Poetry, Creation, and Imagination Theme Analysis

As part of the case he makes in “An Apology for Poetry,” Sir Philip Sidney provides a theory of what poetry is and how it works. This includes a taxonomy of poetic genres, both ancient and modern. Sidney’s influential formulation begins with Aristotle’s traditional definition of poetry (and imaginative literature more broadly) as the imitation or mimesis of reality, but goes even further to suggest that poetry is the creation of new, more perfect realities through the imagination. The poet, Sidney argues, has an almost divine power of creation, and is able to perfect nature through his or her imagination, forming a bridge between original, “golden” nature and the fallen state of contemporary humanity.

At the center of Sidney’s “An Apology for Poetry”—again, as part of the traditional rhetorical structure he is following—is Aristotle’s definition of poetry as imitation of reality. Sidney writes: “Poesy […] is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth.” Sidney explains this using a metaphor from Plato, writing that poetry is “a speaking picture, with this end to teach and delight.” Poetry, then, has a broader definition in “An Apology for Poetry” than it does in modern English. It does not have to be in verse, which is “no cause to poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that never versified.” Poets, though, do tend to speak in an elevated register “according to the dignity of the subject” they are writing about. According to Sidney, Poetry is a term broad enough to encompass not just Homer, but also Plato, Hesiod alongside Herodotus: it is something closer to imaginative literature (rather than merely the relation of fact) with some didactic end. Not only must one conceive of poetry as a broader literary category, but one must also place it in the context of “sciences” like history and philosophy, “skills” that help one achieve “virtuous action.”

Again, following the traditional structure of a courtroom speech, Sidney divides poetry into three kinds—divine, philosophical (what is traditionally classified as “didactic”), and poetry written by “right poets.” This last category refers to poets who write the kind of poetry that Sidney describes and praises throughout his essay. They “imitate to teach and delight, and to imitate borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be.” That is, they are like the vates, for they are not bound by certain knowledge but instead “range, only reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be and should be.” Following a classical taxonomy, Sidney further subdivides poetry into “heroic, lyric, tragic, comic, satiric, iambic, elegiac, pastoral,” which he will refer to later in his essay. But these specific genres and forms should all be merely instances of the essay’s expansive conception of poetry, which is defined less by form (i.e., verse) and more by content.

But Sidney goes beyond classical definitions in suggesting that the poet does not just imitate reality, but can perfect it. The poet is the most excellent example of human superiority to the rest of God’s creation. Sidney plays on the etymology of the word poet, which in Greek means “maker.” The other sciences study nature as God made it, but “Only the poet […] lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature” and makes things “either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew; forms such as never were in nature” like monsters or heroes, or simply morally perfect individuals. Through their imagination, the poet can exceed the “the narrow warrant” of God’s creation, not bound by natural laws but rather “freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.” The fallenness or imperfection of this world is both a Christian and classical commonplace. Sidney accords the poet-maker the role of restorer, or perfecter, of this imperfect world. For since nature’s “world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden” world.

The poet is therefore is not just a special kind of writer or thinker, but a special kind of human being, one who has access to uncorrupted nature. God, “the heavenly Maker of that maker,” created people in his likeness. But, Sidney argues, God set the poet “beyond and over all the works” in his creation. This is clear when “with the force of a divine breath he [i.e., the poet] bringeth things forth surpassing her doings.” The poet’s imagination is an example of “our erected wit” which “maketh us know what perfection is” even if “our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it.” All the sciences, and poetry in particular, help to “draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.” Poetry, then, is something holy, and the poet is not just a writer, but something closer to a priest or even a prophet.

Sidney’s vision of poetry and the poet’s role is much more expansive than one might initially expect. At its heart is Aristotle’s notion of poetry as imitation, the creation of “a speaking picture” that represents reality. But the “picture” is less a photograph and more a painting, or a Hollywood film: an embellishment of the reality that is represented. Combining classical theories of poetry as imitation with a Christian worldview, Sidney’s poetry does not just teach virtue, but creates it in the form of the more perfect reality of the poet’s imagination. Even though Christian theology dictates that humans can never achieve perfection, the poet, in describing “what may or should be,” allows humankind to get a glimpse of it.