The Defence of Poesy

Sir Philip Sidney was writing at a time when humanism was on the rise. This movement secularized education and focused its studies on the achievements of mankind. In this treatise, however, Sidney takes pains to unite poetry, humanist thought, and his Christian beliefs.

Sidney sees abundant poetry in the Bible, for example in the Psalms (22, 42)—whose name even means “words accompanying music” in Greek—and in Solomon’s Song of Songs (25). The author even cites Christ’s story of Dives and Lazarus (34), as an example of the moving power of narration (in contrast with philosophy). Although Sidney admits to some hesitation in counting some Biblical works as poetry, “which is among us thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation” (22), he concludes: “But they that with quiet judgements will look a little deeper into it, shall find the end and working of it such as [...] deserveth not to be scourged out of the Church of God” (22).

In uniting poetry and religion, Sidney must also define the limits of poetry according to his Christian beliefs. When he asserts that poetry has the power to surpass nature with inventiveness, for example, he qualifies it by saying that “with no small arguments to the credulous of that first accursed fall of Adam, since our erected wit maketh us know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it” (25).