gender qualifiers his and her used in the tract itself—has rendered a number of influences. First it imposed stricter interpretation of the moral function of art. Put more simply, we are said to s see virtue exalted, and vice punished. Second, the rigid distinction of genres allowed for the classification of the types of literature which will be constantly considered by the generations of critics following. And finally, Sidney’s adherence and use of his forerunners as cornerstones of his own critical insights acknowledges the pervasive self-conscious awareness of authority and tradition, an issue to be taken seriously by Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot in the centuries following.