English 245 SL-1 online  distance learning course
State University of New York, Tompkins-Cortland Community College

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Lessons

1. Classical Britain

2. Beowulf 1

3. Beowulf 2

4. Middle Ages

5. Romance

6. Sir Gawain

7. Malory

8. Chaucer's Miller

9. Wife of Bath

10. Religious Protest

11. Biblical Drama

12. Play of Mankind

13. Early Modern Period

14. Thomas More

15. Philip Sidney

16. Print Culture

17. Walter Raleigh

18. Twelfth Night 1

19. Twelfth Night  2

20. Civil War

21. An Age of Irreverence

22. Aphra Behn

23. Reading Papers

24. Gulliver

25. Rape of the Lock

26. School for Scandal

27. New God

28. Revolution

Final Exam

 *****   15. Censorship and Criticism   *****

Is literature immoral? Can a man's life turn into fiction?

NOTES AND COMMENTARY
These notes are adapted from David Damrosch, et al.,
Teaching British Literature (New York: Longman, 2003).

Like Thomas More, Philip Sidney was a courtier who counseled his sovereign against an intended marriage, but his punishment worked out somewhat better. Banished temporarily from Queen Elizabeth's court for opposing her plan to marry a French Duke, Sidney had leisure to compose a sonnet sequence (the first great sequence in English), a long prose romance with songs (arguably the first full length English novel), and The Apology for Poetry (the first great work of literary criticism in English). All of these eventually were published after a hero's death in battle at age 32. They directly influenced Shakespeare and others in English literature's golden age, the late Elizabethan period.

Like More, Sidney received a classical education including Greek as well as Latin. Unlike More, however, Sidney was a thorough Protestant, indeed a Puritan. Hence, although The Apology uses the word "poet" in the Greek sense of "maker," Sidney further defines the word in a distinctively moralistic way that few Greeks other than Socrates would have shared. The poet is known, says Sidney, by "feigning notable images of virtues, vices or what else, with that delightful teaching." In this view, we humans live in a fallen world and sinful condition, but our minds are capable of forming images of a "golden" world that can raise us up and inspire us to do virtuous and praiseworthy things. Thus the poet who uses art correctly forms these images for our moral benefit, so we who read can imagine the world to be a place that celebrates and rewards good conduct. This creation delights us, since it looks like a better world, but it also encourages us to be better people. Critics who attack poetry as falsehood, therefore, are missing the point and destroying the hope for improvement that poetry offers. 

Given his understanding of literature as instruction, Sidney unsurprisingly presents himself as the product of his reading--and proud of it. Sidney's bookishness appears even in the academic style of the Apology, which in form is a classical oration, its content stuffed with learned references and citations. He does not care for art that fails to follow "the rules" prescribed for poetry by Aristotle, Horace and other ancient writers. He is critical of popular English theater because its extended plots and far-flung settings are not found in Sophocles, Terence and other classical playwrights he has studied. Sidney is very much a neo-classicist believing that the ancient world was more "golden" than contemporary Britain.

Like his writing, Sidney's life was also a product of his reading. He courted his unrequiting mistress by writing sonnets to her in the fashion of Petrarch, Dante and other old Italian master poets. He died heroically in a cavalry charge, no doubt inspired by the literature that he praises in the Apology, where Homer's Iliad, the ballad of Percy and Douglas (heroic figures who fought against Henry IV, after he usurped the throne of Richard II), and other heroic poetry that is "the companion of camps." Like millions of other soldiers from the Renaissance through World War I, he was making an old fashioned frontal assault when he was hit by a fatal gun shot. (There were no guns in the days of Percy and Douglas.) The bravery that was  effective in the old literature of hand-to-hand combat had become delusional in the age of gunpowder, but nonetheless the celebration and imitation of the old ways went on.

The question may occur to us whether Sidney was hero or fool, but perhaps the best answer is simply that he embodied the poetry that he read. He is an exemplary "man of books." He was self-aware of his poetry addiction but in denial that it was harmful.

The Apology distinguishes poetry from both history and philosophy. History, according to Sidney, narrates what was, but it cannot say anything much about what should be because its most successful characters are so frequently villains. To use history as moral guide, everyone would act like Julius Caesar and seize the government. On the other hand, philosophy can say what is right, but its generalized language is dull and inconsequential. Poetry takes a middle ground between the specific and the general. It constructs images that—while not historically true—elevate the mind and promote admirable conduct. The "golden" world created in the "wit" of poets can translate into a more glorious world to live in.

Literary form of the Apology

The Apology takes the form of a classical oration, as described by Cicero and other ancient analysts. This starts with an Induction which instructs the reader or listener in the terms of the debate and establishes the author’s good character (995-996). It then tells the History of the subject from its origin citing the main authorities who have defended poetry (996-1000). It then makes an analysis or "Partition" of the subject, poetry being divided into divine poetry, philosophical poetry, and historical poetry (1000-1015). In the divine, Sidney remarkably includes Biblical poetry: not only King David's Psalms and the works of Solomon but also the parables of Jesus. The ideal form of poetry, however, Sidney situates between philosophy and history because it is more effective in teaching. Then comes the Refutation of arguments against poetry: that poetry is a waste of time (1015), that poets are liars (1015-1016), and most importantly that poetry encourages lust and other bad behavior (1016-1020). It was against censorship of literature by fellow Puritans that Sidney took practical aim with his essay, but he is careful not to endorse all literature. A Digression criticizes particular practices by English poets, especially popular playwrights (1020-1027). A Conclusion briefly wraps up (1027-1028).

Aristotle understood the poet’s imitation to mean not the representation of realities or ideals, but rather “characters, emotions, actions” (Poetics 1447a28)—in other words, poetry does not represent the sensible world but rather the world as colored by human feeling, in order to stimulate emotions in the audience. Sidney seems to take a more rational and moral view, but he also found the irrational aspects of poetry sublimely moving: "The poet doth grow in effect another nature in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature . . . Nature never set forth the earth in so rich a tapestry as divers poets have done . . . Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden."

“The Apology” and Its Time: the censors attack
The Early Modern debate about the value of literature is part of a larger argument over arts and other pleasure-giving activities in a culture increasingly criticized as immoral by individuals and groups who set themselves up as religious authorities in place of the Roman and Anglican churches. Would the emerging Protestant churches accept literature or wouldn't they? Some would not.

Sidney's defense responds to, among other condemnations of literature, Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse. Gosson and Sidney agree that literature has influence in motivating real world actions; they disagree on how much of that influence is good or bad. Gosson and other censors attacked theater, as Hollywood movies still are attacked today, primarily for promoting sexual license. This objection led to the prevention of women from appearing on stage; with boys taking women's roles, the theater was next charged by its opponents with corrupting boys and promoting homosexuality. Within fifty years after Sidney's death, a Parliament controlled by Puritans and others outside of the Catholic and Anglican traditions would close the theaters and make the performance of plays illegal throughout the Commonwealth. The censors did not lose their grip until the Puritans lost political power in 1660 after Cromwell's death.

Books on writing
More numerous than the works of censorship were "how-to" books. George Puttenham’s The Art of English Poesie was one of the best-known of the sixteenth-century treatises on literature, as it contains a comprehensive discussion of the figures of rhetoric and how to produce “copy”—that is, arguments that are as fully developed or “amplified” as the subject requires. In the portion of his treatise printed in our anthology Puttenham also gives ideas on how to justify poetry as part of a civil society: many of these ideas are echoed by Sidney.

George Gascoigne’s Certain Notes of Instruction is an informal, practical work that focuses on poetic language. It illustrates the extent to which English had risen to prominence by Elizabethan times. Overt nationalism was rising, as England defined itself in opposition to Catholic Europe. Gascoigne urges writers to use words of a single syllable because “most ancient English words are of one syllable” and writers who use them will seem “the truer Englishman.” Gascoigne's preoccupation with simplicity and clarity in writing anticipate later arguments for plain style in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Like Puttenham and Gascoigne, Samuel Daniel’s A Defence of Rhyme is concerned with the craft of the poet. His sense of a national identity as the product of particular uses of language includes a consideration of what might be called historical relativism. He rejects a blanket endorsement of “antiquity” as authoritative. Each age, he insists, evolves the authorities appropriate to its culture: “we [i.e., the English people] are not so placed out of the way of judgment but that the same sun of discretion shineth upon us” as upon the writers of the past. Today's debates on multiculturalism and the selection of works that should be read in schools (the so-called "canon" of literature) are anticipated in Daniel’s approach to the problem of authority.

Left: Renaissance image (colorized) of a melancholy young man, thought perhaps to be Philip Sidney at the family estate at Penshurst.

Left: portrait of dashing Philip Sidney, died in an English effort to break off Holland from the Spanish empire. This economic war was described in religious terms by its participants as the attempt to free Dutch Protestants from their Catholic exploiters.

Left: classical bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), scholar and lawyer during the last days of the Roman Republic.

Left: George Gascoigne

 Below: contemporary drawing of the funeral of the hero Philip Sidney.

Samuel Daniel A Defence of Ryme from Renascence Editions

Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse from Renascence Editions.

George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesy (1589) from Oxford University.

Philip Sidney at Luminarium. Mary Sidney at Luminarium

Philip Sidney, Defense of Poesy from Bartleby.

Students are not examined on these "other resources and amusements." However, if you know of an excellent website that would wonderfully  complement this lesson, please send it to Dr. G. If he adopts it in his list, extra course credit will be awarded.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR THIS LESSON

The lesson includes both a quiz and a journal writing assignment to be submitted on the interactive course site at  SUNY Learning Network.  See General instructions on Journaling for this course. For a sample journal, see Dr. G's 2007 Brit Lit 1 Journal.

Journal

Write for an hour (or more if you have time). Summarize the readings or make notes you will find useful on the final essay. Some other journaling ideas for today might include the same questions that Sidney attempts to answer:

Is literature a waste of time?
Is literature a pack of lies?
Is literature immoral?
Does literature help us see a better future?

Does any of the literature that we have in this course have any of the qualities that Sidney praises in his Apology? Does any deserve to be censored?
 

 Copyright 2008 by Gary Homer Gutchess.