Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)
Katona Gábor: Twentieth Century Critical Bias Concerning the Choice of a Dominating Philosophical Influence in idney's Defence
101 oratio'. Therefore, just as poetry initiates and sustains all knowledge, so it also develops and refines language, and so enables language to serve all the arts effectively."^ Analysing the rhetorical structure of the Defence , Kenneth O. Myrick^ says that it is a seven part oration, although he does not investigate its structural coherence. For Ronald Levao the Defence is almost like one of Stanley Fish's "selfconsuming artifects". in Iiis excellent article, he considers Sidney's use of metaphysics deceptive, because Sidney uses its terms when he praises poetic creativity and dismisses them before they can "compromise the mind's anatomy" J ^ Levao thinks that Sidney advances metaphysical claims while he refuses to rely on them for protection and if there is any justification of the poet's invention, it must lie in their didactic efficacy. * ° For Sidney, there is no universal idea hidden in the groundplot. The mind invents forms to fit its own faculties, as any first premise is impossible. The poet exposes himself to the inevitability of an infinite regress. The Defence requires another Defence to justify it, and so on without end. Levao finds that Sidney's intellectual appetites lie not so much with Ficino and the Italian Neoplatonists as with thinkers like Cusa, who claims that previous philosophers could not really understand the true nature of things, because of the illusion that the world had some fixed structure. Levao's conception of Sidney's "depective" use of metaphysics has a considerable bearing on my essay, as I am trying to give a general idea of the cultural influences that the reader can trace in the Defence. Comparing Cusa's way of thinking to that of the Florentine Neoplatonists, Levao does not say that the Cusanian influence was most significant of all for Sidney. Hiding behind the Poet's mask, Sidney emphasizes the Protean character of literature and manages to maintain his autonomy as a thinker. He takes no account of cultural hierarchies and acknowledges only one imperative, the necessity of defending poetry. The boundaries of time and space are all brought down by the strength of a discursive mind. Platonic ideas do not oust or transcend those of Aristotle, but stand side by side with them. Even Protestantism cannot be considered an overall influence, as it should not interfere with Sidney's acquired role as a poet and a defence-writer. In J. P. Thome's article^ reveals Sidney's poetry was more than just a game of logic, it was a receptacle of ethical norms that can set an example of virtuous action. Therefore, Sidney never became a Ramist. 90 Alan Sinfield^ thinks that the Defence is a significant document of Protestant cultural politics in the late sixteenth-century, but as opposed to Sinfield a think it is not a propaganda piece , as Sidney's basic aim was the achievement of perfection through perpetual self-control.
