By: Mohammad Mahdi
Philip Sidney’s critical book The Defence of Poesie since its publication in 1595 is considered as one of the great works in critical theory. The reason for Sidney to write such a book was first he was highly influenced by his contemporary Stephen Gosson an English satirist. He tried to produce something different from Gosson’s work The School of Abuse which is also a part of critical theory. The most significant thing for Sidney that he tried to produce in his book An Apology for Poetry is something that is a part of literature and very important. He tried to examine many Italian and classical precepts and tried to define the real significance of poetry that was damaged by some philosophers like Socrates and Plato.
The Three Kinds of Poetry
In his book, Sidney tries to define the types of poetry and the difference that is major that separates the poetic discipline into three parts.
- Poetry in the name of God
- Philosophical poetry
- Imaginative and poetry of right poets
Poetry in the Name of God
The poetry that explains and elucidates the godly element in itself and tries to conceive the inconvincible nature of the divine can be included in this category. Sidney tries to explain this kind of poetry as something that we generally use for an explanation of supernatural substances. Though he mentions he is not interested in such kinds of poetry. But this is a kind that we majorly find in the poetic discipline.
Philosophical poetry
Poetry in which some philosophical explanation of things took place can be included in this category. The Homeric and classical poetry are all part of this. This poetry is written by poets for explaining certain cultural or moral issues or disagreements. In this kind of poetry, we can find a large amount of rhetorical beauty and a multiplicity of interpretations.
Imaginative and poetry of right poets
This is the type of poetry for Sidney that is most important. He tried to explain why only this kind of poetry is something important and can teach others things that are not known before. He argued the poetry of right poets is poetry that is least false. This is a kind of poetry that teaches and delight and is something that we can find before the classical period. We can find such claims for poetry in Horace’s works. Sidney tried to commutate the notion of poetry as something bad or equal to flattery. He after distinguishing kinds of poetry argues the one who wants to find the best can do that in poetry also, and for this, he needs to find the right influencer and influence.
Nothing Before Poetry
The claim that poetry is the oldest form of literature is not something new that Sidney talked about in his book. Most of the renaissance poets had written many similar things for showing poetry as something noble and eloquent. But what is new in Sidney’s approach that we can see is the rejection of philosophers like Plato and Xenophon who tried to explain poetry as flattery. In his book, he writes, “Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show me one book before Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history he brought that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who had been the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in learning.”
Here he tries to show the importance of poetry by rejecting philosophical notions and challenging them to show how not much the philosophical discipline is influenced by poetry. And it is true that in the beginning philosophy formed itself by using poet’s poetries. Event Plato in many places in his book takes examples from Homer, Solon, Herodotus, etc. who were all poets.
On Poetry: Sidney V.S Plato
In the Gorgias of Plato, we can find how Socrates is trying to explain poetry as equal to flattery. Plato places poets and rhetoricians on the last level in an ideal state. For Plato, poetry leads us towers falsehood, and only that much poetry is allowed which is written in the praise of God and heroes. Poetry can lead a simple discussion into complex inappropriate paradoxes. Poets are the people who do not intentionally lie but poetry makes them do so.
Sidney claimed Plato’s descriptions about poets as most unworthy truths. He claimed poets are the ones with the help of which philosophy took place. In the beginning, philosophy was itself a type of thing that is written in poetic form. then how can Plato say such things if his own practices are part of poetry. For him poets mainly the right poets are the people who can change the way of common thinking. Poets can compress a whole idea into an image and can tell us somewhat truth that humans can comprehend and understand. They never claim they are saying the truth but merely showing an idea or a thing from one direction that is most beautiful.
He also rejected Plato for telling lies about poets and for saying philosophical discipline as a true and most accurate one. No discipline is true. Everything that we try to comprehend is a mere reflection of truth. Poets know how to show that image and that is why they are most upright and worthy of saying things that philosophers cannot say without poets.
These were some of the major things that Philip Sidney’s book An Apology for Poetry is all about. Sidney also tried to make poetry as something there in every soul and is a part of its rational Geist.