THE RENAISSANCE CRITICISM & SIDNEY

1. THE RENAISSANCE CRITICISM & SIDNEY

2. Renaissance • The period from around the fourteenth until the mid-seventeenth century has conventionally been named “the Renaissance”. • It refers to the “rebirth” or rediscovery of the values, ethics, and styles of classical Greece and Rome. • The term was devised by Italian humanists who sought to reaffirm their own continuity with the classical humanist heritage after an interlude of over a thousand years.

3. Renaissance • The period that preceded the Renaissance is known as the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. • The Medieval Age was a period of alleged superstition and stagnation. • The Renaissance overturned the medieval theological world view, replacing it with a more secular and humanist vision by a rediscovery of the classics.

4. Renaissance Humanism • The most dominant trait has conventionally been identified as “humanism”. • The term “humanism” implies a world view and a set of values centered around the human rather than the divine • According to the humanists, the human nature can be self-defined rather than referring this to God. • Humanim focuses on human achievements and potential rather than theological doctrines and dilemmas.

5. Renaissance Humanism • Renaissance humanism is a more profound shift in sensibility, from a broadly “other-worldly” disposition to a “this-worldly” attitude. • Thisattitudesaw actions and events in this world as significant in their own right without referring them to any ultimate divine meaning and purpose. • Most of the literary and artistic accomplishments of the Renaissance were achieved by laymen rather than clergy, with secular patrons. • Nearly all of the poets of this era were actively involved in the political process.

6. Renaissance Humanism • Renaissance Humanism insisted upon a thorough knowledge of the classical languages: not only Latin, but also Greek. • The humanists also insisted on the direct study of ancient texts. • The monopoly of Latin as the language of learned discourse and literature was undermined, and the rules of grammar and composition were adapted to theorize about vernacular tongues. • In general, the humanists emphasized the moral value of poetry and rhetoric and the worldly achievement.

7. Renaissance Humanism • The humanist poets not only theorized about the vernacular but wrote in it and cultivated its elegant expression. • They adapted classical forms to the vernacular, developing literary forms such as the pastoral, idyll, and romance. • The cultivation of prose – in narratives, epistles, and dialogues – was an important achievement of the humanists. • The Renaissance epic reached its height during the Renaissance. • The humanist tradition was richly expressed in the rise of English vernacular literature of this period. • The rise of national consciousness during this period was reflected in the growth of vernacular literature.

8. Renaissance Literary criticism • Renaissance literature and criticism tends to reflect civic values, a sense of national identity, and a sense of place in history, especially as gauged in relation to the classics. • Renaissance literary criticism views language as historically evolving. • Renaissance literary criticism were involved in the political process during the Renaissance. • Poets engaged fervently in the emerging “public sphere,” a realm of debate in which citizens could participate as equals, independently of pressure from monopolies of power.

9. Renaissance Literary criticism • The expansion of the public sphere enabled the poet • to create fictive and utopian worlds, • to mould the image of public events, and • to assert an individualism that was also promoted by Protestantism. • The translation of the Bible into vernacular languages shifted interpretative authority away from the clergy to the individual reader. • Renaissance poets and critics inevitably placed emphasis on the practical and social functions of poetry. • The most influential classical treatises during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars poetica.

10. Renaissance Literary criticism • Renaissance literary criticism revolves around the following fundamental features: • The Theory of Imitation • The truth-value and didactic role of literature • The classical “Unities” • The notion of verisimilitude • The use of the vernacular • The definition of poetic genres such as narrative and drama • The invention of new, mixed genres • The use of rhyme in poetry • The relative values of quantitative and qualitative verse

11. Renaissance Literary criticism • The Theory of Imitation: • The Renaissance critics’ theory of imitation is different from that of Plato and Aristotle. • Imitation for Plato and Aristotle was the imitation of persons and things in nature. • Horace and Longinus used it as meaning the imitation of other writers. • This latter sense is the one in which it was most often used by the Renaissance critics. • The truth-value and didactic role of literature: • The Renaissance critics adopted the Horatian formula that literature should “teach and delight”. • The prevailing renaissance version of this is that poetry teaches delightfully. • This was in answer to the medieval view that poetry is either dangerous or a waste of time.

12. Renaissance Literary criticism • The classical “Unities”: • Renaissance writers added the doctrine of the “unity of place” to Aristotle’s original demand for the unity of action and time. • The notion of verisimilitude: • Renaissance critics asserted that poetry must be verisimilar in two respects: • It must imitate objects that are real, not fantastic; • Its manner of imitation must appear probable or at least possible to the audience.

13. Renaissance Literary criticism • The use of the vernacular: • Many Renaissance writers to write in the vernacular; • Some of these writers theorized and defended their practice. • The Protestant Reformation fostered vernacular translations of the Bible as well as of liturgies and hymns. • The Renaissance writers were obliged to address controversial issues of meter, rhyming, and versification in vernacular tongues. • The definition of poetic genres such as narrative and drama: • The Renaissance writers wrote in the ancient forms or genres of epic, tragedy, and comedy to attain the ancient spirit. • They mould their style upon that of the great ancients.

14. Renaissance Literary criticism • The invention of new, mixed genres: • The Renaissance critics did not accept the mixing of genres as tragicomedy since it can destroy the sense of decorum. • The Renaissance writers invent newer, characteristically humanist, genres such as the essay and the dialogue form. • They focus on the epigram as an instrument of wit. • The use of rhyme in poetry: • Renaissance writers rejected the regular stress-based alliterative meter of medieval poets. • They rejected rhyme as an unclassical barbarism. • They searched for a new metrical basis for poetry and eventually stimulated the growth of blank verse. • The relative values of quantitative and qualitative verse: • Renaissance writers introduced classical quantitative meters, based on length of syllables rather than stress, into vernacular languages.

15. Sir Philip Sidney Apologie for Poetrie

16. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) • He was born in Kent in 1554 & died in Netherlands in 1586. • He was a courtier, soldier, poet, diplomat. • He won admiration at an early age for his courtly skills and intellectual curiosity. • He is often cited as an archetype of the well-rounded “Renaissance man”. • His talents encompassed not only poetry and cultivated learning but the virtues of statesmanship and military service.

17. Apologie for Poetrie • It is in many ways a seminal text of literary criticism. • It represents the first synthesis in the English language of Renaissance literary criticism. • It draws on Aristotle, Horace, and more recent writers such as Boccaccio and Julius Caesar Scaliger. • It raises issues – such as the value and function of poetry, the nature of imitation, and the concept of nature • It was written as a defence of poetry against a Puritan attack on poetry entitled The School of Abuse by Stephen Gosson.

18. Apologie for Poetrie • Sidney produces a wide range of arguments in defence of “poor Poetry” • The major arguments discussed in the Apologie are: • Chronology or Antiquity of Poetry  • The authority of ancient tradition • The relation of poetry to nature • The function of poetry as imitation • The status of poetry among the various disciplines of learning • The relationship of poetry to truth and morality

19. Apologie for Poetrie • Chronology or Antiquity of Poetry • Poetry has been held in high esteem since the earliest times. • It has been ‘the first light-giver to ignorance.’  • Poetry in all nations has preceded other branches of learning. • The earlier Greek philosophers and historians were, in fact, poets. • The Authority of Ancient Tradition • It is an “argument from tradition” • Both the Greeks and the Romans honoured poets. • The Romans called the poet "Vates" which means a Foreseer or a Prophet. • Poetry has a prophetic character

20. Apologie for Poetrie • The Relation of Poetry to Nature • In Greek, the word 'Poet' means' ‘Maker’ or ‘Creator’. • The poet is a 'maker', a creator in the real sense of the term • While all other arts are tied to Nature, 'the poet is not a slave to Nature.’ • This suggests the divine nature of poetry as a God-like activity. • The Function of Poetry as Imitation • Sidney defines poetry as “an art of imitation; • It is representing, counterfeiting or figuring forth. • Poetry is a “speaking picture.” • Its end is to teach and delight. The object of both teaching and delighting is goodness.

21. Apologie for Poetrie • According to Sidney, there are three kinds of poetic imitation: • Religious poetry: Poetrythat praises God. • Philosophical poetry: • It imparts knowledge of philosophy, history, astronomy etc. • It is also not to be condemned. • it is “the sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge”. • Right or true kind of poetry • It is the first and most noble sort of poetry. • In this kind, poets ‘most properly do imitate to teach and delight’. • The poet is free of dependence on nature in at least two ways: • The poet is not restricted to any given subject matter, any given sphere of nature. • The poet does not actually reproduce anything in nature but depicts portrayals of probability and of idealized situations.

22. Apologie for Poetrie • The Status of Poetry among the Various Disciplines of Learning • Poetry is superior to all other branches of learning • The end of all learning is virtuous action, and poetry best serves this end. • In this respect poetry is superior, both to history and philosophy.  • Philosophy presents merely abstract precepts. • History deals with concrete facts or examples of virtue. • Poetry combines both these advantages. • It presents universal truths like philosophy, but it does them through concrete examples, like History. • It teaches virtue in a way intelligible even to the ordinary men. • It also moves us to virtuous action. • This is so because its truths are conveyed in a delighted manner; it allures men to virtue .

23. Apologie for Poetrie • The Relationship of Poetry to Truth and Morality: • Sidney now addresses the specific charges brought against poetry by Stephen Gosson in The School of Abuse. • The charges are: • Poetry is a waste of time. • Poetry is mother of lies. • It is nurse of abuse. • Plato had rightly banished the poets from his ideal world.

24. Sidney’s Defence of Poetry • Sidney dismisses the first charge on the basis that: • There is no learning is so good as poetry in reaching and moving to virtue • no other learning discipline can both teach and move so much as poetry. • Sidney rejects the second charge that poets are liars saying that: • Of all writers under the sun the poet is the least liar. • The Astronomer, the Geometrician, the historian, and others, all make false statements. • The poet affirms nothing , and therefore never tells lies. • What the poet presents is not fact but fiction embodying truth of an ideal.

25. Sidney’s Defence of Poetry • To the third charge, Sidney replies that poetry does not abuse man’s wit, it is man’s wit that abuses poetry. • The fault lies not with poetry, but with the contemporary abuse of poetry. • The abuse of poetry should not lead to a condemnation of poetry itself. • Poetry is a double edged sword: It can be used badly or well and it is unwise to abandon any kind of knowledge altogether because of the possibility of the abuse of it. • The most serious charge that Sidney confronts is that Plato banished poets from his ideal republic. • for Sidney, Plato warned men not against poetry but against its abuse by his contemporary poets who filled the world with wrong opinions about the gods.