Previous
Sir Philip Sidney
The Poet is at the center of Sidney’s “An Apology for Poetry,” the figure whom Sidney defends against the “poet-haters” of the Elizabethan age. The poet writes imaginative literature, often but not necessarily in verse, and uses his or her imagination to create fictions: concrete examples (of the kind one finds in history) of abstract ideas (of the kind one studies in philosophy) perfectly designed to delight and to teach the reader. Sidney cites many examples of ancient poets (Hesiod, Homer, Vergil, among others) and also alludes to his contemporary English poets (such as his friend Edmund Spenser). But he also refers to the ideal poet, defining him or her as a “maker,” following the Greek etymology of the word (poietes), who resembles and (in the most extreme reading) in some ways even rivals God in his ability (and, indeed, Sidney most likely did have a male writer in mind, given the time and place he was writing) to create people and things even more perfect than what readers can find in nature. The poet combines this capacity for creation with an ability to speak not of what has been but of what should be, and thus resembles what the ancient Romans called a vates, a bard or seer. Because of his or her unique abilities, the poet is the ideal teacher of moral truths. Unlike the philosopher, who can only traffic in abstract ideas, and the historian, who is limited by what has actually happened, the poet can invent an example (i.e., a character, such as Virgil’s Aeneas in Aeneid, or an entire story, like a fable by Aesop) perfectly designed to teach the reader through delighting him or her. The poet resembles God in one final way, alluded to at the very end of “An Apology for Poetry”: the poet can immortalize people and things in verse, or, in an act of literary revenge, condemn his or her critics to oblivion by ignoring them.
The Poet Quotes in An Apology for Poetry
The An Apology for Poetry quotes below are all either spoken by The Poet or refer to The Poet. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
An Apology for Poetry Quotes
Only the poet [...] up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew; forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so he goeth hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.
Related Characters:
Sir Philip Sidney (speaker), The Poet
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
27
Explanation and Analysis:
In this passage, Sidney articulates the creative power of the poet’s imagination. It is this power that distinguishes poetry as the best of all the arts, and the poet is a potentially better moral teacher than the historian or the philosopher. The philosopher generally does not traffic in “things,” but instead merely in abstract ideas. History does somewhat better by furnishing concrete examples. But unlike the historian, who is limited by what has actually happened in the past, the poet can imagine things that do not exist. In fictions, the poet can imagine monsters or heroes, perfect embodiments of virtue or vice. These may not be real, but are useful for communicating the ideas the poet would like to impart to the reader.
The poet’s imagination “goeth hand in hand with Nature,” as an equal, rather than a subject, like the rest of God’s creation. The poet flies through the “zodiac” of his own imagination, not limited by any natural laws. Unleashed from the “narrow warrant” of nature as it actually is, the poet possesses a creative power that resembles God’s own power of bringing new forms into being. This passage is part of Sidney’s effort to recast the nature of poetry not as writing but as an act of imagination, something more elevated than merely composing verse.
Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, not whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Every understanding knoweth the skill of each artificer standeth in that idea, or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed; the final end is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done, [the poet] giveth a perfect picture of it, by some one by whom he pre-supposeth it was done, so as he coupleth the general notion with the particular example. A perfect picture, I say; for he yieldeth to the powers of the mind an image of that whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description, which doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul, so much as that other doth.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The poet is, indeed, the right popular philosopher.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Moving [...] is well nigh both the cause and effect of teaching; for who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught? And what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine) as that it moveth one to do that which it doth teach.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Now [...] of all sciences [...] is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it; nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass farther.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Of all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar; and though he would, as a poet, can scarcely be a liar [...] For the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious? [...] With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country; so that, as in their calling poets fathers of lies, they said nothing, so in this their argument of abuse they prove the commendation.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
But if (fie of such a but!) you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift itself up to look at the sky of poetry....thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets; that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire An Apology for Poetry LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
The Poet Character Timeline in An Apology for Poetry
The timeline below shows where the character The Poet appears in An Apology for Poetry. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
An Apology for Poetry
...arguments” can nonetheless be convincing. He says that he has “slipped into the title of the poet ” and so has been provoked to defend his “unelected vocation” because poetry has fallen...
(full context)
...or prophet. Sidney takes this as evidence of a great respect for the activity of the poet . He mentions the various cultural practices that linked poetry and prophecy, such as the...
(full context)
It wasn’t just the Romans who thought of the poet as prophet, Sidney claims. For the prophet David wrote the Psalms—“a divine poem,” Sidney writes—in...
(full context)
...have to do with “the works of nature”—that is, what has been made by God— the poet alone, “disdaining to be tied by any subjection,” uses his “invention” to create a new...
(full context)
The poet also creates perfect people with perfect virtue, creating a paradigmatic lover as Theagenes (in Heliodorus’s...
(full context)
...but in the “idea, or fore-conceit of the work.” This means that the genius of the poet resides in coming up with the idea of the perfect Cyrus or Aeneas. It is...
(full context)
...poetry he is interested in surveying, Sidney enters into an examination of the activity of the poet in order to secure “a more favourable sentence.”
(full context)
...Sidney claims, that deserves to be considered the most elevated of the arts. Sidney compares the poet with the historian and the philosopher—he ignores the lawyer who, though concerned with peoples’ manners,...
(full context)
The poet , however, can give both abstract principles and compelling moral examples. In fact, the poet...
(full context)
...but does so “obscurely,” for those who already know enough to understand him or her. The poet , on the other hand, is “the right popular philosopher,” teaching virtue in a way...
(full context)
...course, it is good to record what actually happened. But poetry isn’t limited by that: the poet can write about what should have happened: of a great hero, such as Cyrus, not...
(full context)
The poet , then, is indeed prince of the arts, because he can come up with compelling...
(full context)
...the title of prince, Sidney concludes the comparison with history and philosophy by remarking that the poet triumphs by “setting forward” examples and “moving to well-doing” through the compelling way in which...
(full context)
...the way.” It is as if, at the beginning of a journey through a vineyard, the poet gives the reader a cluster of grapes, a taste of the reward at the end....
(full context)
From these stories, Sidney says, it’s clear that the poet can “draw the mind” more effectively than the other arts. If the arts and the...
(full context)
...learning, found in every culture and given much respect by the Greeks and the Romans. The poet does not “learn a conceit out a matter,” the way a philosopher does, but “maketh...
(full context)
...critique of poetry in the Republic, is that poetry is the “mother of lies,” and the poet is a great liar. Sidney responds by claiming that the poet is actually the “least...
(full context)
