Studying Sidney

Reviews Studying Sidney NANCY LINDHEIM Arthur F. Kenney, ed. Essential Articles for the Study of Sir Philip Sidney Hamden, Conn: Archon Books 1986. 458. us $29.50 Just as no anthology quite serves one's purpose for teaching poetry, so no collection of 'essential' essays quite matches one's own evaluations. Contentious . choices are inevitable, as are inconsistencies in applying the criteria used for selection. So, perhaps, is some sort of discernible bias, especially in a period like ours, rife with critical argument, and in an exercise such as this, which seems to proclaim its importance for the future ('essential' for what?). Professor Kinney's bias would seem to be new-historical. The book is set up in seven sections, beginning with 'Biography.' F.J. Levy and Alan Hager both try to align the myth of Sidney with the probable reality, Levy by soberly analysing his public career and Hager by more aggressive 'exposure' of Sidney's political limitations and of the way his spectacular funeral was managed by Elizabeth for her own ends. Hager's logic in applying biography to literature is weak, butwhathe calls 'the deconstruction ofa biographicalimage' (p 26) remains a useful counterblow to the tendency towards hagiography that has been - or used to be - prevalent in Sidney studies. Theodore Spencer's appreciative essay on the poetry introduces us generally to the work itself and to Sidney's careful craftsmanship. These '945 judgments, geared to resurrecting Sidney from the dust-heap of literary history, will seem tame to a generation that accepts his greatness. Two other essays in the collection, Colin Williamson's 'Structure and Syntax in Astrophel and Stella' and Coburn Freer's 'The Style of Sidney'S Psalms,' represent later labours in the same field, Williamson's particularly successful. Section III, LAdy of May, contains only one piece, Stephen Orgel's intelligent and influential discussion. Section IV, perhaps the most successful grouping, is devoted to the Defence ofPoesie. Its strength lies in the fine theoretical essays at the centre: D.H. Craig, 'A Hybrid Growth: Sidney's Theory of Poetry in an Apologyfor Poetry' and John C. Ulreich Jr, '''The Poets Only Deliver": Sidney'S Conception of Mimesis.' The Craig article forms something of a pivot in the group. His convincing refutation of Calvinism, one of the three traditions (along with mannerism and UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1988 440 NANCY LINDHEIM neo-Platonism) to which th~ Defence is currently assigned, refers to Andrew D. Weiner's assertions in 'Moving and Teaching: Sidney's Defence of Poesie as a Protestant Poetic: the independently published chapter of his book reprinted here. Craig's conclusion is that Sidney has created a 'hybrid' theory in which the poetic image (Aristotelianly 'concrete: though reflecting a golden world) is at the service of Plato's passionate desire to make virtue ravishing (pp 128-30). For Ulreich, on the other hand, 'Sidney's mimesis is not a mere eclectic hybrid of contradictory definitions but an active synthesis of contrary conceptions in which Platonic and Aristotelian ideas interpenetrate' (p 147). Ulreich's reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle on mimesis depends upon seeing their conceptions of form as similarly dynamic, having reference to aprocess rather than aproduct. (Aristotle's process fulfils potentiality; Plato's Ideas are forms of energy, causes of that which comes into being.) They thus perceive the same process at work, but from opposite points of view (p 140). By using the Timaeus rather than the Republic to reveal Plato's concept of mimesis, Ulreich saves Sidney from the contradiction of requiring a poetry which is a mimesis of created things and a right poet who disdains to be tied to nature. I admire the argument very much, but my guess is that Sidney would have associated Plato's view of mimesis with the much more negative discussion of Republic x. By comparison to these two essays, Catherine Barnes's discussion of the 'hidden' persuasive techniques of the speaker's voice in the Defence seems lightweight, and O.B. Hardison Jr's discovery of two contradictory voices (here the editor's stated policy of choosing later work - for example RaitU~re or Levao should have been...