Defense of poesy. The Defence of Poesy Study Guide 2022-10-29
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Poesy, also known as poetry, has long been considered a lesser form of literature compared to prose. It has been dismissed as frivolous and not worth serious attention, with some even going so far as to claim that it serves no purpose at all. However, this view is not only misguided, but it also undermines the value and importance of poetry in our society. In this essay, I will defend poesy and argue that it is a vital form of expression that has the power to enrich our lives and connect us to one another in meaningful ways.
One of the main reasons that poesy is often dismissed is that it is often seen as difficult to understand and interpret. Many people believe that poetry requires a level of literary analysis and interpretation that is beyond their abilities, and therefore they see it as an elitist form of literature that is not accessible to everyone. However, this view ignores the fact that poetry can be enjoyed on many different levels. While it is true that some poems are complex and require careful analysis to fully understand their meaning, others are simple and straightforward, and can be enjoyed by anyone with a basic understanding of language.
Another reason that poesy is often overlooked is that it is often seen as being overly emotional or sentimental. Some people view poetry as being overly sentimental or sentimental, and therefore not worth taking seriously. However, this view is unfair and fails to recognize the depth and complexity of many poems. While it is true that some poems are emotional or sentimental, this is not true of all poems, and many poems deal with complex and difficult themes in a nuanced and sophisticated way.
Despite these misconceptions, poesy has a number of important qualities that make it worth defending. For one, it is a powerful form of expression that allows poets to communicate their ideas, emotions, and experiences in a way that is both direct and powerful. Poetry has the ability to convey meaning in a way that is both concise and evocative, and it can be a powerful way to connect with others and convey ideas in a way that is both meaningful and impactful.
In addition to being a powerful form of expression, poesy also has the ability to enrich our lives and connect us to one another in meaningful ways. Poetry can provide insight into the human experience and help us to understand and relate to others in a way that is both empathetic and compassionate. It can also help us to understand and appreciate the beauty and complexity of the world around us, and can provide us with a sense of connection and belonging.
In conclusion, poesy is a vital form of expression that has the power to enrich our lives and connect us to one another in meaningful ways. Despite being dismissed by some as difficult or sentimental, it is a powerful and important form of literature that deserves to be taken seriously and appreciated by all.
The Defence of Poesy Summary
But, more importantly, Sidney's careful analysis of an entire style of literature has long-lasting effects on academia. After these points Sidney continues on to attempt to prove that poets encompass the best traits of Philosophers and Historians. Secondly, that it is the mother of lies. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. Throughout his defense, he advocates for creative writers during a period when religion and strong moral beliefs could have stifled the artistic freedom and expression before the cusp of when literature took off as an industry. Then should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I know not how many years, and travel numbers of places. The purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed; the final end is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of.
This Alexander left his schoolmaster, living Aristotle, behind him, but took dead Homer with him. The person in whom this power resides, may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes? He writes that although it is possible to view poetry as a simply an unoriginal imitation, on the other hand poets are not limited by the rules of reality. Aside from some ego self-stokery, though, "Defense" is a great read. Nay, truly, though I yield that poesy may not only be abused, but that being abused, by the reason of his sweet charming force, it can do more hurt than any other army of words, yet shall it be so far from concluding that the abuse should give reproach to the abused, that contrariwise it is a good reason, that whatsoever, being abused, doth most harm, being rightly used—and upon the right use each thing receives his title—doth most good. Another will say it wants grammar. Poetry is divided into many subcategories such as: heroic, lyric, tragic, comic, satiric, iambic, elegiac, and pastoral.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Truly they have made me think of the sophister that with too much subtlety would prove two eggs three, and though he might be counted a sophister, had none for his labor. I conclude, therefore, that he excels history, not only in furnishing the mind with knowledge, but in setting it forward to that which deserves to be called and accounted good; which setting forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed sets the laurel crown upon the poet as victorious, not only of the historian, but over the philosopher, howsoever in teaching it may be questionable. It deserves 5 stars just for being so gutsy and clever! The different forms of poetry are divided into three categories. Several aspects of Greece including mythology, culture, and language are littered throughout this analysis. Most importantly for our purposes since this is an early English-language critic. They create and things in their poem don't just happen by chance, they happen with the guiding hand of the poet.
For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. For him, it is life's highest calling. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of things, than those who have omitted that form. History is full of things that happened by chance with no overarching intention or goal - it just happened. From almost the beginning of the essay, he emphasizes the godliness of poetry, preemptively laying the groundwork for a defense against the chief accusation against poetry: that it is "mother of lies. The practice is indeed convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification.
A Summary and Analysis of Percy Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’
The French in his whole language has not one word that has his accent in the last syllable saving two, called antepenultima, and little more has the Spanish; and therefore very gracelessly may they use dactyls. But yet presuppose it were inseparable—as indeed it seems Scaliger judges—truly it were an inseparable commendation. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. Besides, one word so, as it were, begetting another, as, be it in rime or measured verse, by the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness, with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. This is especially important because Sidney seeks to defend poetry against its Christian detractors.
Abstracted situations will help you attain more spiritual goals. Their business is asserting the truth; they have the potential to say something that is absolutely wrong about what happened in the world. Sidney responds to the accusations to poetry in a very convincing way, with many literary references to classical texts. Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. And that moving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this appear, that it is well nigh both the cause and the effect of teaching; for who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught? Genre This essay contains ample allusions to works of antiquity, especially Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.
The other thing is that their work is 'brazen' that's the word that Sidney uses , which basically means it's made up of things that happened to happen. I would much more have reverenced; but it was the former, in truth a bitter punisher of faults, but else a man that had never sacrificed to the Graces. But it is not the tragedy they do mislike, for it were too absurd to cast out so excellent a representation of whatsoever is most worthy to be learned. However, as the essay progresses, he does not make fun of or put down horsemanship. The Defence of Poesy or An Apology for Poetry 1580 was written, well, to defend the importance of poetry in society. And let us not circumscribe the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the sensibility of those to whom it was addressed.
Poetry is about universal truths; things we would do and say in a given situation. Sidney seeks to draw a parallel between the historian and the philosopher, and to show the defects of both. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness in statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to which I now refer. His father, Sir Henry Sidney, was appointed lord president of the Marches of Wales by Queen Elizabeth in 1559, and was later posted in Ireland; he was often absent from Penshurst. Sidney and Ancient Greece Sidney spends a vast majority of his argument incorporating Greek mythology. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines labor, let them beware that their speculations, for want of correspondence with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and want.
