Sidney Philip is an outstanding figure in the Renaissance literary tradition. The years 1450-1625 are the first age of the Renaissance, and here historians are concerned with the social setting of the “re-birth” as much as with the artistic achievement itself. In poetry, not only did its dominant themes of courtly love and the knightly romance reflect the values and interests of the nobility, they also answered to the social reality of life. In this historical epoch, Sidney Philip raised an important question concerning the role of poetry and its impact on virtues, and its deductive role in forming values of readers.

Thesis statement: In contrast to practical and theoretical ideas expressed in the Defence of Poetry, Sidney Philip does not follow precisely all principles he established for poetry.

In his most famous sequence of poems “Astrophel and Stella” Sidney provides his own obituary, declaring, among other things, that fair liberty is vital. The novelty that Sidney cherished was less intellectual than moral and his approach to the role of poetry and its deductive nature offer a consistent challenge to readers own reasoning powers to find a way through the maze of epics and imagination.

“Is gone; and now, like slaue-borne Muscouite,
I call it praise to suffer tyrannie”.

In the Defence of Poetry, Sidney justifies that a sensible and comprehensive control over human affairs can be learnt from poetry. It is possible to disagree with this statement because in “Astrophel and Stella” Sidney appeals to emotions of readers but it does not means that sensitivity can be learned. In theory, Sidney reflects Boccaccio interpretation of poetry who supposes that the nature of poetry is a high-toned and serious-minded, and sensitivity can be learned from poetry. In practice, Sidney follows Dante and Petrarch who had rejected the low estimate of poetry and preached emotional impact on readers. Nevertheless, this approach does not coincide with the notion that poetry comprehensive control over human affairs can be learnt.

Like other Renaissance poets including Wyatt and Petrarch, Sidney foresaw the death of civilized values as the works of classical authors were outnumbered by the ephemeral products of those whom they dubbed the “moderns” “Sidney presents a typical Renaissance attitude in seeing the man of letters as the model for learning, and not the abstract philosopher, who is caricatured as a mixture of Scholastic pedant and minor Greek philosopher”. Sidney himself often appears embarrassed at his own imaginative freedom, prefacing his works with statements which sought to legitimize the seductive appeal of sensitivity and didacticism by appealing to some external authority. In referring to Sidney’s poems endeavoured to claim a niche for teaching nature of poetry, it is possible to say that some of his sonnets feel lack of didacticism he writes about.

The justification for Sidney’s poetry is its clear commitment to moral reform, and he presented his poems as exemplary teaching in which vice is routed and virtue rewarded. “His comparison of poetry with history and with philosophy is based on Scholastic psychology, which distinguishes three main faculties in the human mind: imagination, reason, and memory”. There was, however, a serious side to Sidney’s teaching and virtues ideas to promote the refined tone and rational debate to a wider reading public. Sidney tries to heal this breach, by putting morality in another level. It is possible to agree with Sidney that poetry has an imaginative impact on readers, but this impact cannot teach sensitivity and does not give comprehensive control. For instance: “Who his owne ioy to his owne hurt applies, And onely cherish doth with iniurie: Who since he hath, by Natures speciall grace, So piercing pawes as spoyle when they embrace”.

Sidney writes that “in Poesie, looking but for fiction, they shall use the narration but as an imaginative groundplat of a profitable invention”. This principle is followed by him in sonnets where imaginary plays a crucial role for readers. When Sidney tries to take low morals out of the poetry, he made explicit the intention to mingle morality and manners, philosophy and fashion, in an urbane and witty miscellany. And despite a tinge of polite condescension in the tone of its more lightweight contributions sonnets sequence Astrophil and Stella was remarkably successful in maintaining a style of virtues and philosophical ideas, but not teaching.

In broad terms, Sidney deals essentially with different types of teaching such as “enriching of memory (i.e. history), enabling (or strengthening) of judgment (i.e. philosophy), and enlarging of conceit (i.e. poetry), and his poetry judgment (i.e. philosophy) plays the dominant role. His sonnets and songs are concerned less with the redemption of individual sinners than with the regulation of general standards of conduct. But “Astrophil and Stella” is more interested in questions of moral identity and the expression of individual consciousness. For instance:

“Alas, whence came this change of lookes? If I
Haue chang’d desert, let mine owne conscience be
A still-felt plague to selfe-condemning mee?

It is possible to agree with Sidney that “since it is so universal that no learned nation doth despise it…Since the poet’s effects be so good as to teach goodness and delight the learners…he doth not only far pass the historian, but, for instructing, is well nigh comparable to the philosopher” because a substantial portion of his poetry returned to the earlier identification of the religious world, with the belief that poetry can make men moral. Distinction between spiritual and temporal power creates a space for freedom. In these conditions, Sidney dwells on the moral side of human nature. Poetry appeared to undermine the moral seriousness together with negative examples of human virtues and behaviour. Yet the pattern of these contradictions, in which characters preach moralists yet act like ruthless opportunists, goes to the heart of Sidney’s poetry.

“One main argument for Sidney’s defense of poetry is that all sciences depend on nature, but that poetry is a higher activity than science”. Despite of episodic narratives, poems by Sidney are animated by a quality more usually identified with a more self-consciously sophisticated form of love poetry, in the characters of his epic narrators. As a theorist of poetry, Sidney’s prime target is the rational choice of heroes which founds its hopes of progress on a refusal to acknowledge the perversities and flaws of human nature itself. Sidney supposes, “the poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writes”. His sonnets reject this ideas showing that the poet makes circles about readers imagination and prevent his to believe for true the context. For instance, Astrophil tries to cover up the pain in his life. Pain is huge, but has nothing to do with melancholy, nostalgia or any other affliction or disease of the soul, being an emotion more heavenly than earthly. But Sydney forces readers to believe in opposite view. It is possible to say that Sidney takes on a new tone of conventional conformity, and the his poetry became increasingly associated with the values of morality and didacticism. Sidney’s poetry embodies two rival principles: philosophy and the impact of poet’s ideas on readers…

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