Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet by Katherine Duncan-Jones (review)

226Rocky Mountain Review Baker has written a book that makes an extremely useful contribution to the poetics of African-American literature, rather than the literary-anthology market. This is a high accomplishment, and Baker does something very significant in claiming importance for the beauty of the spiritual and transforming space ofblack women writers as something based on more than the history of slavery and racism. In tracing most of the poetics of AfricanAmerican women writers to African origins, Baker makes a claim for the legacy of black writing that relies more on its aesthetic legitimacy than on the history of slavery. In doing this, Baker is refusing to accept the white hegemonic university's latter-day condescension to Black Studies as deserving subject status as a function ofhistory alone. Baker's is not a book that is easily read, but no really important theoretical work is transparent. Careful reading and application of Baker's argument could open up the grounds of possibility for many other analyses ofthe spiritual and transforming spaces of the poetics ofAfrican-American literature. LAURA NIESEN DE ABRUÑA Ithaca College KATHERINE DUNCAN-JONES. Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. 350 p. Katherine Duncan-Jones states that in writing Sidney's literary biography she "avail[s] [her]self of the freedom Sidney would call 'poetical,' identifying causes and connections which make the narrative coherent, even if they cannot always be documented or clinchingly proved" (xi). In a sense, then, she gives the reader fair warning that she will often make statements without adequate support. The reader who heeds this warning, and does not mistake possibilities for certainties, will find an impressive amount of historical and literary research that will stimulate a rethinking, particularly of the hagiographie picture of Sidney painted by Fulke Greville (among others) that still persists. Although Sidney himself observed that "So uncertain are mortal judgments , the same person most infamous and most famous, and neither justly" (The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, ed. Duncan-Jones, Oxford, 1985, 360), Duncan-Jones attempts to give a just account of his development as a writer. It would seem difficult to connect Sidney's early years (1554-63) with his literary life, yet Duncan-Jones makes a valiant effort to do just that. She claims that his "unusually sympathetic and attentive literary treatment of women" stems from his being surrounded by women conversationalists in these years (2). Moreover, in order to flesh out connections between these years and his literary output, she says, "as a poet, Sidney often recollected infancy" (8). These statements are not particularly enlightening, but others are: she also shows parallels between the sufferings of Lady Jane Grey (his aunt about whom he would have heard and/or Book Reviews227 read) and those of the "New" Arcadia's Pamela. These kinds of "glimpses," as she calls them, are very intriguing, even if they cannot be "clinchingly proved" (19). She goes on to demythologize Sidney in the following eleven chapters (plus epilogue) by taking on his other biographers and presenting the poet as chronically choleric and fiery from his boyhood. Her Sidney is so far from being the ideal Elizabethan courtier that the Queen postponed knighting him "as long as she could" (147)—and apparently with good reason. In his personal correspondence, "he viewed her (hopefully) as having one foot in the grave" (106). Sidney's reputed munificence as patron and courtier is also seen in a new light. He was generous with other people's money to the end: in fact, paying off the financial obligations incurred by his son-in-law's will ruined Walsingham (300). In addition, Duncan-Jones does not hesitate to add a bit of sensationalism to Sidney's conventionally sanctified portrait by raising suspicions about his sexual orientation and performance, even though at a distance of 400 years such things are problematic to assess, as she herself readily admits (240). It's a pity she omits John Aubrey's account in BriefLives of the "carnal" relations between the fatally wounded Sidney and his wife. As a literary biographer, Duncan-Jones is not content merely to call assertions by other biographers (especially Greville) "demonstrably false" when...