Discuss the classical influences
which Sidney used and adapted to develop his thesis in ‘Apology for Poetry’.
Answer:
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
that poetry is the oldest of all branches of learning; it 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.
Among its various species 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 and the wretchedness of the world, the satire by its pleasant
ridicule of folly, the comedy by its ridiculous imitation of the common errors
of life, the tragedy by its moving demonstration of 'the uncertainty of this
world, and upon how weak foundations guilden roofs are builded,' the lyric by
its sweep praise of all that is praiseworthy, and the epic by its
representation of the loftiest truths in the loftiest manner. Neither in whole
nor in parts, thus, does poetry deserve the abuse hurled on it by its
detractors.
Hence Sidney says
that a man might better spend his time in poetry. The poet is not a liar; the
poet uses veracity or falsehood to arrive at a higher truth. It is not poetry
that abuses man's wit but man's wit that abuses poetry. Plato found fault not
with poetry, which he considered divinely inspired, but with the poets of his
time who abused it to misrepresent the gods.
