ABSTRACT
The Analysis is a rigorous Latin critique of A Defence of Poetry on Ramist principles (on which see further the helpful introduction and notes in William Temple’s ‘Analysis’ of Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Apology for Poetry’, ed. and trans. John Webster Binghamton, NY, 1984). Latin was the habitual written tongue of the academic, but the choice of a different language from the one Sidney uses and promotes in A Defence aptly suggests the considerable divergence between the two authors’ points of view. As Webster says (ibid., pp. 28, 35) Sidney’s view of poetry was certain to please poetry readers but also ‘to elicit scepticism from those scholars who practised any of the arts which suffered in Sidney’s artful comparisons’, including the logician and moral philosopher Temple; further, in accordance with Temple’s view that poetry is a logical art, ‘where Sidney emphasizes poetry’s power to move, Temple consistently shifts this focus to issues of truth and understanding’. Whereas Sidney argues that ‘poetry is essentially different from all other arts, Temple insists that it is to be valued for what it shares with those arts’.
