An Apology for Poetry Summary & Analysis

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Sidney tells the reader that he and Edward Wotton once studied horseback riding with Giovanni Pietro Pugliano at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor. Pugliano did not simply teach them about the art of riding horses ( how to do it) but invited them to reflect on the activity in a philosophical manner ( why one should do it).

Sidney begins his Apology with an anecdote that acts as the exordium, or introduction, to his essay, which is modeled on a classical oration. The anecdote establishes Sidney’s status as an aristocratic gentleman, since horseback riding was a symbol of status. Pugliano’s philosophical approach to teaching riding—dwelling not so much on how as on why one should do it mirrors Sidney’s own approach in the Apology : it will not be a guide to writing poetry, but a philosophical essay about the value of poetry.

Pugliano argued that soldiers are the most noble of noblemen, and that “no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince” as skill on horseback. He also praised the nobility of the horse, and spoke so persuasively that Sidney admits that if he was not a “logician,” he might have wished that he could have been a horse. Sidney concludes from this that “self love is better than any gilding.”

Pugliano relates the activity of horseback riding to the aristocratic ideals it embodies. His humorous aside about wanting to be a horse indicates that Sidney does not take Pugliano in total seriousness, and that Sidney understands the slightly ridiculous nature of praising horses and horseback riding. He attributes Pugliano’s high-flying rhetoric with self-love: because Pugliano is proud of himself, he must also be proud of what he teaches.

Sidney turns to poetry as another example of this phenomenon: how “strong examples and weak arguments” can nonetheless be convincing. He says that he has “slipped into the title of the poet ” and so has been provoked to defend his “unelected vocation” because poetry has fallen from its privileged position among the arts to be the “laughing-stock of children.” He jokes that there is danger of “civil war among the Muses.”

Sidney claims that his praise of poetry will be a “weak argument” either as part of a rhetorical strategy to capture the goodwill of the reader (formally called a captatio benevolentiae ) or because he is being slightly ironic. In either case, he claims that, like a good aristocrat, he writes his defense only because his own honor is at stake.

Sidney argues that the critics of poetry are ungrateful. In most cultures, poetry is the means by which the young are educated, the “first nurse” who introduces children to learning.

In the Renaissance, elite education involved the memorization of many poems and the composition of verse in several languages. Sidney probably also has nursery rhymes in mind.

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The earliest Greek writers (Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod) were poets, and helped to “draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge.” Archaic poets, like Livius and Ennius in the Latin tradition, inspired people to become more civilized. The same could be said of Dante, Boccace (Boccaccio), and Petrarch, in Italian, and Gower and Chaucer in English, who “encouraged and delighted” later poets “to beautify our mother tongue.”

Poetry has priority not only in the education of children, but also in literary and intellectual history more broadly. Indeed, poetry does not only introduce individuals to learning, but can be seen to be the be the first form of literature and instruction for Western culture on the whole.

In the ancient world, Sidney explains, there was no real distinction between poetry and the other arts: poetry was the language of all learning. The earliest Greek scientists, like Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides, “sang their philosophy in verses.” The same could be said for moral philosophy (Pythagoras, Phocylides), the art of war (Tyrtaeus), and politics (Solon). Even Plato, who was famous for his critiques of poetry, wrote in a poetic manner: his dialogues are fictions, complete “poetical describing” of circumstance and named symbols (Gyges’s ring, for example). The great historians, such as Herodotus, “either stole or usurped” from poetry their description of human emotions, the details of historical events that they never could have seen themselves, and the orations they never could have heard.

The distinct separation of literature from philosophy and history and science is a modern phenomenon. The Ancients—who, to a Renaissance reader, had great wisdom and authority—did not distinguish between imaginative literature and other kinds of writing. Sidney suggests that the best classical authors, regardless of topic, used poetic techniques in their writing.

These great writers would never have become popular, Sidney suggests, if they hadn’t written poetically. As is clear across world cultures (Sidney cites Turkey, Ireland, and Wales), poets are widely respected by the people, however uneducated the general populace may be. Even where there have been attempts to eradicate learning, such as in the conquests of Wales, poetry survives.

Sidney himself had traveled across Europe and may speak from personal experience. It is remarkable that an aristocrat, who benefited from an elite education, brings forward mass popularity as evidence for the virtues of poetry.

Because most of the examples considered thus far have been Greek and Roman, Sidney now considers what names these ancient cultures gave “this now scorned skill.” At Rome, a poet was referred to by the Latin noun vates , which means a seer or prophet. Sidney takes this as evidence of a great respect for the activity of the poet . He mentions the various cultural practices that linked poetry and prophecy, such as the sortes Virgilianae , whereby one turned to a random line in Virgil and read it as a kind of prophetic statement about one’s life, such as the ancient English king Albinus did. Sidney notes, too, that the English word charm derives from the Latin word carmen, which means “poem” or “song,” and that the prophecies of the oracle at Delphi and the Sibyl were delivered in verse.

Sidney, like other Renaissance authors, puts a great value on etymology: the words the ancients contain some kernel of truth about what they name. Indeed, this information seems to us to have little logical force in Sidney’s argument. Yet he incorporates it as a given without offering justification, since its value to a Renaissance reader would be self-evident. It is interesting to note that, although the Roman Sibyl and the Oracle at Delphi were roles always occupied by women, Sidney presents the poet throughout the Apology as male. The Apology is not explicitly misogynistic and does not preclude the possibility of a female poet, and indeed there were female poets in the Renaissance. But Sidney does seem to have a male poet in mind.

It wasn’t just the Romans who thought of the poet as prophet, Sidney claims. For the prophet David wrote the Psalms—“a divine poem,” Sidney writes—in verse. Sidney notes that not only the form but also the style of the Psalms is poetic, with its metaphors and similes. Although Sidney says that he runs the risk of “profan[ing]” the Psalms by referring to them with the modern word poetry , he suggests that the comparison points to the fact that, if the name be “rightly applied,” it’s clear that poetry “deserveth not to be scourged out of the church of God.”

Sidney is a Christian writing to a Christian audience, so it makes his argument more effective to show that the classical pagan ideas about poetry were shared by religious writers. Also, because one of the major early modern critiques of poetry was that it corrupts the morals of its audience (as Sidney addresses later on in the “refutation”), it is important for Sidney to link poetry with religious virtue.

Turning to the Greeks, Sidney notes that in Greek a poet is called poietes, which literally means “maker.” (The English word derives from the Greek.) Sidney feels that this is a very good name, because, while all other arts have to do with “the works of nature”—that is, what has been made by God— the poet alone, “disdaining to be tied by any subjection,” uses his “invention” to create a new nature, better than the one in which we live. He is not subject to nature, but rather “goeth hand in hand” with nature, free to invent fictional characters and events. The poet creates a perfect, “golden” world.

Again, we see Sidney’s faith in etymology. Here, translating the Greek word poietes literally allows Sidney to make a connection to the Judeo-Christian God, who was also a poietes when He made the universe. Sidney’s poet is not a traditionally pious person, however: he “disdain[s]” to be “tied” to nature as it currently exists, and instead uses his own powers of “invention” to make a nature that replaces the one God created. Sidney makes the extremely bold claim that the poet “goeth hand in hand” with nature as an equal—and so that the poet in a way rivals God on earth. This is a kind of Renaissance egoism notably shared by the Italian humanist Pico Della Mirandola in his famous Oration on the Dignity of Man , in which he claims that humans are the best of God’s creation because they most resemble God in their ability to participate in everything in nature. Finally, Sidney echoes ancient creation myths (notably in Hesiod and Ovid) as well as the Christian story of the Fall, when referring to a “golden” age. The poet restores greatness that has been lost through human sinfulness. Later on, Sidney will say that poets teach virtue in such a way as to make humans beings as good as they can possibly be in their “clay lodgings.”