ABSTRACT
SMITH is the indispensable guide to this subject, being a comprehensive collection of the main treatises of literary criticism of the era: it includes Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, George Puttenham’s Art of English Poetry, Samuel Daniel’s Defence of Rhyme, plus works by Thomas Campion, Roger Ascham, Sir John Harington, and Gabriel Harvey. There is also a useful and substantial Introduction, which deals with Puritan attacks on poetry, sources of debates and opinions (classical, medieval, contemporary European), and prosody, diction, and decorum as dominant conceptions of literary composition of the time. The edition, excellent as it is, is badly in need of updating and should be supplemented by KINNEY, who collects the important writings of Stephen Gosson together with useful commentary and notes. Gosson was the writer whose attacks on the theatre in The School of Abuse (1579) led to Sidney’s famous reply in defence of literary composition partly because, strangely enough, Gosson had dedicated his treatise to Sidney. Gosson attacked drama and literature on the grounds that they effeminised men and made the nation dissolute: Kinney discusses his work in terms of Protestant ideology.
