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INTRODUCTION S ir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry occupies a central and even a pivotal position in both the history of literary theory and the history of ideas. It is, however, a work that easily could have gone unwritten. Poetry was, as Sidney says in the Apology, his “unelected vocation .”1 Sidney’s chosen calling was the active pursuit of the cause for which he believed England, and its queen, was destined: European Protestantism. Happily for English literature, if not for Sidney, the pragmatic Elizabeth did not share Sidney’s zeal, nor did she hesitate, when he displeased her, to deprive him of political and military service to the state. After writing Elizabeth a letter of advice on the matter of her prospective marriage to Alençon and then challenging the earl of Oxford, his social superior and a supporter of Alençon, Sidney was effectively cut off from all public employment. Thus, in the autumn of , the twenty-five-year-old Sidney retired from the court, and he remained effectively unemployed until mid-. It was during this period of semienforced rustication that Sidney composed—in addition to his prose romance, the Arcadia, and his sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella—the short defense of poetry that would prove to be a landmark in literary history.2 Sidney never bestowed a title on his defense of poetry, referring to 1 . An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepard (London: T. Nelson, ), . Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent citations of the Apology refer to Shepherd’s edition and are cited parenthetically. . The date of the Apology remains uncertain. Although many have argued that Sidney composed the work as early as , it probably was written around . On the dating of the Apology, see Shepherd, ed., Apology, –, and Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, ), –. it rather, with his characteristic irony, as an “ink-wasting toy” (). Nor is there any evidence that he ever considered having it printed. It remained unpublished for almost a decade after his death, until , when it appeared in two separate editions, Olney’s Apologie for Poetrie and Ponsonby’s Defence of Poesie. The work did, however, circulate in manuscript prior to its publication, and it is clear that Sidney wrote for more than a small coterie of family and friends.3 Neither the form of the work—a classical oration—nor its rhetorical style befit a small private audience. On the contrary, running throughout the Apology there is what might be called an evangelical impulse. Whether it is the soaring eloquence in his presentation of a fictional Cyrus who can make “many Cyruses,” the plaintive insistence of his digression on the bleak landscape of English literature in his day, or the beguiling charm of his persona, Sidney seeks at every point to enamor his audience with his expansive vision of poetry, and with virtue. Deprived of any diplomatic or military responsibility, Sidney did not turn his sights away from God’s “great work .l.l. against the abusers of the world.”4 Rather, laboring in the defense of his “unelected vocation,” he contributed to 2 Introduction . Perhaps responding to the power of Sidney’s prose, A. C. Hamilton, in Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of His Life and Works (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, ), goes so far as to call the Apology a “manifesto” in which Sidney “declares his emergence as a public poet” (). See Martin Garrett, in Sidney: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, ), –, who cites internal evidence indicating the “public context” of the Apology. For a different view, see Peter C. Herman, “When Is a Defense Not a Defense?: Sidney’s Paradoxical Apology for Poetry,” in Squitter-Wits and MuseHaters : Sidney, Spenser, Milton and Renaissance Antipoetic Sentiment (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, ), who believes that Sidney intended the Apology only for private consumption, and that the views he wished to be made public are to be found in two letters, one to Edward Denny and the other to his brother Robert. . From a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, in The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat,  vols. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, ), .. Sidney is expressing his faith that the Protestant cause would advance despite Elizabeth’s unwillingness: “If her Majesty were the fountain I would fear considering what I daily find that we should wax dry, but she is but a means whom God useth and I know not whether I am deceived but I...

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