Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-d8cs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T22:43:34.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Truths of a Slippery World: Poetry and Tyranny in Sidney's Defence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Robert E. Stillman
Robert E. Stillman*
Affiliation:
University of Tenessee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Against the “presentism “ of current criticism linking the Defence's universalizing epistemology to the absolutism of Soviet-style propaganda, this study historicizes Philip Sidney's poetics as a consciously constructed vehicle of political liberation. The Defence's epistemology is recontextualized as a governing body of assumptions about the nature of knowledge that Sidney derived from the revival of natural law theory among an intellectual elite closely associated with the late Philip Melanchthon — the so-called Philippists — and the proponents of tyrannomachist political philosophy. Poetry's preeminence, Sidney maintains, derives from its serviceability in freeing us from the sovereignty of self-love and self-loving sovereigns.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 1287 - 1319
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, William A. 1946. “The Elizabethan Conception of the Tyrant.” Review of English Studies 22:161-81.10.1093/res/os-XXII.87.161Google Scholar
Baron, Hans. 1966. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Revised onevolume edition. Princeton. First pub. 1955.Google Scholar
Bauer, Carl. 1951. “Melanchthons Naturrechtslehre.” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 42:64–100.Google Scholar
Bergbusch, Martin. 1974. “Rebellion in The New Arcadia.” Philological Quarterly 53:29–41.Google Scholar
Bergbusch, Martin. 1981. “The ‘Subalterne Magistrate’ in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia: A Study of the Character of Philanax.” English Studies in Canada 7:27–37.10.1353/esc.1981.0002Google Scholar
Berry, Edward. 1998, The Making of Sir Philip Sidney. Toronto.10.3138/9781442659780Google Scholar
Briggs, William D. 1931. “Political Ideas in Sidney's Arcadia.” Studies in Philology 28:137-61.Google Scholar
Buchanan, George. 1766. De jure regni apudScotos. Anon, trans Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Buchanan, George. 1983. Baptistes sive calumnia tragoedia. In George Buchanan: Tragedies. Eds. Sharratt, P. and Walsh, P.G., 95– 164 Edinburgh.Google Scholar
DeNeef, Leigh. 1980. “Rereading Sidney's Apology.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10:155-91.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Margaret W 1983. Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Golz, Reinard and Mayrhofer, Wolfgang, eds. 1998. Luther and Melanchthon in the Educational Thought of Central and Eastern Europe. Miinster and New Brunswick, NJ2.Google Scholar
Hadfield, Andrew. 1994. Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hager, Alan. 1991. Dazzling Images: The Masks of Sir Philip Sidney. Newark, London and Toronto.Google Scholar
Hoopes, Robert. 1962. Right Reason in the English Renaissance. Cambridge, MA.10.4159/harvard.9780674182431Google Scholar
Jed, Stephanie H. 1989. Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucrece and the Birth of Humanism. Bloomington.Google Scholar
Juvenal, and Persius, . 1961. Trans. Ramsay, G.G.. Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Kaske, Carol. 1999. Spenser and Biblical Poetics. Ithaca.Google Scholar
Kastan, David Scott. 1999. Shakespeare After Theory. London and New York.Google Scholar
Kenshur, Oscar. 1989. “An Exchange on Ideological Criticism: (Avoidable) Snares and Avoidable Muddles.” Critical Inquiry 15:658-68.10.1086/448508Google Scholar
Kingdon, Robert M. 1988. Myths about the St. Bartholomew Day Massacres, 1572- 1576. Cambridge, MA.10.4159/harvard.9780674182202Google Scholar
Kolb, Robert. 1991. Confessing the Faith: Reformers Define the Church, 1530-80. St. Louis, MO.Google Scholar
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1961. Renaissance Thought. The Classic Humanistic, and Humanist Strains. New York and London.Google Scholar
Kuin, Roger. 1998. “Querre-Muhau: Sir Philip Sidney and the New World.” Renaissance Quarterly 51:549-85.10.2307/2901577Google Scholar
Kuin, Roger. 1999. “Sir Philip Sidney's Model of the Statesman.” Reformation 4:93– 117.Google Scholar
Languet, Hubert. 1581. An Apologie or Defence, of my Lord the Prince of Orange… Against the Proclamation … published by the King ofSpaine. Anon, trans London.Google Scholar
Languet, Hubert. 1646. Huberti Langueti Epistolae politicae et historicae adPhilippum Sydnaeum. Leyden.Google Scholar
Languet, Hubert. See Sidney and Languet. 1962. Levao, Ronald. 1985. Renaissance Minds and their Fictions: Cusanus, Sidney, Shakespeare. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Louthan, Howard. 1997. The Quest for Compromise. Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511582028Google Scholar
Manschreck, Clyde L. 1958. Melanchthon: The Quiet Reformer. New York.Google Scholar
McCoy, Richard C. 1979. Sir Philip Sidney: Rebellion in Arcadia. Rutgers.Google Scholar
McNeill, John T. 1941. “Natural Law in the Thought of Luther.” Church History 10:211-27.Google Scholar
Melanchthon, Philip. 1547. De defensione concessa humano generi iure naturae. Wittenberg.Google Scholar
Melanchthon, Philip. 1834-60. Corpus reformatorum Philippi Melanthonis opera quae supersunt omnia. Eds. Bretschneider, C.B. and Bindseil, H.E.. 28 vols. Halle an Brunswick.Google Scholar
Melanchthon, Philip. 1944. The Loci Communes of Philip Melanchthon. Trans. Charles Leander Hill Boston.Google Scholar
Melanchthon, Philip. 1965. Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine, Loci Communes 1555. Trans, and ed. Clyde L. Manschreck. New York.Google Scholar
Melanchthon, Philip. 1999. Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Its Influence Beyond Wittenberg. Ed. Karen Maag. Cumbria and Grand Rapids.Google Scholar
Miller, Anthony. 1987. “Sidney's Apology for Poetry and Plutarch's Moralia.” English Literary Renaissance 17:259-76.Google Scholar
Mornay, Philippe Du Plessis. (Pseud. Stephanus Junius Brutus, the Celt). 1994. Vindiciae, contra tyrannos: or concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over a prince. Ed. and trans. George, Garnett. Oxford.Google Scholar
Nicollier-de Week, Beatrice. 1995. Hubert Languet (1518-1581), un reseau politique international de Melanchthon à Guillaume d'Orange. Geneva.Google Scholar
Nischan, Bodo. 1999. Lutherans and Calvinists in the Age of Confessionalism. Aldershot.Google Scholar
Norbrook, David. 1984. Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance. London.Google Scholar
Osborn, James M. 1972. The Young Sir Philip Sidney, 1572-77. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Peterson, Luther D. 1987. “Melanchthon on Resisting the Emperor: The Von der Notwehr Unterricht of 1547.” In Regnum, Religio, et Ratio: Essays Presented to Robert M. Kingdon, ed. Jerome, Friedman, 133-44. Kirksville, MO.Google Scholar
Peterson, Luther D. 1996. “Philippists.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. Ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, et al. 3:255- 61. New York.Google Scholar
Phillips, James E. 1948. “George Buchanan and the Sidney Circle.” Huntington Library Quarterly 12:23–56.10.2307/3815873Google Scholar
Ponet, John. 1556. A Shorte Treatise ofpoliticke power, and of the true Obedience which subjectes owe to kynges and other civile Governours. London.Google Scholar
Prescott, Anne Lake. 1989. “King David as a ‘Right Poet': Sidney and the Psalmist.” English Literary Renaissance 19:131-51.10.1111/j.1475-6757.1989.tb00973.xGoogle Scholar
Proxenus, Simon. 1979. Commentarii de itinere francogallico. Ed. Dana Martinkova. Budapest.Google Scholar
Raitiere, Martin N. 1984. Faire Bitts: Sir Philip Sidney and Renaissance Political Theory. Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Ribner, Irving. 1952. “Sir Philip Sidney on Civil Insurrection.” Journal of the History of Ideas 13:257-65.10.2307/2707615Google Scholar
Robinson, Forrest G. 1972. The Shape of Things Known. Cambridge, MA.10.4159/harvard.9780674420489Google Scholar
Rupp, E. Gordon. 1980. “Philip Melanchthon and Martin Bucer.” In A History of Christian Doctrine, ed. Hubert, Cunliffe- Jones, 371-84. Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Schneider, John R. 1999. “Melanchthon's Rhetoric as a Context for Understanding his Theology.” In Melanchthon in Europe, 142-56.Google Scholar
Scriptores historiae Augustae. 1953. Trans. David C. Magie. Cambridge, MA. 3 Vols.Google Scholar
Shuger, Debora K. 1988. Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance. Princeton.10.1515/9781400859269Google Scholar
Shuger, Debora K. 1997. Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance. Pbk. reprint of 1990 ed. Toronto.Google Scholar
Shuger, Debora K. 1998. “Castigating Livy: The Rape of Lucretia and The Old Arcadia.” Renaissance Quarterly 51:526-48.10.2307/2901576Google Scholar
Sidney, Philip. 1965. An Apology for Poetry or The Defence of Poesy. Ed. Geoffrey Shepherd. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Sidney, Philip. 1973. The Countess ofPembrokes Arcadia (The Old Arcadia). Ed. Jean Robertson. Oxford.10.1093/actrade/9780198118558.book.1Google Scholar
Sidney, Philip. and Hubert, Languet. 1962. “The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, 1573-1576.” Trans. Charles S., Levy. Ph. D. dissertation, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Sinfield, Alan. 1992. “Sidney's Defence and the Collective-Farm Chairman: Puritan Humanism and the Cultural Apparatus.” In Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading, 181-214. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume Two: The Age of the Reformation. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Stillman, Robert E. 1985. “The Politics of Sidney's Pastoral: Mystification and Mythology in The Old Arcadia.” English Literary History 52:795–814.Google Scholar
Stillman, Robert E. 1998. “Allegory, Poetry, and History in Sidney's Arcadia.” The Sidney Journal 16.2, 80–85.Google Scholar
Stillman, Robert E. 2002. “Deadly Stinging Adders: Sidney's Piety, Philippism, and the Defence of Poesy.” Spenser Studies 16:231-69.10.1086/SPSv16p231Google Scholar
Stillman, Robert E. Forthcoming. “The Scope of Sidney's Defence of Poesy: The New Hermeneutic and Early Modern Poetics.” English Literary Renaissance. Google Scholar
Sturm, Johann. 1574. De imitatione oratoria libri tres. Strasbourg.Google Scholar
Sturm, Johann. 1995 .Johann Sturm on Education. Eds. and trans. Lewis W. Spitz and Barbara Sher Tinsley. St. Louis, MO.Google Scholar
Talbert, Ernest W. 1951. The Problem of Order: Elizabethan Political Commonplaces and an Example of Shakespeare's Art. Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Ulreich, John C. Jr. 1982. “'The Poets Only Deliver': Sidney's Conception of Mimesis.” Studies in Literary Imagination 15:67–84.Google Scholar
Waller, Gary F. 1986. English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century. London and New York.Google Scholar
Wengert, Timothy. 1998. Human Freedom, Human Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon's Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam. New York and Oxford.Google Scholar
White, R.S. 1996. Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature. Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511553400Google Scholar
Woudhuysen, H.R. 1996. Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558-1640. Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.001.0001Google Scholar
Worden, Blair. 1996. The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics. New Haven and Londo.Google Scholar