1. Sir Philip Sydney: An Apology for Poesy
Prepared by: Marie Joy Anhaw
Jaypee Rogel Pacres

2. Early Life
Birthdate: November 30, 1554
Birthplace: Penshurst Place, Kent
Parents: Sir Henry Sidney
Lady Mary Dudley
Education: Shresbury School (secondary)
Christ Church, Oxford (college)

3. Politics
• defended his father's administration of Ireland in
a lengthy document
• wrote a lengthy letter to the Queen detailing the
foolishness of the French marriage

4. Literary Writings
• The Lady of May
• Astrophel and Stella
• The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
• A Defense of Poetry

5. Injury and Death
"Thy necessity is yet greater than
mine"
• Died on October 17, 1586

6. Legacy
• A street in Zutphen, Ohio , was named
after him
• A statue for him can be found in the park
at the Coehoornsingel

7. A defense of Poesy (1595)_

8. The Renaissance
• The Renaissance was an era of
changes.
• Intellectuals doubted values and
beliefs from the ancient world and
tried to find another way of
thinking.

9. Stephen Gosson
He is best known for his attack on plays, poetry,
and other arts in The School of Abuse (1579),
which evoked in reply a defense from Thomas
Lodge and Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry.

10. Stephen Gosson makes charges on
poetry which Sidney answers.
The charges are:
1. Poetry is the waste of time.
2. Poetry is mother of lies.
3. It is nurse of abuse.
4. Plato had rightly banished the poets
from his ideal world.

11. SIDNEYS’ DEFENSE
1. Poetry is the source of
knowledge and a civilizing force.

12. 2. A poet does not lie because
he never affirms that his fiction
is true and can never lie.

13. 3. Sidney rejects that poetry
is the source of abuses. To
him, it is people who abuses
poetry, not the vice- versa.

14. 4. Sidney views that Plato in
his Republic wanted to
banish the abuse of poetry
not the poets.

15. References:
http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/criticaltheories/sir-philip-s
http://www.answers.com/topic/stephen-gosson-english-writer