The Perfection Of The Coutier

I’m on a commenting rampage as of late. I’ve been reading a few other blogs, inside this class and also out side of this class and I’ve realized that this whole blogging thing is some kind of phenomenon. There are blog groups that you can join to post your thoughts and keep aware of the thoughts of others and comment on those thoughts. It all seems very interesting…

This is my last entry that on the subject of Sir Phillip Sidney. After this I will be moving on to tackling Dryden and seeing just what he has to say to the world. I’ll tell you right now I have no idea what to expect. I’m not an English major but a Linguistics major so anyone with ‘dry’ as the first part of their name worries me a little bit.

But I did like Sidney, young courtier of old. He seems to be a person who was more concerned with exercising his wit than anything else. Which is probably why he wanted to be the best courtier. As a courtier, it seems, you wear your charm and wit on your sleeve and present it to the world every time you step into the royal court. On top of that, this same wit and charm is your only tool to use when, as a courtier, you are abroad representing the queen and country. Its understandable then that‘…the highest expectations of him were high indeed.’

I can see why expectations would be high! It would be so easy to have a negative view of a courtier. If someone is going to go around saying that they represent the interests of a nation and of royalty they better do a damn good job of it. After all, as a diplomat, they are in a station of esteem and, as a diplomat, they should possess some qualities that would make those around them think that they are deserving of that role. Any less would cause people to think that they were fools. I think something similar happens to people everyday. We go around representing ourselves at some levels, our communities at others and sometimes, like when we’re on vacation, our nation.

Sidney’s contemporary’s all thought of him as possessing the qualities well suited to bringing his role great esteem. ‘He appeared as a living refutation of the common Italian assumption that all Northern Europeans, and the English in particular, were uncultured barbarians’. His concern for keeping a sharp wit manifests itself in his works, where it seems that at every point of discourse he wields a razor.

My favourite work is ‘the Defence’ where in a sort of fun way Sidney sets about the task of bringing the station of the poet some esteem. I especially like how he takes Plato who seems to look at poets unfavourably, and makes Plato one of their advocates. He does a good job of showing the right side of poetry, by turning criticism of poetry on its head. ‘…as Plato banishing the abuse, not the thing, not banishing it, but giving due honour onto it, shall be our Patron and not our adversary’

I think that the aim of ‘the Defence’ was to show that there is a positive way to approach how we view imaginative writing and that by looking at it with a positive frame of mind, we will be able to see its merits. By looking at imaginative writing the right way we can then see how a poor treatment of poetry, like a bad poem, has no place in poetry at all. Our condemnation of poor work shouldn’t be a condemnation of poetry itself, it should instead, serve to give us guidelines that will help develop its perfection.

I think what Sidney was striving for in his work and in his life was some kind of ideal. Where he would, at each step, seek to educate himself to refine his thoughts and wits. Sidney’s main drive seems to be more along the lines of self-enrichment where he could take a task and develop it to its perfection to satisfy his own desire of being the best person that he could be.

Fitzroy Ford “Bloggers Unite”