Architectonic Knowledge in the "New Arcadia" (1590): Sidney's Use of the Heroic Journey

1980 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Patrick G. Hogan ◽  
Josephine A. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
1985 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 687
Author(s):  
Andrew V. Ettin ◽  
Myriam Yvonne Jehenson

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Εμμανουήλ Αρετουλάκης

This thesis shows how, in seminal works of the English Renaissance, the “artificial” substitutes for the natural or, at times, creates it. I view the term “artificial” in two different ways. On the one hand, the artificial is any material object represented in Renaissance narrative; on the other, it is, metaphorically, any artificial/fictitious representation of an “objective” external reality. My basic point is that the artificial in the English Renaissance assumes the dimension of a new kind of technological nature that transcends the “artifice-nature” dichotomy. I use as a model Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia (1593) because they mark the beginning and the end of the sixteenth century in England. In my analysis, I argue that the presence of artificial objects in More and Sidney undermines the representation of the human body and de-naturalizes the self and personal identity. Furthermore, an artificial text-a self-consciously fictitious or historically “inaccurate” text-turns out to be a reliable/natural witness to the real; what is more, such a text often produces the real and the authentic. The island of Utopia becomes real in a retrospective way, that is, only after More has written his book. In the New Arcadia, material objects and prosthetic devices, such as armors, miniatures or paintings, do not merely affect Renaissance subjectivity, but they also create new artificial subjects and identities overshadowing “purely” human identities. In short, the artificial in the sixteenth century exceeds its symbolic status, in the sense that it is so dominant in prose works as to be almost “physically” real and present. I demonstrate cases in which the artificial becomes real and truthful in a retrospective and, rather, unconscious fashion. For instance, the citizens of Utopia gain, unknowingly, their interiority and nature from the outside. In a way, they are retrospectively assigned their own unconscious wishes. Likewise, desire in Sidney’s book does not spring from the inside but from the outside. It emerges as a product of imitation: we desire because somebody else desires. In this way, artificial desire becomes retrospectively authentic and natural. I subscribe to the post-Freudian construal of the unconscious as already residing in language and the exterior, and I connect unconscious desire with the New Historicist notion of theatricality and self-fashioning. However, my view of theatricality is more poetic, in a deconstructive way, in the sense that I focus on the “theatrical” as an unconscious, rather than self-conscious, artificial activity. In chapter I, I provide the cultural circumstances under which the Utopia and the Arcadia were created, while in chapter II, I deal with the historical transition from hearing to seeing. Chapter III addresses the role of physical objects as depicted in Renaissance narrative. Finally, chapter IV and V analyze the importance of unconscious desire as an artificially generated emotional and psychological state. This thesis deals with representations rather than presences, copies rather than originals; therefore my thinking revolves around signs and the reality that they may confer. The artificial in English Renaissance Prose as well as the English society itself proves indispensable both, to the representation and the constitution of reality. At the same time, Renaissance prosthetic devices not only enrich human nature, but also produce new natures and identities.


Author(s):  
Emily Wingfield

This chapter begins by introducing the most significant features of Scottish literary manuscript miscellanies, such as: their relatively late date, in comparison with surviving miscellanies from elsewhere in the British Isles; their copying by scribes who also functioned as notary publics, writers to the signet, and merchants; their links to some of Scotland’s most prominent book-owning families; and their inclusion of material derived from print and from south of the border. The remainder of the chapter offers a necessarily brief case study of one particular Older Scots literary manuscript miscellany (Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.5) in which the Older Scots romance, Lancelot of the Laik, is placed alongside a selection of Scottish courtesy texts and legal material, a series of English and Scottish prophecies, several acts of the Scottish parliament, an English translation of Christine de Pisan’s Livre du Corps de Policie, and the only surviving manuscript copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 86-91
Author(s):  
Marlin Brenner
Keyword(s):  

1969 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 614
Author(s):  
Ingrid E. Briar ◽  
Ian Mudie
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-69
Author(s):  
Joachim Frenk

Sir Philip Sidney is not commonly associated with a search for happiness or the use he made of concepts of happiness in his works. Yet, as this article seeks to show, he employed a rhetoric of happiness throughout. In particular, Sidney’s Arcadias – the Old Arcadia, which he finished in 1581, and the New Arcadia, the substantial rewriting which remained unfinished – are markedly different in their representations of and their reflections on happiness. While happiness is associated with the Arcadian state as a – potentially fatal – aim in the Old Arcadia from its very beginning, it is subordinated to a sterner and more violent discourse in the New Arcadia, for which after Sidney’s death other writers wrote diverse happy endings. This different treatment of happiness in the Arcadias is also discussed with a view to different manuscripts and print editions as well as to the power play at the Elizabethan court.


2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey. Sedinger
Keyword(s):  

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