SIDNEY, PHILIP, sir. - Writer, b. at Penshurst on 30 Nov. 1554, d. at Arnhem (Netherlands) on 17 Oct. 1586.
He is regarded as the typical gentleman of Elizabethan England, with the virtues of the courtier, the soldier and the scholar, in the Italian and French Renaissance tradition, a patron of artists and men of letters, himself a man of letters, and a defender of the national religion. His works, published posthumously, include the long epic-pastoral novel Arcadia (1590), which stands alongside the work of Sannazaro and the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor, written in prose, at times prolix, interspersed with lyrics chiefly amorous in character; the Apologie for Poetrie (1598), written following an attack on the theatre by Stephen Gosson, which makes him the first representative of literary criticism of the English Renaissance and in which interesting judgments on contemporary production are found; and Astrophel and Stella (1591), a collection of sonnets addressed to Penelope Devereux, which place S. among the most conspicuous and most original representatives in Europe of the genre of Petrarchan lyric.
Bibliography3 worksed.: The complete works, edited by S. Feuillerat, 4 vols., Cambridge 1912-26; La Difesa della poesia, edited by S. Policardi (Italian trans.
BIBL.: ed.: The complete works, edited by S. Feuillerat, 4 vols., Cambridge 1912-26; La Difesa della poesia, edited by S. Policardi (Italian trans.), Padua 1946. Studies: F. Grenville, Life of sir P. S., edited by N. Smith, Oxford 1907; M. S. Goldman, Sir P. S. and the Arcadia, Urbana 1934.
Castelli, Alberto. “Sidney, philip, sir.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XI, coll. 542–543. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1953. https://azioneromana.com/article/sidney-philip-sir.
MLA
Castelli, Alberto. “Sidney, philip, sir.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XI, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1953, coll. 542–543. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/sidney-philip-sir.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec11_sidney_philip_sir,
author = {Castelli, Alberto},
title = {Sidney, philip, sir},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {XI},
pages = {542--543},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1953},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/sidney-philip-sir}
}
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