Sir Philip Sidney
A Study of his Life and Works

A general critical study of Sir Philip Sidney's life and works, first published in 1977.

A. C. Hamilton (Author)

9780521158909, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 January 2012

228 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.3 kg

A general critical study of Sidney's life and works, first published in 1977: his life in relation to his works and both in relation to his age. In the late 1570s and early 1580s, when the literary scene in England was barren, Sidney emerged as the right man at the right moment to establish a national literature. In his Defence of Poetry he formulated a poetic which showed 'why and how' imaginative literature could be written in Protestant England; and in his poetry and prose, chiefly in Astrophel and Stella and the two versions of The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, he revealed that the English language was, as he claimed, 'indeed capable of any excellent exercising of it'. Through the influence of his personality, his critical insight, and his brilliant achievement in both poetry and prose - which Professor Hamilton in this study establishes through careful analysis - Sidney became the central figure of the English literary Renaissance.

Preface
1. Sidney in life, legend, and in his works
2. Sidney and the pastoral: The Lady of May and the Old Arcadia
3. Sidney's 'unelected vocation'
4. Sidney's poetics
5. The New Arcadia: 'an absolute heroical poem'
Appendix
Abbreviations
Notes to pages 1-174
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]