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
99 KATONA GÁBOR Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem,, Debrecen TWENTIETH CENTURY CRITICAL BIAS CONCERNING THE CHOICE OF A DOMINATING PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE IN SIDNEY'S DEFENCE The most important questions that have been asked about Sidney and Iiis work in the course of our century are the following: What philosophical, poetic and other cultural inf luences can be detected in the it the Devencel Is it Platonic or Aristotalian thinking that dominates in it? Is it a masterpiece in its own right or a skilful recapitulation of previous writings? All kinds of answers have been given to these questions. Spingarn 1 claims that Sidney, in his def inition of poesy, relies on Aristotle and on other Continental authors, ancient and modern, like Horace, Cicero, Castelvetro, Scaliger, Minturno Daniello, etc» Saintsbury^, while he partly agrees with Spingarn, never mentions the word "copymg." Atkins compares the two main sources of Sidney's philosophical orientation, Plato and Aristotle. Finding Aristotelianism more influential on Sidney he recognizes the abundance of sources that could have influenced Sidney's work: "... in the central section of the Defence Sidney fused together ideas drawn from various quarters, from Plato and Aristotle chiefly, but from Horace, Cicero, and Plutarch, from patristic writings, from Italian and other sources as well."^ Irene Samuel ' claims that Platonic ideas dominate the Defence. Michael Krouse thinks that we should not look for direct quotations from Ficino's, Pico's or any other Neoplatonist's works to decide if Sidney's Defence is Platonic or Aristotelian in spirit. Krouse thinks^ that Sidney applied Plato's argumentation about ethics and poetry to Aristotle's theory concerning the formal aspects of artistic creations: "The philosopher needs ethical myths no less than cosmological."^ Krouse's attitude points forward to further interesting developments in the debate about the philosophical character of the Defence :
