The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

as having a second-rate relationship to the truth, to
actual knowledge. Poets represent, imitate, and mimic
the world. Such representations are already imitations;
thus no truth inheres in them.
As a consequence of Plato’s criticism, translations
and other paraphrases from the scriptures, even post-
Reformation, come headed with apologias that justify
their existence for the edifi cation of readers. The poet as
creator must clarify the intentions of his work and show
its usefulness to society. Furthermore, Plato’s criticism
presents a double problem for the poet. By linking
poetry to what is useful, the poet must then delineate
the usefulness of his or her work, thereby opening it up
to the full range of Plato’s other criticisms.
In Defense of Poesy, Sidney’s fi rst response to the
premise that poets are liars is to claim that “the poet, he
nothing affi rms, and therefore never lieth.” To dignify
his art, he turns to Aristotle’s claim that poetry is a “more
philosophical and more serious thing than history;
poetry tends to speak of universals, history of particu-
lars” (Aristotle, Poetics 3.2.351b5–10). That is, history
speaks of what happened and poetry of what ought to.
In his somewhat contradictory efforts to reestablish
the authority of poetry, Sidney begins by disavowing it
as his chosen profession, calling it “my unelected voca-
tion.” Through this awkward mechanism, Sidney
exchanges the poet’s passive role of inspired observer,
one who refl ects on gods, for the active role of man of
action (soldier) and man of infl uence (statesman and
courtier). Sidney’s posturing as an “author” relieved of
the stigma of “poet” enables him to speak powerfully
on poetry’s behalf as an objective observer, even while
he argues against unjust characterizations.
Second, Sidney proclaims poetry the chosen base of
authority for historians, the repository of classical
knowledge, and the repository of the culture of other
countries and civilizations. Moreover, Sidney bestows
the poet with divinity, calling the poet “diviner, fore-
seer, or prophet.” Third, he makes the poet a super-
divinity (or, at least, supernatural), a maker almost
beyond his Maker:

Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such

subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own

invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in

making things either better than nature bringeth

forth, or, quite anew, for such as never were in

nature.

After setting the poet above Nature, Sidney must dis-

tinguish the poet as maker from God as Maker, for the

poet does not make a “real” world. Rather, the poet’s art

is not in the work but in the idea. The characterization

of the poet as free-ranging “only in the Zodiac of his

own wit” (l. 182) encapsulates the uncontainability, the

independence of poets.

Sidney avers that “the skill of each artifi cer standeth

in that idea or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the

work itself.” The conceptual skill of the poet is what

obliges him to the Maker, who is the ultimate author-

ity. Sidney asks us to

give right honour to the heavenly Maker of that

maker, who having made man to His own like-

ness, set him beyond and over all the works of

that second nature: which in nothing he showeth

so much as in poetry, when with the force of a

divine breath he bringeth things forth surpass-

ing her doings.

Sidney’s argument shifts and conceives of poetry as

imitation, as mimesis, or deliberate mimicry inspired

by desire. The poet’s work has become a faculty, a

technique in service of an end.

Next, Sidney attempts to give poetry authority by

yoking it to utility, especially through the power of

poetry to teach. Sidney delineates three main reasons:

One, poetry imitates the “unconceivable excellencies of

God”; two, poetry deals “with matters philosophical,

either moral,... natural,... astronomical,... or his-

torical”; three, poets partake in “the divine consideration

of what may be and should be.” Sidney asserts that poets

imitate to teach and to delight, borrowing freely from

the world, but only doing so to expand, not usurp.

Ultimately, Defense of Poesy attempts to support the

poet’s efforts and ennoble them by focusing on the utility

of the poet to the state and denigrating “his other com-

petitors.” Of his “principal challengers,” Sidney fi nds the

moral philosophers—with their “sullen gravity” and their

DEFENSE OF POESY, THE 141