Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism

Book excerpt: Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism was first published in 1978. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.In this study of the important Elizabethan writer and critic, Sir Philip Sidney, Professor Weiner examines the impact of the Reformation on traditional medieval and humanist ideas of the nature and function of poetry, taking Sidney as an exemplar of the transformation of both theory and practice that occurred. He offers a new reading of Sidney's Old Arcadia, placing it in the context of Elizabethan theology and politics. In the process he also offers a new reading of Sidney's Defence of Poesie, a major classic of English literary criticism. Professor Weiner shows how the latter work may be read as a virtual manifesto for a literary movement based on an emphatically Protestant outlook on questions of religious faith.