Posted by Dr. Ted on March 26, 1999 at 12:54:08:
The context of this discussion is the view often expressed that today's students "can't read or understand" Sidney's "Defence": Here's another view that strongly supports the usefulness and accessibility of Sidney to undergraduates:
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:54:36 -0500 I've been a lurker on this list for a while, and it's good to see some At 12:39 PM 3/25/1999 +0000, Helen Vincent wrote: The Defence is not usually seen as very relevant to the poets who were >Perhaps rather than teach the whole You could easily lose students by linking poesy and fiction. Most people I do like the idea of focusing on the fact vs. fiction issue if the terms >I It's possible too that students would sympathize with Sidney's definition >But then, where *do* you start with the Renaissance? Do you ease people in Maybe some of both? If Harold Bloom is right and Shakespeare invented us, >Christine Gilmore: Yes. >And if so, why? So we figure out how rational people become whining stalkers and learn not >Why did so many men write 'whining poetry' in Why do so many men dress up as "goths," "punks," or God knows not wot--an >Does Sidney intend us to blame Astrophil for his attempted Can you both laugh and blame? Perhaps Sidney's statements on laughter as a >And should we as Well, I'd say even if they really meant to be offensive, it's a bit late to Dan Knauss
From: Dan Knauss
Subject: Re: teaching Sidney
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prolonged discussion picking up. I finished my MA last semester at North
Carolina State with my thesis on Sidney and Donne, so I was especially
interested in Ms. Vincent's post:
>In my experience, the Defence isn't a very helpful text as an introduction
>to the literature of the period. Students have a perception of the
>Renaissance as 'Shakespeare - other dramatists - Donne - other lyrics' -
>in other words, the literature produced after Sidney wrote, so they find
>his judgements utterly baffling.
prominent after Sidney, but I think a lot of continuities may be overlooked
as a result. Isn't Shakespeare understandable in terms of Sidney's emphasis
on the fantastic/the imagination, as well as Sidney's emphasis on
delighting audiences to teach and move them toward admiration and imitation
of the virtuous Idea or Foreconceit of the poet? Thomas Roche, Jr.
(_Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences_) argues that true Petrachism
had a spiritual, didactic (psychogogic) purpose as its chief reason for
being. Poets like Sidney were trying to get back to this sort of
Petrarchism while disparaging and moving away from superficial Petrarchist
imitation. Is Donne's own Petrarchism in Songs and Sonnets radically
different from Sidney's in Astrophil and Stella? I don't think so. Both
poets were using and abusing the same tradition while taking the love lyric
in new directions. Students might also be pointed toward Donne's poem on
the Sidneys' translation of the Psalms. Inspiration, the role of the poet,
the poem and the interrelation of all three are represented in ways that
seem quite amenable to the Defence.
>Defence, with the problematic questions of how serious it is, and how to
>relate it to the existing canon of Renaissance literature, it would be
>helpful to take it as a 'defence of fiction' - highlight Sidney not as
>reinforcer of the elite but rebel against the proposition that fact is
>better than fiction, a battle which certainly still exists today.
now seem to regard fiction as "made up" material--sheer fabrication--or, in
other words, lies. Why not just explain Sidney says he means--i.e. "making"
(poiesis)? The richness of the Defence then is its focus on this dynamic,
conceptual process that all arts engage in--that the mind itself engages in
when imaginatively conceiving or receiving art.
are well-defined. If done well, it's likely to help clear up one of the
biggest modern prejudices that I'm sure contributes to the increasing lack
of interest in literature. The idea that fiction, while in some sense a
lie, could still truthfully and accurately describe reality, is not
something contemporary students (in my experience) understand or think
about much. They have a very simple either-or conception of truth.
(Something is either true or it is false.) Sidney (and Plato's) notion of
truth and falsehood is very different--they allow for "noble lies/fictions"
which are diegetically false but mimeticaly true. That is, what they say
literally is literally false, but what they say figuratively is
figuratively true. (Arthur Kinney points this out end of his _Humanist
Poetics_.) The problem for Sidney and Plato, however, was that the common
playgoing, reading public could not distinguish mimesis from diagesis,
superficial appearances from inner realities, and so they would be misled,
confused, corrupted or raised to wrath by the poets. In one of his most
misread passages, Plato's solution is to kick out the mimetic poets and
only allow a few diegetic (narrative) poets. The only fiction allowed is
the one Plato sets up as the Foundation myth to keep the ideal polis in
order. Only the elite magistrates know the myth is "made up" and they
maintain it because it has a true and noble purpose. Sidney, on the other
hand, tried to educate the common herd. Who's the elitist now? ;-)
>suppose the trick is to find valid cultural comparisons - one of the
>proudest moments of my teaching career was when a student off his own bat
>compared Milton's attitude to his classical epic predecessors to modern
>cinematographers and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation - wonderful
>technique, appallingly wrong subject matter...
of genre by emotional response. I've observed that our contemporary
"playgoing public" (people who watch movies every week), generaly select
what they're going to watch based on how they expect it to make them (or
their significant other) feel.
>or hit them over the head with how strange it all is?
the Renaissance can't be all that strange. Easing in, however, is probably
the best start. I learned once the hard way that Hamlet is not appreciated
by 1st-2nd year undergraduates if you focus on historical and philosophical
context before they've finished the play.
><
>designated him a whining stalker who practiced the 16th c
>equivalent of date rape on poor Penelope! >>
>
>That's what I *always* end up talking about with my students over
>Petrarchan poetry! Have I been doing something wrong? The question is, if
>Astrophil comes across as a whining stalker, does Sidney do this on
>purpose?
to do likewise.
>this period?
effort to aesthetize, externalize, and/or publicize their particular angst?
>kiss or laugh at his dismal failure to assert himself?
response to certain aesthetic conditions would be helpful here. As for
intentionality, Sidney says we are intended to see the Foreconceit and not
the poet's life. See Andrew Weiner, "Structure and 'Fore-Conceit' in
Astrophil and Stella'" texas Studies in Literature and Language, 16.1
(Spring, 1974).
>modern readers be outraged? The same, and worse, problems are encountered
>with Donne's love poetry, after all...
get mad at them for it. Plus, we're modern and they were at best early or
proto-moderns. We can probably afford to cut them some slack.
_____________________________________________
Dan Knauss - dpknauss@facstaff.wisc.edu
Department of English, University of Wisconsin - Madison
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