So the poet does know what he’s talking about, and demonstrates it by the felicity of his imagery, which is more striking than the reasoned logic of the philosopher. In short, he’s more honest in the way he understands and uses METAPHOR, in which he “coupleth” form and meaning together. But then Sidney goes further than that: poets are more honest than any rhetorician.

Now writers aren’t the only professionals to use metaphor - as well as philosophers, teachers and theologians do too. But the writer uses it best, because even though it may be an imaginatively compelling synthesis, he’s not using it  to prove the truth of anything:

. . . of all writers under the Sunne, the Poet is the least lyer: and though he wold, as a Poet can scarecely be a lyer. . . the Poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth [bold mine]: for as I take it, to lie, is to affirme that to bee true, which is false. So as the other Artistes, and especially the Historian, affirming [bold mine] manie things, can in the clowdie knowledge of mankinde, hardly escape from manie lies.

It’s the philosopher’s insistence on literality (“affirming”) that is the distortion, because the literal is only metaphor that we have agreed among ourselves to regard as somehow non-metaphorical. [Quick explanation of that: if a metaphor is believed by enough people, it becomes the truth. It’s no longer a metaphor, because the philosopher’s not saying “as if”; he’s saying “it is”. He’s using metaphor to ultimately furnish proof rather than simply to illustrate a proposition.] But, says Sidney, our knowledge of the way the world works is too “clowdie” to be able to make that connection between form and meaning honestly. And, of all the professions, the writer doesn’t make it. So, for example, if everyone’s saying “the sky is blue”, the writer’s the infuriating bugger who chimes in “not always”. It depends on who’s looking at it, and how representative they consider themselves of everyone else’s take on the issue.

This is incendiary stuff. Meaning, as Sidney portrays it, is relative and not absolute. Meaning is as much a part of the “clowdie” world as anything else.

So actually, Sir Philip Sidney may have been the first English deconstructionist. It’s an involved argument, but please bear with me. Let’s take this quotation from ‘The Defense’ as our starting point:

There is no Art delivered unto mankind that hath not the workes of Nature for his principall object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become Actors & Plaiers [bold mine], as it were of what nature will have set forth.

So, Art (and meaning) have their roots in Nature. So far, so classical. But Sidney deviates from his classical forebears by insisting:

a) that the artist doesn’t simply reproduce Nature, but uses it as a starting point;

and

b) he’s not ashamed to be mucking about with Nature for his own artistic ends.

The artist doesn’t just reflect what he sees - he moulds it too. So meaning isn’t a reflection of anything in a cave - it’s a stand-alone creation that owes its final form to the writer’s imagination. But note his use of the words ‘Actors’ and ‘Plaiers’. Plato would have been very uncomfortable with this deliberate and shameless monkeying around with Nature. He would probably have preferred ‘Reporters’ or ‘Witnesses’. But Sidney’s actually proud of what he’s doing. And he goes even further - literature is the architectonike (the key to all disciplines) because it can do this.

If we return to Plato’s idea of ‘organic’ meaning, what Sidney’s proposing is not simply that the meaning of something is like a natural, non-negotiable exhalation from within it; meaning can be whatever the writer, in collaboration with Nature, chooses to find in it. It’s an exhalation given a purpose, or meaning, by the artist, to suit the ends of his art.

Sorry for all these italics, but it’s not the easiest idea in the world to explain. Nevertheless, given it’s one of the most crucial in this entire book, further proof might not be a bad thing. Let’s go round the block one last time:

The sciences map the their objects of inquiry as accurately as they can. But the poet has the advantage over these, says Sidney, in that he doesn’t have to stick to the literal contours of the landscape; in his creative imagination, the mind itself ("first nature") treats Nature ("second nature") as source material only. That way,  the poetic imagination creates a model that others may learn from. So if the poet’s describing a bloke called Cyrus, for example, the writer’s aim is;

not onely to make a [i.e. one] Cyrus, which had bene but a particular excellency as nature might have done, but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyrusses, if they will learne aright, why and how that maker made him.

So what the writer’s dealing with is not ‘Cyrus’, but what makes Cyrus the Cyrus he is - the ‘Cyrusness’ of Cyrus as it were. I noted earlier (page 55) that Plato was rather prescriptive on this issue, and it was actually rather difficult for a writer to incorporate his recommendations. Here, Sidney is approaching meaning from a practical or perhaps realistic perspective rather than a Platonic ideal perspective that is unchanging and unchangeable. SO he deserves a resounding cheer from writers everywhere.

Meaning is not, therefore, so much a study of Nature (how things are and must be to preserve stability and order), but of essences and how the individual writer perceives them. And different writers may perceive the same things in different ways. It’s only human, because all us humans are creatures with opinions. And opinions vary. So there’s no ‘real’ Cyrus, only ‘versions’ of Cyrus - but nevertheless versions that emanate from whatever his perceived ‘essence’ is. You can almost hear the literary critic rubbing his hands with glee. The tyranny of Nature is over! Wheel on the era of Interpretation! Trebles all round! Drink a toast to Multiple Meanings! And, ultimately, Deconstruction!

So Nature and the Writer are now equal partners in Meaning. And because they both contribute, it’s still a wonderful compromise between Inspiration and Perspiration, smack dab in the middle of the Meaning Line.

Now in addition to all the above, which represents a huge leap forward from Plato, Sidney is converting what was formerly a weakness into a strength. But also, he really talks up the writer’s status, giving literature extra credibility in so doing (well, to us moderns who aren’t shocked by the idea of plural meaning). As a writer, how much job satisfaction would you get from Plato’s model of meaning, knowing that your task was weaving texts out of shadows of shadows? Not much, I’ll warrant. But now that, under Sidney’s proposals, you’re a co-conspirator with Nature, you’re far more at the centre of the creative process. Literary meaning, despite “affirming” nothing, is much the stronger for that. And your stock as a writer has risen with it. Win/win. You’re not a hireling of Nature; you’re not a medium for a Muse; you’re not a slave to the irrational or a servant of the state. You’re a writer. And you can pretty much go where your imagination takes you.

But then Sidney could say what he wanted, because he was loaded and not bound to income from a patron whose own views on classical models might not be so revolutionary.

But the main inference we can draw from ‘The Defence of Poesie’ is that form and meaning no longer necessarily co-exist as an organic unit; they are now separable. And this is Big Theme #5 - Meaning is Detachable from Form by Varying Degrees. So in a way, it can be argued that as well as being a Renaissance man and all round good egg, SPS tries to set meaning free from its classical shackles through the use of Metaphor, paving the way for those for whom literature represents freedom from tyranny of all kinds.

It’s interesting to look at the way this theory pans out through subsequent critical history. I feel Sidney was so far ahead of his time, not everyone was prepared to run with him for at least a good two hundred years (see page 188 below), and then only part of the way.

Take Alexander Pope, for example, writing in the early 1700’s; if Sidney’s the rebel who went out on an aesthetic limb, Pope was the spin doctor who tried to bring lit crit back into the fold, to pour oil on the troubled waters of classical thought (and like it or not, he was living in what subsequently came to be known as ‘the Classical Age’, so it’s quite natural he should do so).

In his ‘Essay on Criticism’, he comments upon the respect and authority that ought properly to be given to the classical authors who dealt with the subject; and concludes that the rules of the ancients are in fact identical with the rules of Nature: poetry and painting actually reflect natural law. So classical crit isn’t at all out of date. It’s just the way things are, like it or not. The rules of criticism were “discovered, not devised”, so they pre-date the establishment of criticism as a discipline. They’ve always been with us. So Plato’s back on his throne as the King of Literary Theory.

 These mental gymnastics either represent  a fudge or an elegant compromise, depending on your point of view. But, while paying extravagant lip-service to his classical forebears, Pope also notes the existence of mysterious, apparently irrational qualities (“Nameless Graces," "Happiness", “Freer Beauties” and "Lucky Licence") which permit the true poetic genius, (possessed of adequate "taste") to transcend those same rules.  So he’s actually a little farther forward in the argument  than is immediately apparent, although he does heavily qualify practically every aesthetic assertion he makes in the poem. In the following passage, the Inspiration/ Perspiration axis of meaning continues as his central theme, but expressed in terms of Freedom and Discipline:

First follow nature and your judgment frame

By her just standard, which is still the same.

Unerring nature still divinely bright,

One clear, unchanged and universal light,

Life force and beauty, must to all impart,

At once the source and end and test of art

Art from that fund each just supply provides,

Works without show and without pomp presides

In some fair body thus the informing soul

With spirits feeds, with vigor fills the whole,

Each motion guides and every nerve sustains,

Itself unseen, but in the effects remains.

Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse, 

Want as much more, to turn it to its use;

For wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed,

Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed,

The winged courser, like a generous horse,

Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

Those rules, of old discovered, not devised,

Are nature still, but nature methodized [bold mine];

Nature, like liberty, is but restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained.