3 h 33 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if poetry does more than please us—what if it teaches us how to live?
Philip Sidney takes on a blunt accusation: poets are liars who waste our time. In A Defence of Poesie, also known as An Apology for Poetry, he asks what poetry does and why society needs it. His answer brings imagination into a contest with philosophy and history over how best to teach and move us.
This collection places Sidney's argument beside his poems, above all the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella. Here, a lover tries to write his way to a woman's heart. The essay considers poetry's power to teach and delight; the poems let you explore that power through the words of a lover trying to win love.
What you’ll discover
- An unexpected opening Meet John Pietro Pugliano, whose praise of horsemanship makes Sidney half wish to be a horse.
- Imagination with a purpose Explore Sidney's idea of poetry as a speaking picture that aims to teach and delight.
- A defence against distrust Follow his answers to charges that poetry tells lies and wastes time better spent elsewhere.
- A lover seeks words Enter Astrophil and Stella, where the effort to write becomes part of the pursuit of love.
- Argument beside poetry Read the defence alongside Sidney's poems and consider how his practice meets his claims.
Is it for you?
This is for readers who love poetry and wonder what it is for, and for students who want the root of English criticism. It will suit you less if you want a modern, plain theory, since Sidney writes in a courtly, Renaissance manner.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Poetry came first among all learning
- The poet makes a better world
- Poetry moves us better than philosophy or history
- The poet never lies
- Four charges against poetry, answered
- Sidney's own poems and the essay's long life
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Verteidigung der Dichtkunst und Gedichte
A defence of poetry stands beside poems of love.
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Language: Deutsch
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
Poetry came first among all learning
Sidney opens with a light, playful scene. He recalls an Italian horseman, John Pietro Pugliano, who praised horsemanship so well that Sidney half wished to be a horse. Sidney says he will now defend his own calling with the same zeal, though he admits he is an unlikely champion.
His first real argument is from history. Before there were philosophers or historians, he says, there were poets. In Greece the earliest teachers were Orpheus, Amphion and Homer, and they taught through song. Their verse carried wisdom about gods, war and how to live. People first learned to be good, and to fear and love, through poems.
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The author
Philip Sidney
1554–1586 · English Renaissance poet
Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and diplomat, born in Kent in 1554. He lived in England and travelled in Europe. He wrote The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Astrophil and Stella, and A Defence of Poesy during the late 1570s and 1580s. He died in Arnhem in 1586.
“Now for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth.”
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What is A Defence of Poesie about?
It is an essay arguing that poetry is the oldest and most powerful way of teaching virtue. Sidney answers the charges that poets lie, waste time and corrupt readers, and he judges the state of English verse.
Why does Sidney say the poet never lies?
Sidney argues that a liar claims something false is true. A poet makes no such claim, since readers know a poem is invented. A fiction offered openly as fiction is therefore not a lie.
What is Astrophil and Stella?
It is Sidney's sequence of one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs. Astrophil, the star lover, courts Stella, the star. It follows Petrarch's tradition and helped start the English fashion for sonnet sequences.
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