Sir Philip Sidney’s an Apology for Poetry, and, Astrophil and Stella: Texts and Contexts

This edition presents together Sir Philip Sidney’s response to the many attacks on poetry current in early modern England, An Apology for Poetry, and his path-breaking sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. The introduction provides biographical and historical contexts for reading Sidney’s works, and to help students explore how the Apology arises from and intervenes in the “Quarrel over Poetry,” this volume provides substantial excerpts from such texts as Plato’s Republic, Scaliger’s Poetics, Gosson’s The School of Abuse, and Richard Wiles’s A Disputation Concerning Poetry (the first extended discussion of poetry in Englad). This edition also includes excerpts from Sidney’s letters to his brother, Robert, and his friend, Sir Edward Denny. All the texts are newly edited, annotated, and modernized.